Worship

The following article is by Carroll Ellis and appeared in the Gospel Advocate January 1960. It’s still relevant today, and I commend it to your consideration. BP A man has just received a kind invitation. It was not an all-expense paid, deep sea fishing trip, neither was it free tickets to a basketball game. Rather, it was an urgent, pressing invitation to attend public worship. He was not annoyed, embarrassed, teased, but pleased, for he said: “I was glad when…

Most of us are probably familiar with Martin Luther. When you hear the name, you probably think of him first and foremost as the spark that ignited the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. What you might not know about Luther is that, among all the changes he made, he was responsible for reintroducing congregational singing into worship. A Jesuit priest once complained he, “has murdered more souls with his songs than with…

I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. (1 Corinthians 14:15)  Congregational singing is one of the most distinctive aspects of our public worship in churches of Christ. It’s certainly the one that stands out to visitors to our services because it is relatively unusual in contemporary Western Christianity; most religious groups over the last 150 or so years have moved to featuring various instruments in their assemblies. That immediately draws attention to…

I bet if you stopped 100 people on the street to ask them what they associate with churches of Christ, 90+ would say, “oh, they’re the ones who don’t use instruments” (or even “you don’t believe in music!” as I’ve occasionally heard). That stands out to people because it is something of an oddity in the contemporary West. Most professing Christians grew up attending churches with an organ, or a piano, or guitars and drums, depending on the denomination. Whatever…

As we continue our series of lessons on the activities we participate in when we assemble together, we are going to talk today about prayer. The ability to approach God’s throne is a great privilege. But it is also a tremendous responsibility to direct God’s people before him; after all, the one who leads prayer is speaking on behalf of an entire congregation to God! We will make some suggestions for the public (and private) prayer in our sermon, but…

From their emergence in this country in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the ethos of churches of Christ has been restoration. European nations had established churches: Roman Catholicism in many countries, Anglicanism in Great Britain, Lutheranism in Scandinavia. These were supported by taxes, given privileges by the government and, in some cases, compelled membership of all citizens. The New World offered an opportunity for religious freedom, as most of us learned in grade school. But that freedom came…

This week, we are beginning a sermon series on worship – specifically, on the corporate worship of the church in the assembly. We are going to cover the specific activities we participate in and why they are important. More fundamentally, we want to consider what worship is. And with that in mind, there are a couple of important points about the nature of worship that did not make it into our sermon this morning (you don’t want me to talk…

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;     break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;     the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands;     let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes     to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness,     and the peoples with equity.–Psalm 98 Isaac Watts is considered…