Jeffrey J. Meyers is a fellow at Theopolis Institute in Birmingham Alabama and pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church (PCA), St. Louis, Missouri.
AUTHOR: Douglas Wilson
PAGE COUNT: 448 pages
SIZE: 5.50x8.50"
ISBN-10: 1591280087
ISBN-13: 9781591280088
PUB. DATE: February 1, 2003
What should worship on Sunday look like? This book is a comprehensive introduction to covenant renewal worship.
Since worship should be the center of everything we do, we should think through what we do on Sunday very carefully. Evangelicals are generally clueless about worship. When we're not putting guys with long hair and guitars at the front of the church, we are often pursuing the latest high church fad, with incense and bells making up for the missing smoke machine on the rock and roll stage.
In this book, which began as a practical guide to worship, Jeffrey Meyers charts an alternative. He lays out out a case for a covenant renewal service by means of Old Testament sacrificial liturgics, biblical typology, and covenant theology. He then guides us through the stages of a covenant renewal liturgy, explaining from Scripture the meanings of each step of the service.
The final section addresses miscellaneous issues in worship, such as the use of creeds, the "regulative principle," and ministerial clothing. Jeffrey Meyers provides not only a compelling biblical, theological, and historical case for covenant renewal worship, but also shows that it is beautiful, profound, edifying, and liberating.
What People Are Saying:
"A wide-ranging book that could be an enormous help to almost any pastor or elder, especially (but not exclusively) those in the Reformed tradition." ~Gillis Harp, Modern Reformation
"Outstanding." ~Douglas Wilson
READER REVIEWS:
"Before reading this book I was very happy with mixed worship. I didn't mind singing songs to God that I could also sing as a love song to my wife. I didn't mind not participating in worship except for in the first 30 minutes during the 'praise' section of the service. I was cool with skits promoting the exciting thing that's happening this week. Then Jeffrey Meyers introduced me to a latin phrase, 'Lex orandi, lex credendi.' The law of prayer is the law of belief. What I sing and pray in worship is what I believe. If I sing a sappy love song to God and do not participate in corporate prayer at all, my life will reflect that. If I sing the war psalms of the Bible and confess my sins during the service along with the rest of the body, my life will reflect that. Worship is the centerpiece of our lives and some thought should go into what we do in the service." ~a reader
As a minister of the gospel, my trajectory has been somewhat unique. I was raised Jewish and was apprehended by Christ at age 27. Much of what I've been taught as a Christian has been gleaned in evangelical circles that were neither Reformed, nor with any allegiance to the historical orthodoxy of the faith that I've come to know and love over the last 10 years of ministry. In many ways, what I initially learned trended towards abandoning anything that smelled of formal liturgy. Meyers' work has been a significant and refreshing renewal of the worship of God that I found dear and precious in the Jewish synagogue. I am still working through the details of this book, the liturgical aspects of a worship service, in an effort to smoothly adapt our current church milieu to certain aspects of more traditional worship, not for the sake of tradition itself, but to help our body realize the entirety of covenant renewal throughout our time together on Sundays. This book is truly a God send. I am grateful to know that I have not been crazy all these years as a Christian, in thinking "something is missing." Meyers' attention to the significance of every aspect of worship, explaining the how and why of covenant renewal in each portion of the service, and the accompanying songs and music, has been an affirmation of what I've intuitively thought as a Jew who has been apprehended by Christ. I highly recommend this work, especially for anyone who has wrestled with a desire to facilitate change in a church that is not familiar with Reformed theology and its implications for everything we do to glorify our Lord and Savior when we gather on Sundays. Shalom & much grace.
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