thoughts and ruminations while in exile (1 Pet. 2:11)

This is an old post originally from 2008 which is at my blog: http://exilicthoughts.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

I repost it here in case you are interested in studying this topic in depth:

For those interested in this topic, I found a great two-part article in The Evangelical Quarterly. That being said, it is an old periodical. You'll need to find volume LVI, numbers 2 and 3, April and July, 1984, written by Roger Beckwith. Remember, it's a two-part article.

The name of the article is "The Daily and Weekly Worship of the Primitive Church in relation to its Jewish Antecedents." The first article gives a good overview, while the second gets specific in looking at the transition from Jewish worship to Christian worship. I believe this topic is important since, as the author notes, "The originality of Christian worship is not that it abolishes Jewish worship but that it reforms and develops that worship, in accordance with Jesus' teaching and in recognition of his saving work."

To get you interested, here are some of the topics covered:
1. The Christian ministry of the Word.
2. The origin of the Sunday Eucharist.
3. The origin of the Eucharistic thanksgiving prayer.
4. The origin of the daily services.
5. The origin of the Christian prayer-forms.

While I'm sure many will look at this and say it is indicative of the church being too "institutional," or too "traditional," I think it takes seriously the command of Scripture to do all things "in order"--the Greek literally reads "according to an order." Our culture denigrates written prayers because it believes that worship or prayer is not heart-felt unless it is spontaneous. I agree that heart-felt prayers are very important as well, but let us not be so quick to bash our Christian heritage which used them so often. Also, note that in Acts 2:42 when the text reads that the Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine . . . and to prayer,' the Greek there literally reads, "the prayers," plural. Most translations leave this out because they have an anti-liturgical bias.

Our culture dislikes liturgical worship because it seems to believe that it is too formal, and hinders true "worship." They would rather do away with all of the formal prayers and liturgy, and, quite possibly even the church. They would rather have their private "Jesus experience." No church, no creeds, just "me and Jesus."

I'm not saying we have to be slaves to tradition, but it should inform our worship. We don't have to reinvent Christianity every week. Bryan Chapell's words are instructive:

“Always are we to be informed by tradition; never are we to be ruled by it. The Word of God is our only infallible rule of faith and practice, but an unwillingness to consider what previous generations have learned about applying God’s Word discloses either naivete or arrogance. God intends for us to stand on the shoulders of those faithful before us. He gives us a mission for our time, but he also gives us a history to prepare us for our present calling. Without critically and constructively examining this foundation we are ill equipped for building the church God wants today.”