The Worship of God, by Ralph P. Martin, Eerdmans, $7.95; Worship Old S New, by Robert E. Webber, Zondervan, $12.95; Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel, by Ronald Allen and Gordon Borror, Multnomah, $9.95.
Reviewed by Bruce L. Shelley, professor of church history, Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, Denver, Colorado
The prelude, skillfully played, wafted from the organ. But no one heard it. Too much chatter. The psalm that followed set the stage for worship, but the mood shifted abruptly. A lay leader made an impromptu appeal for Sunday school teachers and tacked on an immediate request for two or three adults to corral a class of junior boys loose in the parking lot.
A recently returned missionary was next. It was obvious he was doing a great work, but he needed, and took, too long to tell about it. Twenty minutes into the service the congregation sang the opening hymn, which had nothing to do with teaching Sunday school or foreign missions. After the hymn the “order of service” called for Scripture reading, but in the interest of time, the worship leader eliminated it. And so went the parade of unrelated events.
The scene, described by Gordon Borror, is all too familiar. But must such comic tragedy continue? That is the question these three books raise.
Conservative evangelicals have grown increasingly sophisticated. After World War II they moved into mass communications, then during the fifties and sixties they invaded higher education, and during the seventies they became politically active. Now in the eighties it seems worship is emerging as a primary concern.
You could hardly muster more representative voices than the authors of these three books: Ralph P. Martin is professor of New Testament at Fuller Seminary. Robert E. Webber is a theology professor at Wheaton College. Ronald Allen and Gordon Borror teach at Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Oregon. All three volumes agree that corporate worship in evangelical circles is in pathetically poor condition.
Each of the books attempts to address this need; each provides helpful material for reshaping the traditional worship service. But beyond that point, the books move in different directions, and Martin and Webber assume sharply different positions.
To start with the most popular, not in terms of sales but in terms of audience, the work by Allen and Borror is in many ways a frustrating book. It appeals for “excellence in the art of worship expression,” but it does not practice excellence itself. It is not well written. Too many passives and muddled sentences, and a maddening habit of shifting from first person to third person when referring to one of the authors.
But readers who persevere will be rewarded. Allen and Borror give a number of sensible suggestions on how church leaders can improve worship services:
1. In designing a service, begin with the goal of the sermon, then find the components that will help the speaker get there.
2. Be sensitive to the people; lead them into change gently.
3. Readers of Scripture lessons should practice their texts aloud.
4. Balance valid contemporary music with worthy expressions from the past.
The closing chapters of the book prove most valuable. They deal with fundamental aspects of worship such as colors and sound. The chapter on public reading of Scripture and the one dealing with music in worship are especially helpful.
The significance of this book, however, may not rest so much in what the volume says as in who says it. Not only is it published by a trusted name in conservative-evangelical circles, but Allen and Borror obviously know conservative-evangelical attitudes and do not hesitate to confront them. The best illustration is their courage in challenging D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he equates art in worship with decline in spirituality.
Allen and Borror represent the free church, preaching-is-central tradition, but we catch something of the spirit of their book when we read: “We tend to avoid ‘liturgical-seeming’ activity because we do not want to be like the Lutherans or Catholics- then we likewise shun the experience-oriented expressions because we are fearful of being dubbed charismatic. We steer a middle road to nothingness if we pursue this thinking too far!”
Amen! Must our theology always be reactionary?
Not for Robert Webber. He knows where he wants to go, straight back to the first six centuries of the church. He writes for evangelicals, but he wants to make them Catholic.
Webber’s purpose is to examine the biblical roots, the historical development, and the theological meaning of worship. Like Allen and Borror, Webber is an advocate. He wants to bring back the ancient practices and thereby improve evangelical worship.
Those who appreciate the beauty order, and pomp of the Catholic tradition will find in Webber the historical background for the various elements of the Western liturgy. Here are the Gloria, the Kyrie eleison, the Sanctus and the Sursum Corda. Here, too, is Webber’s theology of worship: form, sign, enactment, order. And here are three models of worship, three orders of service that Webber proposes for a free service, a planned service, and a formal service. A useful annotated bibliography for church leaders caps the volume.
But do not let Webber’s association with Wheaton College mislead you. He is no fundamentalist with a formal taste. Whether or not he is evangelical in his theology of worship can be debated. I raise the question for two reasons. Both are reflected in this book.
First, Webber’s standard for judging Christian worship is not the Scripture but the first six centuries of church history, “the most formative period of the church.” This does not mean, he says, that the practices of the early church are placed on the same level as the Scripture. The early sources are important because the church was committed to “the apostolic tradition.” But this “apostolic tradition” emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries and that makes these centuries “the most important historical period for the thoughtful working out of the rituals that have characterized Christian worship through the centuries.” We must understand this period, he says, “if we would know how to worship today.”
This confidence in the church fathers is unbounded. When Webber discusses the most important issue of this book, the meaning of the “offering” of the Lord’s Supper, he admits there is no direct answer to the question in the New Testament! However since the early fathers “unequivocally regarded the offering of bread and wine as symbolic of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Webber moves to defend such a position.
Second, I raise the question of Webber’s “evangelical” position because of the way he defends the “offering.” He rejects the medieval Roman Catholic idea of Jesus sacrificed in an unbloody manner again and again for salvation. But he feels the Reformers went too far in rejecting all ideas of offering and sacrifice in the Supper. The early church he contends, held that the elements of bread and wine, when offered to the Father, proclaim the saving power of Jesus, and when we receive them by faith, “we receive not only bread and wine, but mysteriously receive the saving grace that comes from the once-for-all, unrepeatable sacrifice of Jesus Christ.”
Perhaps Webber is saying no more than Ralph Martin is saying about the Lord’s Supper. But when Webber puts this “sacrifice and offering” in the context of a worship procession “entering into the very presence of God” and a recessional signifying “going out from” the saving presence of God, then one suspects that some literal sacrificial ideas remain.
My choice of the three volumes is Ralph Martin’s The Worship of God. It puts the biblical material in a theological framework, and it addresses contemporary concerns.
Martin is a New Testament scholar and lay people may find The Worship of God just out of reach. Perhaps if they are in the free-church tradition, they should start with Anne Ortlund’s helpful paperback Up with Worship or Allen and Borror’s more popular volume. But for seminary students and ordained ministers, Martin’s book is just what the bishop ordered.
Martin’s aim is to help ministers and seminarians to think theologically about worship and to apply this thinking to their own situations.
Martin insists that worship is a corporate act. That means the responsibility to hear, understand, and control all that goes on in the public expressions of worship rests with the church. Worship should not be a reflection of the minister’s idiosyncrasies but an expression of the common faith. The language of public prayer, then, is “we,” not “I.”
Leaders of public worship must learn the distinction between devotional exercises for personal needs and worship expressing the aspirations and fears of the community. “The thought of the church at worship as an accidental convergence in one place of a number of isolated individuals who practiced, in sealed compartments, their own private devotional exercises is utterly alien to Paul’s mind.” The worship of the church means the pulsating of common life (koinonia) that flows through the body of Christ.
Martin’s whole concept of worship is in the context of a community “under the Word.” This is in contrast to Webber’s concept, in which God comes to us through physical signs. The distinction is not absolute, but it is significant.
We see the contrast most clearly in the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Martin argues that the Lord’s Supper is “sacramental” in the same way that preaching is. God is “making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20). And the message is “not the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13). Just so, the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper ‘/remain what they were created to be, food and drink-until they are offered to God to be employed in his service.” Then like preaching, the elements are caught up in God’s purpose. But this “change” is only operative “within the encompassing relationship of grace and faith.” Thus the Lord’s Supper and preaching are “kerygmatic.” They both “proclaim.” As Martin puts it, “The presence of Christ is at the table, not on the table.”
Few books on worship combine so well serious treatment of the biblical materials, brief historical surveys of the elements of worship, and an awareness of contemporary issues. Martin’s first chapter, dealing with the meaning of worship and his agenda for reform, is an outstanding starting point for pastors and worship committees concerned with improving Sunday morning services. His chapter on the sermon provides what most homiletics classes never discuss: the context for most sermon the worship hour. If their aim is impact, most pastors could profitably surrender some of their preaching preparation time for planning the worship service.
I would recommend all three of these volumes-but to different readers: Allen and Borror to lay leaders. It offers down-to-earth tips for immediate improvement in worship services. Webber to students, especially those from the liturgical traditions. It pours meaning into many accepted practices of the Western liturgy. And Martin to ministers generally because it provides theological and exegetical reasons for the timeless elements of Christian worship. All three share the commitment to excellence expressed so well by Martin: “Have done with all that is slipshod and flippant not to say frivolous-in our approach to God.”
Preaching and Worship in the Small Church
by William H. Willimon and Robert L. Wilson Abingdon, $4.95
Reviewed by Michael Coughlin pastor, Clough Valley Baptist Church St. Francis, Kansas
Small churches tend to share one of the divine attributes: they don’t change. But at the same time, it is this very stability that makes them the bedrock of American Protestantism. As Lyle Schaller points out in the foreword of this book (another in his Creative Leadership Series), approximately 60 percent of all Protestant churches in North America have memberships of less than 200. And more than one famous preacher has begun in a small church.
With these thoughts in mind, authors Willimon and Wilson attempt to bolster the life of small churches. Their efforts prove quite helpful to small congregations.
Willimon, pastor of Northside United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and Wilson, acting dean at Duke Divinity School, point out that although most small churches are rural, not all are. Declining urban congregations in changing neighborhoods and core city storefront churches also fall into the small-church category.
In either situation, however, the authors observe that “Sunday is still the basis and most promising asset of their life together.” Most small churches cannot support the full program of activities of a typical suburban church. Thus, Sunday worship becomes the focal point of the small church’s week. The authors maintain this is not necessarily wrong. We must be the people of God before we do the work of God. Worship helps us become his kind of people.
Five chapters on practical matters cover worship order, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, weddings and funerals, and preaching. The authors capitalize on the inherent closeness of small churches and term these items “family functions.” The analogy fits well both in the book and from my experience as a small-church pastor.
The most helpful chapter for me concerned preaching. During summer holidays when worship attendance is low, I have often wondered what good all my sermon preparation has done. After worship, talk centers on the weather or how the crops are doing instead of my insightful sermon! The authors encouraged me, however, by this statement: “For the people in the pews of Protestant churches, the sermon is still the most important event, and whether the clergy believe it or not, what they say has an impact on the lives of the listeners. It is almost impossible to find a group of lay people who, when asked to rate, in order of priority, all the tasks a minister is expected to perform, will not rate preaching somewhere near the top.” Preaching truly is a service of the Word.
This book, however, is not without its shortcomings. The authors deal almost exclusively with the rural church. I’d like to see a similar treatment of inner-city storefront churches, which have somewhat different needs in worship. If rural churches are the authors’ specialty, then the title of the book is somewhat misleading.
But the abundance of helpful suggestions and illustrations are still valuable. I’ve found that pastoring in rural, northwest Kansas-the people, the traditions, the closeness to the land, and the values-all make for a refreshing experience. After reading Preaching and Worship in the Small Church, my appreciation of the small church has increased, and I’m more deeply committed to enhancing its life.
The Church Secretary’s Handbook
by Patricia McKenna Seraydarian Tyndale, $5.95
Reviewed by Betty Powers, parish secretary, Hope Lutheran Church, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
The church secretary, says Patricia Seraydarian, must think of her work as a career, not just a job.
The Christian secretary often finds it difficult to think of her work as a career because of the common perception that careers and families don’t mix. Therefore, she thinks of her work as a job and doesn’t realize the importance of “career growth,” which will benefit herself and the congregation.
The author, herself a secretary to the board of deacons at Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan, points out that the church secretary has an opportunity to use her career skills in a practical application of her commitment to Jesus Christ and to people. She is not only an extension of her typewriter, but she works daily in the kingdom of God showing concern for her congregational family and accomplishing the processes of records, correspondence, and communications.
The Church Secretary’s Handbook is a must for the beginning church secretary. It’s full of information on processing church information, working with office/telephone callers, establishing and maintaining files, communicating with church leaders, and supervising volunteers. The experienced church secretary will add to her career growth from this material and should share it with her pastor(s). There is always a new and better way of doing a task!
Detailed information is given on office machines, correspondence, making appointments, membership records, forms, postal services, meeting minutes, and doing the annual report. This book will allow the church secretary to control her career and not let it control her. Pastors will realize from reading the book that the church secretary really wants to be a “career” person, which will benefit everyone.
Most church secretaries I know have been at their careers much longer than the average worker in a manufacturing, retail, or other public service business. There must be something in the kingdom of God that keeps secretaries working in the same place so long.
I believe Seraydarian explains why in her book by stating the church secretary is a committed person. First, she is committed to Jesus Christ. Second, she is committed to people and shows genuine concern for them. “If I am the only contact a person has with Christ and the church, what is that person’s impression?” Seraydarian reminds us. Third, the church secretary is committed to professionalism. She cares how a letter looks when it leaves her desk and how it will impress its receiver.
She anticipates, organizes, and knows her priorities. Loyalty and confidentiality are the first two books of her bible. The pastor depends on her and she knows it. The more administrative duties she is capable of handling, the better her pastor is able to accomplish the primary tasks to which he or she is called-to preach, teach, and counsel.
A good attitude becomes one of the church secretary’s office tools. She realizes she is in the people business and looks for ways to work with interruptions. Seraydarian reminds the church secretary that she will find her endless interruptions less frustrating if she remembers Romans 13:8-“Love one another.” The church secretary takes time to listen to the spiritual needs of a member but knows her primary function is to direct that person to the pastor for counseling. The church secretary’s role is primary liaison, but a large portion of her time will be spent listening.
The church secretary is a mediator. Again, she listens. She doesn’t take sides. If possible, she answers a negative comment with a positive one. She corrects false information but doesn’t give advice.
A job may be only a job, but the church secretary is a career person who is fortunate to work for God’s kingdom. She knows who she is and what she is. As Seraydarian states: “Remember, if you wait for the pastor to make you a manager, you may have a long wait. But you can promote yourself- by attitude, by efficiency, by reliability. You can grow career-wise, without ever leaving your present job.”
Tell It to the Church
by Lynn R. Buzzard and Laurence Eck David C. Cook, $7.95
Reviewed by Tom McKee, pastor, Sun River Church, Rancho Cordova, California
A woman in Texas sued her veterinarian for carelessly shearing some curls from her pet Afghan. Another woman received $850,000 because her doctor caused her navel to be two inches off center.
In a culture where lawsuits have become a way of life (“One out of every two Americans will sue someone, sometime”), Tell It to the Church gives an astute analysis of the problem as well as a practical method of reconciliation. Lynn Buzzard, director of the Christian Legal Society, and Laurence Eck, national coordinator of CLS’s Christian Conciliation Service, analyze the American obsession with demanding one’s rights and the church’s responsibility to settle disputes among believers.
In spite of Paul’s firm rebuke in 1 Corinthians, we have recently seen lawsuits to oust a pastor, foreign missions groups suing each other for libel, and Christian musicians and composers bringing suit against Christian radio stations. In fact, during one year in one medium-size metropolitan area, over 8,000 cases involved persons on both sides who called themselves Christian. “Although many ministries were barely making it for lack of funds, Christians were spending 20 million dollars in legal fees each year in our country,” the authors report.
The words court, lawsuit, and litigation are alien to the daily vocabulary of most of us. Our natural instincts are to run from contention and hope it will go away-one of the two most common methods Christians use when dealing with conflict, according to the authors. Sometimes we even spiritualize this method of avoidance and call it “forgiveness,” but too often the unresolved issue smolders.
The second method is the “shoot it out” system of frontier justice, which has evolved into a twentieth-century version, litigation. Those who choose this approach, too often motivated by revenge, go after their adversaries with all the townsfolk watching. The book reminds us of what Stonewall Jackson said upon observing fights among his own men: “Remember, gentlemen, the enemy is over there.”
Buzzard and Eck present an alternative to litigation, the process of reconciling out of court, using the church. Although people may think the church doesn’t know how to deal with child custody, medical malpractice, mechanic’s liens, and insurance claims, the book pleads with us to follow the teaching of Scripture. The authors point out that in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is not talking about theological disputes. “The church has jurisdiction not simply over religious litigation, but over all disputes between believers. … The church must get involved because she is gifted as a judge Paul says. She will ultimately judge angels. She has in her body the gifts of wisdom and discernment necessary for just and righteous judgment.”
Tell It to the Church recognizes the difference between the first-century church and the church today. “In the first century, the believing community in a city was all part of one worshiping, sharing family. They knew each other and had some sense of accountability to the same pastoral and spiritual leadership.” Today, however, the believing community is different in theology and experiences. How can they possibly get together in Christian love to settle commercial disputes? Who is going to solve a conflict between members of First Baptist and First Methodist?
The answer to these and other difficult questions are presented in the principles and examples of Christian peacemaking. The chapter on the Albuquerque Project describes the work of the Christian Conciliation Service (CCS) in New Mexico. Between 1979 and 1980 over seventy lawyers, seventy pastors, and one hundred laymen served without fee as peacemakers in disputes between Christians. They handled over sixty cases a month. These case studies give legs to the book’s principles.
The book suggests a three-step process developed from the practical application of Matthew 18:15-17. When a Christian feels another believer has “trespassed against” him, he should first go to the person in private, next take along witnesses, and finally, if these measures have not resolved the problem, tell it to the church (not the entire congregation, but rather certain appointed individuals, gifted and called to this task).
These Christian peacemakers are not concerned merely with answers to legal questions, such as who owes whom $500 and when they must pay it, but also with restoring relationships. “In the class meeting of early Methodism each participant was asked, ‘How is it going with your soul?’ In our day of specialization there are people who inquire about our taxes, our IRA accounts, our credit ratings. But who really asks, ‘How is it going with your soul?’ It would be a terrible mistake not to consider the person’s guilts, fears, and lostness. Reconciliation and peace are essentially about people who have disputes, not about disputes people have.”
The suggested system of reconciliation includes the following steps:
1. Suggest the mediation or arbitration option to the parties. (Mediation is when the two parties ask an outsider to help them come to a negotiated settlement. Arbitration is when they agree to abide by the outsider’s judgment.)
2. Select the process (mediation, arbitration, or mediation/arbitration).
3. Select the mediator or arbitrator.
4. Define the scope of the dispute.
5. Determine the parties (number involved-the fewer the simpler).
6. Prepare for the hearing.
7. Conduct the hearing.
a. Establish the climate (prayer, rules, openness).
b. Have both sides tell “their story.”
8. Seek resolution/reconciliation.
9. Determine the agreement or award.
10. Solidify reconciliation.
Over one-third of the book is devoted to the appendixes and an annotated bibliography, which give tools for putting the principles into action. Included are seven Bible studies used in the reconciliation process, an example of the Uniform Arbitration Act, and the mediation, mediation/ arbitration, and arbitration agreements. David C. Cook has also prepared an excellent teaching guide with lesson plans, cassette tape, overhead transparencies, and duplicating masters.
Christian lawyers and church leaders will find this material particularly helpful as they are faced with this growing problem of litigation. Perhaps the place to start is with a study group. As the church begins to study and develop the peacemaking gifts, we can pray that those Christians in conflict will have the confidence in Christian peacemakers to “tell it to the church. “
Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
