liturgy on Spiritual Formation

Why is it that countless American school-children memorize the Gettysburg Address each year? Is it a simple civics lesson? An opportunity to learn about the Civil War, a turning point in American hist...

How do you deliver the authentic faith and great wisdom of the past into the new cultural situation of the twenty-first century? The way into the future, I argue, is not an innovative new start for th...

Much of American spiritual life trudges through the muck of solitary spirituality. Twenty years ago, Robert Bellah described this phenomenon. in Habits of the Heart , with his now famous description ...

Training a worship leader (or "liturgist") is a vital task within any faith community. As my friend and former Senior Pastor, Dr. Mark Roberts puts it, the worship leader or liturgist "...

The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental sta...

The foundations of my Christian faith were laid in mid-20th century fundamentalist churches. For introducing me to Jesus, I am grateful. However, over the years I have had to cast aside and recover fr...

Ancient worship . . . does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people tod...

What is Liturgy? I know that not all of us come from so-called “liturgical” traditions, but all of us do use a liturgy of sorts. Liturgy is a compound Greek word meaning “public work” that is associa...

Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped th...

I came to appreciate liturgy during a time in our church’s life when we were rediscovering the gospel. We planted the church in 2000, and for the first several years, we struggled to discern the best ...

The liturgy as the Reformers understood and practiced it consists of God acting and us responding through the work of the Spirit…The liturgy is a meeting between God and God’s people, a meeting in whi...

The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and atten...

What a small topic! And clearly one I am definitely not the best equipped to answer. But why don’t I share a few thoughts, hopefully, that can help shape a conversation about worship. A New Discover...

Liturgy is not, in the end, open to our emotional whims. it re-points the person praying, taking him somewhere else.

When I am away from Liturgy for too long, I find I burn for it now, for the steadiness of the calendar, the words" that ring out in repetition, the heavy scented air. When I return each week, I a...

[T]he liturgy helps us enter a counter-intuitive story. In an individualistic culture, the liturgy helps us live a communal life. In a culture that values spontaneity, the liturgy grounds us in someth...

Years ago, during a vacation in New Hampshire, Jonathan and I climbed Mount Washington, which is notorious for erratic weather. It can change from sunny and warm to snowing in a few hours. The wind is...

The common pattern of the order of worship in the church reflects the pattern of the progress of the gospel in the heart.

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good t...

[People] need to find words that can reconnect them with each other. That is the gift of good liturgy, yeah. We're not talking about fluffy stuff. We're talking about real life for people arou...

In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love.

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, excit...

Prayer Service for Peace in Israel and Palestine This service is designed as an evening, outdoor prayer vigil using handheld candles. Feel free to modify the order of worship as needed, including...

When one prays the hours, one is using the exact words, phrases, and petitions that informed our faith for centuries. . . . We are using the exact words, phrases, and petitions that were offered just ...

“…the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, s...

Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should ...

It is useful to reflect that the word 'liturgy' did not originate in church or worship settings. In the Greek world it referred to publish service, what a citizen did for the community. As the...

Every call to worship is a call into the real world.

Independence Weekend Prayer for Unity VOICE ONE — Psalm 133 How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the b...

We aren’t just conversing with each other when we recite the Psalms antiphonally or responsively. We are talking to God, too. Reminding one another and God of his promises and our complaints. We are w...