By Rev Canon Dr Alson B H Percival PhD

(Continues from last week)

The first school defines the church as a worshipping community, thus making worship the very essence and goal of the church’s existence. Some of its proponents also include helpful reflections on the way that biblical theme on eschatology (death, judgement and destiny) and mission provides an historical frame of references and a practical purpose for corporate worship.

For this group worship embodies the tension of the present era as we celebrate the presence of the promised coming kingdom of God in Christ and at the same time look with longing and hope to the future consummation of the kingdom.

In this era of the New Covenant, worship sustains the total mission of the church, as Christians gather for nourishment and redirection toward God and are then sent forth to serve and glorify God with all their lives in the world.

The New Testament establishes a few basic principles for Christian liturgy. Corporate worship centres on the ministry of word and Eucharist. The ministry of God’s Word in the reading and preaching of scripture and the ministry of God’s Word in the Lord’s Supper are of two fundamental foci around which Christian liturgy takes shape.

It is the excitement of God’s story both verbally and non-verbally. Since an sacrament forms integral part of Christian worship, Christians must acknowledge that worship involves the response of the whole person, in mind, heart and body.

Biblical worship attends to matters like ritual gesture and bodily posture, colour and other visual symbolism, architectural setting and other physical and tangible ways that corporate worship embodies.

Corporate worship in the New Testament says group one is an action of the whole church and so Christian liturgy ought to provide for worship which calls for a response to God that involves the whole person.

This prospective is based on the priesthood of all believers; and it indicates that full biblical worship provides opportunities for the whole congregation to participate actively in responding to God’s actions throughout the whole worship.

Because the New Testament does not provide a systematic picture of Christian worship, guidance has to be sought regarding worship from the practice of the early church.

Worship that is biblical has an explicitly Trinitarian and Christ-centred content that focuses on presenting the story of God from creation to incarnation to re-creation in Christ and His kingdom.

In the same way that the church has wrestled with its understanding of Christ and the scripture through creeds, commentaries, systematic theologies and such like, so also the church has developed ways to do its worship. These include structural forms, written prayers, hymns, rules for preaching, the church’s year, the lectionary and numerous symbolic ceremonies.

During the early days of the church, these resources were being developed at the same time that creedal statements were coming into being.

The church today affirms its faith by way of the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds and has remained faithful to their intent. We boast that we remain steadfast to the theological perception of worship shaped by the same church fathers.

We need to recognise that those who have gone before us, those who wrestled with the meaning and interpretation of the faith in Creeds and liturgy were women of and men of faith. To accept creeds on the one hand and reject the liturgies on the other is contradictory and unwise.

The church is blessed, for in the early days it was blessed with gifted servants with spiritual leadership as Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, John Chryston and Augustine. It is to our detriment if we neglect to study the worship of the church which reflects their faithfulness to Christ and the orthodox tradition.

We therefore should not neglect the specific forms of corporate worship in the Old and New Testaments which has already being built.

It is Webber who advises, “Principles of worship may be drawn from both the Old and New Testaments.... In the Old Testament, God gives His people specific directions regarding the how, when, and wherefore of meeting Him in worship. These directions contain principles that were not abrogated for the Christian Church.”

We will look at the second model in the next issue. (To be continued)