It was quite funny, really...

Friday morning I said to a colleague, "so the question is, does Christian worship derive from the temple or the synagogue?"... "Beuh, from the temple, of course !" quoth he.

Friday afternoon, sneaking a quick read of "20 controversies that killed a church" : The pattern of New Testament worship is the synagogue. After God's people in the Old Testament returned from Babylon they no longer had the temple worship with its sacrifices. They gathered weekly in the synagogue to worship. Here they sang psalms, prayed, read the Scriptures and heard expositions of the Scriptures. The early church continued this pattern of worship..." (page 201)

I've been doing a bit of thinking about orders of service. This follows various things :

1) in my background I've been used to the simple British non-conformist "hymn sandwich" - feeling at liberty to modify this according to need - for example splitting the sermon into three parts ( one of my favourite things for carol services and the like )

2) generally my past has been part of the kind of churches that are on a quest for authentic simplicity. "This is us singing for you", rather than "this is our Sunday production"

3) at the same time sister churches in, for example, the USA have shared our heritage and convictions but expressed their worship with robed choirs, organ voluntaries, orchestras and so on. Oho...

4) in the church here in France we had a rather more ... elaborate order of service which allowed great freedom but still had a lot more structure and somewhat less scope for spontaneity

5) meanwhile the group of churches to which we belong has a liturgy book and many churches follow the pattern laid out. The pattern gives much freedom of choice of texts to use, but follows a basic pattern of "covenant renewal" - reading of God's law, confession of sin, announce of pardon, and so on...

Hence my reflection. This is where if I were a student I'd do an essay, or for a masters I'd do some reading up and present a thesis. However I am not... So here's the outline of what I'd think about if I were...


1) Origins of Christian worship and the Old Testament :
a. Temple worship and the Christians
b. The synagogue and the Christians
c. Covenant renewal assemblies in the Old Testament and the Christians


2) Development of Christian worship in the Church Fathers :


3) The Reformation and Christian worship :
a. Anglican and Lutheran solutions
b. Continental reformed churches
c. British non-conformity and reformed churches

4) Where does that leave us today ?

You'll notice that I don't mention the regulative or normative principles. There's a sense in which this question assumes the regulative principle but asks where in the Bible that principle sends us to find our instructions for worship.

OK folks. Please respond.

A) Christian worship is based on Temple or Synagogue or Neither ?
B) What book do you know of that deals with this question best ?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more