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development of Christian worship
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I. Introduction.
Worship is something a lot of us do without giving it much thought. Even worship planners don’t always give it the thought it needs or deserves. How does what we do in worship connect us to God? How does what we do retell and remember the mighty deeds of God? In our market driven society where the consumer is king, worship has became a smorgasbord with a little of ‘that’ and some of ‘this.’
In our drive to get people in the doors of our churches we have allowed the consumer mentality determine the content of worship. Our rally cry has been: “Give them what they want.” But should ‘what they want’ be the determining factor of worship? Is what they want what they need? It is the responsibility of worship leaders to make sure that what they need is what we give them. The church desperately needs to recover from the consumer mentality.
In the Western Church worship has gone through several major upheavals and dramatic changes. In the Eastern Church there has been considerably less change. The Orthodox liturgy looks much the same as it did a thousand years ago.
In part 2 of this paper I will try and track the history of worship in the Western Church.
II. A brief history of worship.
A. The Early Church— AD 50-100
The early church had many characteristics of late Judaism. They believed that God was active in their history and their organizing philosophy was holistic thinking. To that belief the early Christians added the belief that God’s action had culminated in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.
B. The Ancient Church— AD 100-600.
Worship in this period was characterized by the concept of mystery brought about by their platonic philosophy that this world was a shadow of the tru...
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... of the Christus Victor pays closer attention to the whole scope of the Christ event. Redemption in the Reformation, and since, is more about the personal forgiveness of sin and a person’s right relationship with God. While personal salvation is certainly important and a vital belief, a critical aspect has been lost. Christ’s death not only forgave the individual’s sins, but also was the renewing of all of God’s creation. Christ accomplished that renewal, which is ongoing, by his cross. Paul wrote: “There (the cross) he disarmed the cosmic powers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, leading them as captives in his triumphal procession.” (Colossians 2:15 [Revised English Bible]). Romans chapter 8 gives further evidence of the cosmic nature of Christ’s death and resurrection.
“The God who created becomes incarnate in order to re-create.”
Webber, Christopher. Welcome to the Episcopal Church: An Introduction to Its History, Faith, and Worship. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Pub., 1999. Print.
Mead, Loren B. The Once and Future Church Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier . The Alban Institute, Inc., 1991. Kindle eBook file.
Southland Christian Church, one of several worship centers in the United States that has earned the moniker “Six Flags over Jesus,” is Lexington’s largest megachurch. With a weekly attendance of 8,000 people and an operating budget that supports a staff of over eighty members, Southland far exceeds most U.S. congregations in terms of financial resources and social clout. In recent years, popular and scholarly studies have attempted to situate the megachurch movement within a broad cultural context. Although the majority of these analyses dispute the precise definition of a megachurch, most distinguish these multiplex sanctuaries from smaller worship communities by using the same criteria—i.e. weekly attendance, campus acreage, annual budget, etc.—that megachurches themselves draw on to represent their own success. [2] However, the essence of a megachurch is not its large buildings, but rather the theology of consumption that informs its programming.[3] In this way, a megachurch ethos has infiltrated even the smallest congregations in the United States and has helped to solidify Christianity’s inextricable connection to consumer capitalism. To those who see megachurches as symptomatic of a flawed Christianity, market-minded church growth confounds one of the faith’s oldest dualities, the contradiction of living in the world without conforming to its ways, as Paul puts it in Romans 12. Megachurches at once reject “the world” and participate in it by seeking to win the lost and wow the consumer at the same time.
As I have read through the differences in these churches I think if I were to go back I would have to lean towards the Western church as it sounds closer to my theological convictions, but I would say that my Eastern brothers and sisters do add some insight into the discussion about how to facilitate worship.
Martin, Malachi. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church. New York: Putnam, 1981. Print.
In an age when culture continues to lower standards of intellect, Marva Dawn makes compelling observations and suggestions for the Church to rethink its’ strategy on impacting society. How do we evangelize without weakening the message of what we are communicating? The majority of her text focuses on the worship environment generally, but later she focuses on music, preaching, and liturgy specifically. According to Dawn, a gathering of believers should emphasize God as the subject and object of worship, challenge each individual to grow in godly character, and accentuate the community of believers (not only in the room, but throughout history as well). Through this grid, she encourages leaders and participants to evaluate each worship element. If these primary goals are accomplished, then worship will not be empty and simpleminded. Instead the worship atmosphere would be held to a higher standard and, she believes, both pleasing to God and attractive to those who do not know God.
Religion is too rigid and has many definitions with just as many denominations. Each religion has its own set beliefs, as well as its own way to worship. Pope Francis, who was elected as the world’s top religious leader said, “The Church is or should go back to being a community of God’s people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the c...
I have not experienced anything quite so disillusioning as a crisis of faith. It is a gut-wrenching, world-warping realization that sets in slowly with increasing pain. But like an ice cube thawing in your hand, the agony yields to absolute numbness. For me, this tribulation set in after leaving my Christian community of ten years. When I started attending an out-of-state, Christian liberal arts school, Wheaton College, I was surprised to discover—in place of the diverse body of competing doctrines and life experiences that I had anticipated—a homogenous student body composed of two-thousand teenagers who were also nondenominational, also raised in megachurches, and also floundering to find a “church home” in the city with America's greatest number of churches per capita (Tully and Roberts 2008). In the three years since, I have sought to better understand the factors that impacted my drifting, and the search has led me to evaluate the megachurch in which I grew up. What I have discovered is a critical oversight in the “new paradigm” game plan—an evangelical church strategy designed as a response to secularization—that may be rendering evangelical Protestantism less relevant than ever for my generation. In my experience attending a megachurch, the movement toward consumer Christianity and its consequences for how church was conducted precipitated my departure and engendered an interest in attending smaller, more liturgical churches.
Lynn Malone, is currently the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Monroe, Louisiana. On June 13, 2008, Malone gave a homily that entailed a very key component of the Christian faith, the church. In this homily, the main concept of the homily is the church as being one whole entity. Throughout the homily, numerous examples are given that exemplify this concept. I will be discussing two themes more in depth throughout this paper, the Christian Church as one entity, and the universality of Christianity and Christ’s teachings.
Although the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church ultimately had more differences which ended up causing their split, they once had quite a few a similarities. The churches shared “many of the same prayers and liturgies” (“Eastern Orthodox”, 2001 para.1). Both the Eastern and Western churches had a difference in opinion in defining and numbering sacraments but they did agree on what the seven major sacraments for their churches should be. They also agreed upon that the male clergy should consist of bishops, priests, and deacons.
into a richer experience of worship and a more effect life of service" (Crabb, 1977, p.31). The method to establishing an
Schaff, P. (1997). History of the Christian Church. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Greengrass, Mark. The Longman Companion to The European Reformation, C. 1500-1618. London: Longman, 1998. Print.
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: The Reformation to the Present Day. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: HarperOne, 2010.
“Early Christianity” is generally regarded as encompassing the time period between the origins of Christianity (during the lifetime of Jesus Christ and his apostles) and the end of Roman persecution of Christ and his followers around 300 AD. The First Episcopal Council of Nycea in 325 AD marked the beginning of Christianity’s structural hierarchy and the establishment of canonical laws governing the behavior of Christians. The three hundred years between the life of Jesus Christ and the First Episcopal Council were characterized by a gradual transition from relatively established Judaist beliefs and traditions to a new, quickly changing code of Christ...