Over the previous a number of years, I’ve taught programs to seminarians and pastoral interns on the theology and apply of worship within the Reformed custom. A part of the syllabus requires college students to work together with worship providers posted on-line, evaluating the weather, coherence, and execution of the liturgy. Providers should not prescreened, and we choose church buildings across the PCA with numerous worship kinds.
The project requires college students to critically interact worship providers, cultivating a acutely aware interplay with issues that steadily fly below the radar. After reviewing a major variety of providers, a number of constant liturgical themes have surfaced that deserve remark.
Beforehand I surveyed the roles of the call to worship, confession of sin, pastoral prayer, and Lord’s Supper in PCA worship providers. This essay examines the order of the weather God prescribes for worship.
Historic Roots of Liturgical Order
In John Calvin’s Geneva liturgy, company worship started with a recitation of Psalm 124:8 adopted by a prayer of confession. Following confession, the congregation sang a psalm to thank God for his grace. The congregation then listened to the studying and preaching of the Phrase prefaced by a prayer for illumination. After the sermon, the minister led a sturdy pastoral intercession masking a variety of matters with a periphrastic growth of the Lord’s Prayer. The service concluded with extra psalm singing and a benediction. On Sundays wherein the Lord’s Supper was celebrated, the communion liturgy was inserted after the pastoral intercession.
This order displays a transparent theological narrative that progresses by 5 distinct phases: (1) coming into God’s presence, (confession of sin, assurance of pardon, and thanksgiving in track), (2) listening to God’s Phrase (studying Scripture, prayer for illumination, sermon), (3) responding to God (intercessory prayer and thanksgiving in track), (4) communing with God (Lord’s Desk and track) and (5) departing in peace (benediction). Although some particulars differ, this similar construction and overarching theological narrative characterize the liturgical orders of Martin Bucer and John Knox as effectively.
In contrast, The Listing for the Public Worship of God drafted a liturgical order that constructed the service across the studying and preaching of God’s Phrase. Within the Listing, the service begins with a name to worship which is adopted by an invocation that features a prayer for illumination. Readings from each Previous and New Testaments comply with earlier than a psalm is sung.
After singing, the pastor leads the intercessory prayer which features a confession of sin, a wide range of supplications, and closes with a second prayer for illumination. The sermon follows this prayer and concludes with a pastoral prayer of thanksgiving. On account of tensions on the committee accountable for drafting the Listing, the doc notes that the intercessory prayer is also supplied right here, consistent with John Knox’s liturgy, and could possibly be adopted by the Lord’s Prayer. This selection was an lodging of a number of Scottish delegates who favored the standard order of prayers following the sermon. After the prayer, one other psalm is sung, and the service concludes with the benediction.
The aim of this liturgical order was to assemble a liturgy across the studying and preaching of God’s Phrase. Whereas the Listing pursues a laudable aim, you will need to observe that the liturgies of the Reformed custom didn’t have a low view of the studying and preaching of Scripture. Reformed predecessors, together with Calvin and Knox, merely located the preaching of God’s Phrase in a theological narrative that mirrored liturgical varieties present in Scripture. The studying and preaching of God’s Phrase adopted confession and thanksgiving in track as a result of petitions for God to show and instruct steadily comply with prayers of confession within the psalms (Contemplate Psalm 25; 32; 51; 143).
Reflections on Fashionable Follow
Acknowledging that Scripture doesn’t prescribe a hard and fast liturgical kind, Presbyterians have allowed every congregation to construction their very own order of worship. In consequence, there’s a broad vary of liturgical orders within the PCA. The range makes it troublesome to supply substantive commentary, however listed below are two normal observations.
First, many ministers lack a theological narrative that drives the development of the service from one factor to the following and binds the weather collectively right into a coherent expertise. Moderately than flowing by a seamless development of components, ministers information the congregation by discrete blocks disconnected from the broader entire.
For Presbyterians, components of worship exist within the liturgy as a result of God instructions them (Westminster Confession of Religion 21.1-5). We focus a number of consideration on what God prescribes, however there appears to be little biblical and theological reflection on the order and the connection between these components.
Given this, liturgists steadily transition from one factor to the following with a procedural observe: “Subsequent we’ll give our tithes and choices to God,” or “Now, let’s flip to web page 100 within the Trinity Hymnal.” These liturgical transitions, or stitches, between components reveal the absence of a broader theological rationale as to why a component is being executed at a specific level within the service and that factor’s relationship to what has gone earlier than and what follows.
As an example, as mentioned in a previous article, Calvin adopted the sermon with the intercessory prayer in his liturgical order. His sermons constantly conclude with an invite to name upon God in prayer in view of what was heard within the Phrase of God.
Calvin’s conclusions served two functions: (1) it wrapped up the sermon, summarizing its content material; and (2) it transitioned into prayer, ushering the congregation into an acceptable response to God’s Phrase. This isn’t a procedural transition, however a transition born out of a theological conviction that the intercessory prayer is to comply with the sermon, sowing the Phrase in prayer, asking God to assist us obey his will, and praying for the world by the lens of the Phrase. Calvin reveals a theological narrative in his order of worship by preserving the dialogical relationship between listening to God’s Phrase and providing our prayers to God.
To miss the theological narrative aborts the dialogical construction of worship wherein one factor, in accord with liturgical varieties discovered within the Bible, results in the following. This distorts company worship by making it one thing lower than an interplay between heaven and earth.
Second, many ministers in additional liturgically sturdy providers spend an excessive amount of time explaining the weather of worship. These explanations (extra like lectures) in regards to the components of worship are totally different from the liturgical transitions talked about beforehand. A well-constructed liturgical sew transitions the congregation intuitively into the following factor based mostly on a theological understanding of the connection between the weather whereas a didactic transition affords a theological apologetic for every factor (why we confess our sins, why we learn and preach from Scripture, and so on.).
In a didactic mode, the minister focuses on educating the congregation about why we do what we do. Often, extra time is spent on the reason of the factor than within the religious train God prescribes by the factor. This overly didactic method subtracts from the congregation’s engagement with God because the emphasis falls on theological comprehension quite than religious train knowledgeable by theology. My college students constantly noticed this liturgical error on the name to worship, confession of sin, providing, career of religion, and observance of the Lord’s Supper.
These two approaches yield totally different experiences in worship. Didactic transitions discuss God. Liturgical stitches search to induce engagement with God by selling a dialogue. They replicate two totally different philosophies of worship. One is concentrated on congregational comprehension of God; the opposite on congregational dialogue with God. To emphasise the dialogical factor between God and the congregation will not be much less theological—it’s utilized theology.
Conclusion
The Reformed liturgical custom affords an instance of a coherent theological narrative that unfolds in 5 phases: (1) coming into God’s presence, (confession of sin, assurance of pardon, and thanksgiving in track); (2) listening to God’s Phrase (studying Scripture, prayer for illumination, sermon); (3) responding to God (intercessory prayer and thanksgiving in track); (4) communing with God (Lord’s Desk and track); and (4) departing in peace (benediction).
Different prescribed components could be tucked into this broad define as effectively. The custom preserves the dialogical form of worship, permitting the congregation to interact with the dwelling God.
Chuck Colson serves as senior pastor of Christ Church Presbyterian in Jacksonville, Florida, and in addition serves as visitor lecturer at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.
