Story, Structure, Style

Story, structure, and style are three elements of a paradigm first formulated by family therapist Salvador Minuchin. To the person interested in finding a useful way to think about the act of divine worship, this paradigm may be helpful. Many of us, when we think of worship, think of it as "the way we do it in our church"; that is, as a complex system of words, actions, events, history, and emotions, all tied up in God. When one attempts to say something useful about worship, one therefore needs a way to discuss it in less complicated and less "loaded" terms. Thus, we offer this paradigm as a way to identify and clarify what we know, think, feel, believe, and understand about Christian worship, given the breadth and depth in which worship is discussed in these volumes. Christians are storytellers. We have a gospel that tells the story of our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself used stories to proclaim his message. Though the first generation of Christians had only the Hebrew Bible as Sc…