The Principles and Prejudices of Christian Worship

I recently been reading three very different books about Christian worship that have in their own way been beneficial and challenging to me. To two of them I am happy to give very positive reviews; the third has some good material, but is also problematic. The three books in question are the following:

Worship by the Book
Edited by D. A. Carson
Zondervan 2002

Worship Matters
By Bob Kauflin
Crossway 2008

The Lord's Service
By Jeffrey J. Meyers
Canon Press 2003

Worship by the Book is a collection of four essays on worship, each one is of some value. They are 'Worship Under the Word' by Carson himself, 'Following in Cranmer's Footsteps' by Mark Ashton, 'Free Church Worship: The Challenge of Freedom' by R. Kent Hughes and 'Reformed Worship in the Global City' by Timothy Keller.

Carson's essay is a masterful overview of a theology of worship and is worth the price of the book by itself. Ashton's essay is basically a call to pay heed to the liturgical tradition handed down from Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer in particular and will appeal to those of a traditional bent in worship matters. Hughes's essay says much that is helpful for all forms of Christian worship. Keller's essay attempts to deal with the tension between Reformed worship and dealing with today's postmodern people in big cities like New York.

The book is also useful because it contains a number of liturgies or orders of service for actual services in the congregations of each of these pastors (except Carson I think). Overall, it is a very useful book on worship with a balance between the theoretical and the practical.

Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin of Sovereign Grace Ministries is an excellent book. In some respects it is a more specialist book as it is aimed at 'worship leaders' or music leaders, yet it is actually an excellent primer on worship and even theology generally. Kauflin offers a working definition of what a good worship leader is and does:

A faithful worship leader
magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ
through the power of the Holy Spirit
by skilfully combining God's Word with music,
thereby motivating the gathered church
to proclaim the gospel,
to cherish God's presence,
and to live for God's glory.


He then spends a chapter dealing with each line of this definition. The second half of the book is a series of practical chapters of guidance to worship leaders in the churches. This book is thoroughly recommended.

The Lord's Service by Jeffrey J. Meyers is a call to a very traditional, high church form of worship, which the author calls 'covenant renewal worship'. While Meyers makes some good points about the importance of not disregarding tradition - I liked his quoting of Chesterton that tradition is 'the democracy of the dead' - ultimately the book failed to convince. There are countless times where Meyers pleads that high church worship should not be rejected just because it resembles Rome or Canterbury. This may be fair enough, but he largely fails to show why it should be accepted either. Time and again he appeals to Old Testament passages to do with Temple worship to support his case. However, as the likes of Carson would point out, we are not under that covenant. Meyers also thinks that only the ordained pastor should lead worship or preach (and certainly administer the sacraments). He keeps saying that the minister represents Christ or God to the congregation, but he fails to give any solid exegetical evidence for this, and this seems to set up an 'us and them' of clergy and laity or 'priest and people' that the New Testament, it seems to me, knows little of.

In the end, Meyers sounds more like  a Roman Catholic or High Anglican than he does a Presbyterian. It would certainly be useful for many churches to take some of the more traditional liturgy elements into modern worship services without throwing out the strengths of modern worship (which Meyers simply cannot see).

It should also be pointed out that Meyers is part of the Federal Vision movement and it seems to me this fits with his worship views, which are to be frank, very unusual for a Presbyterian minister, and much closer to Canterbury than they are to Edinburgh or Geneva.