Baptists and Worship

Sitting Beneath the Gospel's Joyful Sound

R. Scott Connell

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725271593
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Worship is dialogue. It is more than that, but it is not less than that. The way Baptists have worshiped for three and a half centuries demonstrates this consistently, in spite of their penchant for freedom and autonomy. No one tells Baptists how to order their worship services. They don't have a common liturgy that they must follow, and yet their services look remarkably similar.This is largely due to two controlling factors in their worship: The Bible that they embrace as inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient; and the Christ-revealing gospel that is contained within its pages. When the word of God is followed closely, a shape for worship order begins to emerge. It is the same "gospel-shape" that is found throughout the Bible.When the word of God is applied to a worship service in which God and his people are engaged in a worship conversation, a consistent contour of gospel elements and content begins to emerge that reveals the glory of the Christ we gather to worship. He is so glorious that when we behold him, we are transformed into the same image from one degree to another. This is the power of corporate worship (2 Cor 3).

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The Role of the Gospel in Baptist Worship

Introduction

Worship is dialogue. It is more than that, but it is not less than that. Worship is a conversation between God’s people and him. As a result, a worship event conveys something about those people and their understanding of who God is. It also communicates insights about the people’s perception of the nature of their relationship and how it came to be. A worship encounter cannot take place in isolation from what brought them to the place of worship, nor can it deny their understanding of its present purposes or future hope. In short, a worship service is a snapshot within the context of an ongoing relationship between worshipers and their object of worship. Every act of worship is informed by some combination of priorities, convictions, and beliefs. These values serve as internal constraints that shape the worship; and as a result, the worshiper. All that occurs in a worship service is a part of a greater narrative that forms the worshipers’ metanarrative. The Christians’ metanarrative is called the “gospel,” which is the good news that God has redeemed people who were estranged from him, but now through the death of Christ have been reconciled to him. It is because of the gospel and by the gospel that they first came to know God and now worship him. All of this takes place through the person and work of Christ, who is the central figure in Christian worship.

How then should the gospel inform worship? How should it affect the worship conversation? If it is by the gospel that Christians have been turned to God, does not the gospel have a continuing role in the deepening of this relationship through the dialogical nature of worship? Should not the gospel’s ongoing work be evident in the way the church worships? In a liturgical tradition, this role might be ensured through the liturgy; how might the gospel be evidenced among the tradition of a people where formal liturgy is not just absent from practice, but vehemently rejected? Does historic Baptist worship reflect the gospel? If so, how can one “see” the gospel in a Baptist tradition?

Christopher Ellis in Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality of Worship in Free Church Tradition explains the nature of what can be derived from examining worship:

Worship is a communal event. It is something which Christians do together. In fact, it is the central activity of the Christian Church. There are, of course, other things which the Church is called to do, such as share the good news of Jesus Christ in word and action—which is usually called “mission.” But worship is the central activity of the Church because it is here that what it believes is most clearly expressed and it is here that it regularly encounters God and is confronted with what God has done in the past and what God has promised for the future.1

In his book, Ellis attempts to derive the theology and spirituality of English Baptists from their examples of worship from the earliest days of the seventeenth century until today. His work is an example of liturgical theology by which the beliefs of a particular Christian community are studied via its worship practices. Ellis explains, “In liturgical theology we observe the worship practices of a community and then draw from them what we perceive to be their theological meaning.”2

Due to the nature of Baptist worship, this process cannot be simply accomplished by examining prayer books or historic liturgy. Neither exists in the Baptist tradition and the history of Baptist origins reveals their deeply held conviction to be free from such prescribed ritual. However, information exists in other sources that reveals the form and shape of worship in Baptist congregations, as well as the content. As Ellis has demonstrated with English Baptists, even so there is enough data available to undertake a similar study of Baptist worship in North America. While this effort for Ellis was challenging due to the scarcity of records concerning the nature of Baptist worship, he was able to derive conclusions concerning Baptist worship in England as well as the spirituality of those Baptists. He was able to do so due to the inherent nature of worship, which makes liturgical theology possible. “In worship, we find a bringing together of what Christians believe, examples of their praying and various liturgical actions. These thoughts, prayers, and actions intersect so that it can be said that the gathering for worsh...