liturgy on The Christian Faith

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 ...

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...

Why worship in our native language? Well, for one thing, it can keep people from distorting the Christian faith into a superstition: In one stream of church history, this can help explain worshipi...

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...

Step back in time to when you weren’t leading worship, but to a time, whether as an adult or a child, when you arrived a few minutes early to church. Maybe you began to pray for God to help you focus ...

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...

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 "...

We are again in a moment of intense anger, fear, and sorrow. We've been here too often, lately. In September 2025, prominent activist Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd in Utah. This ca...

So, you’re staring at your laptop screen. It’s later at night than you’d like to admit. The Word document is blank and that vertical bar is flashing, daring you to write the first word. You need to st...

The Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and beginning Holy Week. Even less-liturgical churches often dip a toe into the liturgical waters, distributing palms...

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...

A Blue Christmas Service is offered especially for those hurting during the holidays. It’s often offered December 21, the longest night of the year. Some come because they are mourning the death of...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 an hour...

What is a Benediction?  The word benediction comes from Latin and literally means “good word” ( bene [good] + dicere [to say, speak]). Put another way, a benediction is a blessing ...

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...

Inspired by the Book of Lamentations Most Heavenly Father, We lament the coupling of our allegiance to Christ as Lord with a trust in Caesar, as if the halls of power, the chambers of government, a...

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...

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

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 Christian church sings. It is not a choral society. Its singing is not a concert. But from inner, material necessity it sings. Singing is the highest form of human expression....What we can and mu...

The best liturgies in use in Christian churches are ancient, well-worn compositions permeated with scriptural language skillfully deployed across a series of pastoral pronouncements, prayers, congrega...

Asking for a "Friend"... You are ready for Holy Week. You are probably reading this because you're already thinking about next year— you're just that organized and put together...

Your Easter morning services should do two things: put on a rip-roaring celebration for the most joyful event in history and invite newcomers and Christmas-and-Easter attenders to join in, building 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...

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...

(Leader) Heavenly Father, we come before you to give thanks as we near the end of 2020 a year of confusion, conflict, CoronaVirus, quarantine, and shut down, But what does it even look like to be trul...

I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And thoug...