Sublime

That doesn’t mean there’s no room for faithful innovation in worship; it just means that creativity and novelty in worship are not goods in and of themselves. We inherit a form of worship that should be received as a gift.

What our generation of somewhat individualistic and anti-institutional Christians misses is that the assembled church operates with a different set of authorizations, warrants, or licenses than the individual Christian does. The gathered local church is authorized in Matthew 16, 18, and 28 by Christ’s keys of the kingdom to make an international de

For these reasons it is essential that all the clergy, especially priests of Christ and others who as deacons or catechists are officially engaged in the ministry of the word, should stick to their spiritual reading and to serious bible study. It must not happen that any of them becomes “an empty preacher of the word of God outwardly, who is not a

Not surprisingly, a growing number of voices called for the renewal of the church: organizational renewal, program renewal, worship renewal, every kind of renewal. There were calls for renewed worship through the introduction of new styles of preaching and contemporary elements (bring the rock concert into the church; exchange guitars, drums, and p

the Reformers saw the liturgy as God’s action and our faithful reception of that action. The governing idea of the Reformed liturgy is thus twofold: the conviction that to participate in the liturgy is to enter the sphere of God’s acting, not just of God’s presence, plus the conviction that we are to appropriate God’s action in faith and gratitude

St. Matthew Passion,’”

encouraged the chanting of hymns to open hearts to God’s teachings. But they urged believers to reject all dancing and elaborate singing, lest their souls be tainted by “diabolical choruses.”