worship on Spectacle

I can remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. I (Doug) was standing out in the middle of the green grass of the quad on campus, singing as loudly as I could. Twenty of my Christian friends an...

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 "...

Drama at Its Finest The transfiguration is theatrical. It is drama at its finest. The mountain peak as the stage of the performance, the appearance of the greatest dramatis personae known to Israel, ...

It is not a gathering of 'escapees' from the world, bitterly enjoying their escape, feeding their hate for the world. Listen to their psalms and hymns; contemplate the transparent beauty of th...

Preaching Commentary Drama at Its Finest The transfiguration is theatrical. It is drama at its finest. The mountain peak as the stage of the performance, the appearance of the greatest dramatis per...

Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

Liturgical time raises our sights above the dailiness of life to the essence of life.

My friend Isaac Wardell, a pastor of worship and founder of Bifrost Arts, asks whether we think of gathered worship as being more like a concert hall or a banquet hall. If it’s a concert hall, we show...

[Worship is] the celebrative response to what God has done, is doing, and promises to do.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.

What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.

Our worship bands are more technically proficient than ever, and louder than ever. The people holding microphones are singing, often expertly and almost always passionately. It’s just the rest of us w...

In one stream of church history, this can help explain worshiping in a dead language like Latin—holy language that honors God but leaves the church bewildered. It’s believed that the incantation “hocu...

Nobody ever went up to Jesus after his blistering warning about religious hypocrisy and shook his hand and said, “Thanks, rabbi. That was a nice talk." Nobody went up to Moses after the thunder, ...

What’s at Stake in Worship? Everything. that’s what’s at stake in worship. The urgent, indeed troubling, message of Scripture is that everything that matters is at stake in worship. Worship names what...

Good liturgy, whether formal or informal, ought never to be simply a corporate emoting session, however “Christian,” but a fresh and awed attempt to inhabit the great unceasing liturgy that is going o...

The influence of the familiar on our lives is something that advertisers never forget. The point of advertising is to capitalize on real needs or to create needs and then to provide a product to fill ...

Prayer that is used for any other purpose, no matter how lofty, than to personally converse with a personal God is a sham. It must never be used as part of public relations. It must never be put to th...

There was much I could have said in that moment. I could have contrasted different philosophies of ministry, especially in relation to the seeker movement in our postmodern culture, and explained how ...

My teenage son, Justin, had been invited to an area church by a friend. Since he had grown up as a PK (pastor’s kid) and had never been to a megachurch like this before, I wondered what impression it ...

What’s at Stake in Worship? Everything. that’s what's at stake in worship. The urgent, indeed troubling, message of Scripture is that everything that matters is at stake in worship. Worship names ...

At this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone—an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God thr...

Since we were made to glorify God, worship happens when someone is doing exactly what he or she was made to do.

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. . . . If man cannot pray, he is gagged; if he cannot kneel, he is in irons.

As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not conscio...

Worship is not a feast we lay out for God. It is the table on which God spreads his feast for us.

Leader: Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; People: his greatness no one can fathom. Leader: One generation commends your works to another; People: they tell of your ...

Worship means, literally, acknowledging the worth of something or someone. It means recognizing and saying that someone or something is worthy of praise. It means celebrating the worth of someone or s...

I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed.

Martin Lindstrom observes: When people viewed images associated with the strong brands-the iPods, the Harley-Davidson, the Ferrari, and others-their -their brains registered the exact same patterns of...