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Library Articles & Resources (86)
The History Of Baptism
Baptism remains the point of entry into the Christian church. However, the form of baptism has developed through the centuries, as seen in the following entries. Catechism shifted from before baptism to after baptism in the medieval church as infant baptism be…
A Brief History Of Preaching
Preaching has always been a significant moment in the church's worship. During the Middle Ages, preaching became almost completely irrelevant to the people as the consecration of the eucharistic elements became the sole focus of the liturgy. Fewer and fewer pe…
Pre-reformation Liturgies
The following entries provide the reader with an overview of the major liturgies and worship orders from the early church through the nineteenth century. Each entry has three distinctive features: Introduction, Text or Order or Worship, and Commentary. Each mo…
Contemporary Documents On Worship Renewal
This era will no doubt be remembered as one where the church most vigorously addressed the renewal of worship. Probably more research and writing centered on liturgy and worship have been produced in the past few decades than during any previous period. Neoort…
A Roman Catholic Theology Of Worship
The centerpiece of Roman Catholic theology of worship is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated in worship. The whole of Christian life takes its meaning from that which alone gives meaning to everything: the incarnation, life…
Luther: Formula Missae: Order Of Mass And Communion For The Church At Wittenberg (1523)
Luther's Formula Missae, written after his break with Rome, did not suggest a wholescale reform of the Catholic mass. Rather, Luther cautiously suggested ways of adapting the Mass for use in local congregations and also proposed ways to make it more relevant t…
Seven Styles Of Morning Worship
Broadly speaking, the contemporary renewal of worship in the Western world can be classified as follows: (1) liturgical; (2) traditional Protestant; (3) creative; (4) charismatic; (5) praise-and-worship tradition; (6) convergence; (7) the seekers' service/beli…
What Is The Christian Year?
The Christian celebrates the saving events of God in Jesus Christ by marking those particular events in which God's saving purposes were made known. The most common term for the yearly celebration of time in worship is the Christian year. The Christian year,…
Historical Origins And Development Of Footwashing
At the Last Supper Jesus gave special meaning to an ordinary custom of the Mediterranean world. Associated with the Lord's Supper and with baptismal rites in the early church, footwashing survived as part of the bishop's Maundy Thursday ritual, as a regular pr…
Historical Origins And Development Of The Funeral
Christian rituals related to death did not begin at the funeral service. Dying itself was surrounded by many Christian rites. During the Reformation, Protestants' sharp attacks on the medieval beliefs in purgatory and intercession for the deceased eventually s…
Historical Origins And Development Of Confirmation
Large dioceses in northern Europe during the early Middle Ages made it difficult for bishops to be present at the baptism of infants. Gradually a two-part initiation process emerged spanning the period from infancy to late childhood. With increased emphasis on…
An Early Church Theology Of The Lord’s Supper
Christian writers of the first two centuries affirmed, without attempting a theological explanation for the fact, that the risen Christ is present in the eucharistic action that transforms those who receive it. Christ's Presence What can be said confidentl…
Adventist Churches
With roots in the radical Reformation, Adventists have not placed great emphasis on sacraments. Nevertheless, they traditionally have regarded Communion, baptism, and sometimes marriage as sacred acts. Footwashing, ordination, and anointing the sick are also p…
A Theology Of Ordination In The West
The main distinction among Christians in the question of ordination remains the matter of apostolic succession of bishops, who in turn are responsible for ordination of other ministers. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and the Eastern Orthodox believe in a direct s…
Theologies Of The Lord's Supper
From the early church's firm belief in the Real Presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist have developed a variety of Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant explanations of how this mystery takes place (or, as Radical Reformation Protestants asserted, …
Concerns For The Future Of Worship
Worship renewalists live by the Reformation axiom semper reformanda: the church must always be renewing itself. In advocating the need for worship and worshipers to be in continual renewal, renewalists recognize the pattern through which movements have moved h…
Reformation Models Of Worship
In the next four entries we find that the sixteenth-century Reformers regarded the worship model of the Roman Catholic church in varying ways. The liturgies of Luther and of the Anglican church retained more elements of the Catholic Mass. Calvin and Hubmaier m…
Reformed Worship
Calvin argued that only practices explicitly taught in Scripture could be used in worship. For this reason, churches influenced by Calvin have been less inclined to restore pre-Reformation practices of worship perceived as unbiblical or "Catholic. " The Refor…
How The Architectural Setting For Worship Forms Our Faith
Every liturgical space reflects the theological commitments of its designers. Every time a liturgical space is used, those ideals shape the experience of those who worship within it. Space for worship must be designed with concern for the theological and litur…
The Development Of Anointing In The Modern Church
This article traces the history of anointing since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Note how each development in the history of anointing was based on larger theological discussions. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century envis…
A Theology Of Confirmation
A number of relatively clear theological assumptions under gird the liturgies of confirmation used by a variety of churches. Baptism must be regarded as complete Christian initiation; it is not the first part of a staged-out action. By it, one becomes a Chri…
Historic Worship In The Western (catholic) Church
The Roman rite was only one of several rites that existed in the Western church prior to the time of the Reformation, as shown in these eight entries. As the Roman rite gained influence, the traditions of other regions became assimilated to it. Some of the reg…
Post-reformation Models Of Worship
Between 1600 and 1900 a variety of new movements grew out of the Reformation. Believers within each of these movements expressed their faith in slightly different forms of worship. These 12 entries place these forms of worship in their historical context, arra…
Anglican Worship
Anglican worship has a variegated history, having fluctuated between worship forms similar to those of Catholicism and worship influenced by the Puritans. This accounts in part for the variations in worship within the Anglican communion of today. Nevertheless …
The Chorale
The chorale was Martin Luther's important contribution to church music. Featuring strong rhythmic tunes and vernacular texts, the early chorales were songs for all worshiping people to sing. Since the Reformation, a long line of hymn writers, especially in Ger…
Sacred Actions In The Medieval And Reformation Eras
The Middle Ages witnessed some far-reaching developments in the theology and practice of the sacraments. This article traces these developments and explains the nature of the Reformation debate which arose out of them. Medieval Christian culture was a highly…
Worship And Evangelism In Nineteenth-century Revivalism
In America, nineteenth-century revival movements forged a relationship between worship and evangelism that continues to be widely influential today, even in worship traditions not traditionally associated with revivalism. Understanding the history of this rela…
Resources For The Service Of The Table
In the early church, worship consisted of both Word and Table. The Word proclaimed the saving deed of God in Jesus Christ, and the Table was the response of thanksgiving (Eucharist is the Greek word for thanks). During medieval times, the Roman Catholic church…
Protestant Worship Of The Reformation Era
In these four entries, we find how the Reformation's break with the Roman Catholic church was expressed in the work of various synods, particularly in new documents and confessions. But nowhere was it more clearly visible to the ordinary Christian than in wors…
A Protestant Worship Manifesto
This manifesto summarizes the themes of twentieth-century worship renewal and calls the Protestant community to action around twelve themes acceptable to the majority of worship leaders in the mainline Protestant tradition. A new Reformation of Word and sacr…
Quaker Worship
Quaker worship, to varying degrees, is unstructured. It is characterized by silence and by the leading of the Spirit. It is easy to identify the Quakers or Society of Friends as the most radical tradition of all in its break from late medieval forms of worsh…
Anabaptist Worship
Anabaptists argued for a pure church and a radical discipleship in absolute obedience to Scripture. They refused to countenance any form of worship that could not be substantiated by Scripture. It is not easy to generalize about the Anabaptist elements of th…
Anglican/episcopal Churches
Worship in the Anglican Communion is structured by liturgical celebration of the Christian year, centering on Easter. In recent decades, greater emphasis has been placed on the paschal and baptismal nature of the church year and on observing the complete yearl…
The Lord’s Supper In The Reformation Era
Martin Luther insisted that Christ's body and blood are really present in the Eucharist. On the other hand, the Swiss and South German Reformers, who initiated what became the Reformed tradition, believed Christ was present only symbolically in the minds and h…
Baptism Among The Protestant Reformers
Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all believed baptism could properly be administered to infants. Yet, whereas Luther emphasized baptism as a sign of God's promise to bring about faith in conjunction with the infant's inchoate faith, Zwingli and Calvin saw it as a C…
Sacred Actions In Modern Catholicism
This article traces the development of a Catholic view of the sacraments since the medieval period. This development shows a great respect for the tradition which has shaped it, but also shows new emphases offered in response to the Reformation and later theol…
Cartigny Statement On Worship And Culture: Biblical And Historical Foundations
The Cartigny Statement on Worship and Culture was prepared on October 1993 by the Lutheran World Federation's study team focused on this topic. In this first consultation, the team focused on the biblical and historical materials relating to the relationship b…
American Baptist Churches In The Usa
Although rooted in that wing of the Reformation which made the most radical shift away from highly developed liturgical structure, American Baptist churches are nevertheless undergoing a radical rethinking of the role and shape of worship in congregational lif…
Protestant Worship In The Post-reformation Era
Between 1600 and 1900, Protestant movements proliferated in a continuous search for biblical Christianity or for renewal and restoration. The result was the establishment of many different worship traditions, as seen in these 11 entries, since these Christian …
The Protestant Liturgical Renewal
Liturgical renewal among the ecumenical churches of mainline Protestantism has brought about a widespread consensus in worship style. In the spirit of the Reformation, not only the Scriptures but also the sacraments are being restored to a central position in …
Liturgical Essays & Blog (2)
The Seven Styles of Morning Worship
Broadly speaking, the contemporary renewal of worship in the Western world can be classified as follows: (1) liturgical; (2) traditional Protestant; (3) creativ…
Read EssayA Presbyterian View of Ash Wednesday
The church calendar is a tool that is full of the wisdom of the ages. It is a tradition that pre-dates the Reformation and belongs to all of Christendom. God ha…
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