The Language of Worship and Prayer (Essentials Red Fall 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt

This week, we have been looking into the languages of prayer and the reading of scripture and how they have been used throughout time in the setting of worship.

In our church setting, both of these are used frequently during our times of worship. There is always a floor mic open for people to come up and read scripture and pray what is on their hearts. I am thankful that this is not a new idea to us, because the fruit has been very good.

Nonetheless, I am going to switch gears a bit on some of the reading we were assigned this week out of the book, "Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year" by Robert E. Webber. Being in a charismatic and non-denominational church, we do not observe much out of the Christian Year, other than the obvious: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

The idea of observing the Christian Year in it's entirety seems very "religious" and based solely on tradition, not spirituality. Although, when I started reading Webber's book, I was realizing how shallow my view really was. I had not looked at the meaning behind each of these specific observances. Webber writes: "Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entereing into his great saving events." [1]

This is fascinating to me! I had never thought about it in that way, but it makes complete sense. This is not about being "traditional" and following rules. It's about keeping the acts of Christ in the forefront of our consciousness. This is going to be an enlightening course for me, because I am so clueless about the Christian calendar.

I can see how incorporating scripture reading with the observance of the Christian year would bring us into thought processes that we normally would not have of the ways Christ lived out his life when he was on the earth. This would also allow the prayers that are prayed to be more on-purpose and in tune with the heart of Christ.

[1] Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), p. 22