“For: the Institute of contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt”
Until I read Wright’s Simply Christian (1), I had thought that role of the scriptures in worship was mostly relegated to being a foundation from which songs/liturgy are written. In other words, worship leaders were using the scriptures in worship properly if they were choosing songs with texts that either matched up with scriptural theology or were scripture themselves.
I am not yet quite sure what I think of his idea–although it is at least many centuries if not closer to two mellennia older than Wright himself (and now that I think of it I must have heard this idea before, but dismissed it as from a differing tradition. The idea is this, that scripture itself, specifically its public reading, is worship: it reliably declares God’s character and works in history.
Contentions?
What about the earliest Christians who did not yet possess written scripture? Well, they did have the Old Testament, i.e. Jesus’ Bible, most practically the Psalms much of their perhaps original melodies. They had the oral traditions and the apostles, disciples and other eye witnesses of Christ’s life and teaching as well.
Would it be worship to God to retell these stories? Why not!
Well it’s not directed to God for one thing? So are thousands of hymns and songs: God is in third person.
But it’s so passive? One must just sit and listen. Not if everyone brings a story!
Nevertheless, it does seem especially that the church should sing to God together in worship. Brian Doerksen puts it well:
Why do we sing songs in the first place? We do it because it is something that we can do together. There are probably other things that we could do to express our love and our worship to God that would be, in one sense, just as valid. But they’re not easy for us to do together. Yet we can get ten people, or a hundred people, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand – whatever number we choose – and we can all get together and sing a song. That song reflects what is going on in our hearts and our minds, together. There is truth that we’re affirming, but there’s also affection that we’re expressing. That’s why I think that singing as an expression of worship has stood the test of time (2).
Yet there is something simple, eternal and universal about reading scripture in the context of worship. But can it really be the central activity? I just can’t imagine it.
I’d love to hear some thoughts on this one.
(1) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
(2) Dan Wilt, “Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement.” Perspectives On Christian Worhsip: Five Views, Ed. J. Matthew Pinston. B&B Publishing Group. 2008.
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