Worship

Book Review: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

/ J.K. / 1 Comment

Rating: Must Have

Level: Easy (though helpful to have familiarity with liturgy); Long (400+), but each day is less than 10 pages

Summary

This is the third book by Gibson and Crossway of a liturgy for daily worship. The first, being a general 31 day guide called Be Thou My Vision, the second one, like this one is focused on a part of the church calendar, O Come, O Come, Emanuel (see my review here), which went roughly from Advent to Epiphany. I have to admit, I was confused by the dates of this book. The subtitle is A Liturgy for Daily Worship from Pascha to Pentecost. I thought this would be a good Monday to post, as Pascha is (I thought) another name for Easter and Pentecost is the 50th day after Easter. However, this is actually a Lent (timeframe) devotional, though Gibson writes “this [book] is not intended to be associated with the traditions of Lent..” I find this an odd and confusing choice.

This book is neither a 40 (or 46, as Sundays don’t count towards Lent) day Lenten Devotional, not is it a 50 day Easter (Pascha) to Pentecost devotional. Instead, it is a 48 day devotional that starts on Ash Wednesday, proceeds 42 days, and then has special service days – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Resurrection Sunday (Easter/Pascha), Ascension Sunday (the Sunday after Ascension Day, which is 40 days after Easter),and Pentecost Sunday.

After a preface and acknowledgements, the books starts with an intro (titled Remembering Jesus), where Gibson makes something of a defense of ‘holy’ days, or having special days of remembrance. It is a really interesting chapter, and if you are in the reformed community, you know that there is a pretty sizeable split with strong feelings on both sides of ‘holy days’. 

The following chapter is a very useful (especially if you aren’t used to Liturgy) ‘how-to’ on using the format, which includes: meditation, call to worship, adoration, reading the Law, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, creed, praise, catechism, prayer for illumination, scripture reading, praise, prayer of intercession (and then further petition/prayer), Lord’s Prayer, benediction, and finally a postlude (doxology).  

There are also appendixes for tunes to various parts of the worship, Bible reading plan, and Author, Hymn, & Liturgy index.

My Thoughts

I still find the subtitle odd and do not understand why they would give it such a name. As noted above, Gibson doesn’t want this to be a traditional Lenten style devotional, but it would seem to me that explaining the difference in the book while giving a clearer title would be more helpful. Another confusing aspect is at one point he refers to this season as the ‘Pascal Season’, which coincides with Lent. This is again odd, as most English speaker use Easter not Pascha, and Easter Season (or Eastertide) is the time from Easter to Ascension Day. It is truly a perplexing decision. That being said, it is another wonderful book. I couldn’t come up with much new to say about how it works, so see below for what I wrote about O Come, O Come, Emanual: 

Honestly, if you attempt any personal or family worship this is a must have. I am a big fan of the structured (liturgical) worship, especially for family devotion. It really doesn’t make it easy to lead or do with your family or community. Really my only (minor) quibble with this is that with 16 parts, it might be just a little too long. However, if you are doing this with a family with young children or you find yourself short on time, there are always parts you can cut. That being said, some sections are only a line or a paragraph long; this shouldn’t take an hour or any extended time. 

If you are unfamiliar with liturgy or structured daily worship this is an outstanding way to get into it. Unless you are from a pretty free-flowing Baptist/non-denom/mega-church background you will probably recognize parts (if not all) of these sections. If you are Anglican, you can see the clear influence of the BCP (which is probably the best book that exist for personal and family worship). 

I know some people don’t like the repetitive nature of some parts of guides like these, saying and can be rote or unfeeling, but really that is up to you. If you don’t take it seriously, or just mindlessly repeat things, then yes, the downside is that it can be meaningless. However, the upsides are a daily reminder of how to worship God, what He has done for us, what so much of the church today and most have always believed and recited, and of course – scripture reading. This is more important than every in church life, especially if you do this as a family/community and use it to help shape and guide children in their beliefs. This is true of any structured worship, but I think is even more important for this time of year, when we are pulled away in so many directions, with so many competing interesting. As I said above, if you are looking for personal/family devotion/worship, this is a must have. 

*I received a free copy of this book from Crossway, in exchange for an honest review. 

Tune My Heart Podcast

/ J.K. / 1 Comment

As you probably know, Lent starts this Ash Wednesday. I wrote some thoughts on Lent about 6 years ago. I think my views have matured a little more sense then, but I still don’t entirely participate in Lent. Again, mostly because I don’t know how. I am waiting for Jonathan Gibson, who wrote the Advent to Epiphany guide and has an Easter through Pentecost guide come out soon (check back next Monday for my review), to write one on Lent, hopefully next year. It has been a few months sense I’ve read through the Psalms, so I’ll probably use that Lent as a reason to jump back in.

All that to say, if you are looking for something to do, I have a suggestion – check out the Tune My Heart podcast, which you can find it on Spotify, or any other app of choice (as always: rate, review, subscribe). Tune My Heart is a 30 day, daily worship and prayer liturgy. It is based on the Book of Common Prayer, so if you are Anglican (or one of they other churches who use it) it’ll be familiar and easy to enjoy. If you don’t know the BCP, you’ll enjoy this as something new and different.

The series is 30 episodes long and Lent is 40 days (plus 6 Sundays), so you have built in time in case you miss days. Each episode is less than 10 minutes which can fit into your morning commute, if you are still one of those people (like me) that has to commute every day, or easy enough to wake up a few minute earlier for. Check out the Welcome intro below for more information, then go find it and subscribe wherever you get your podcast.

Book Review: Reformation Anglican Worship

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Reformation Anglican Worship: Experiencing Grace, Expressing Gratitude (The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, Volume 4)

My Rating – Put it on your list

Level – Short, mostly easy read (occasional Latin thrown in).

Summary

The book is generally what the title says. For those confused from the ‘Reformation’ part, I was, too. I’m not sure why the author(s, it is a series) didn’t use Reformed, as this seems to be what they are discussing. Canmer (who wrote the Book of Common Prayer, and was the main influence on Anglicanism) was heavily influenced by the Reformation and it’s new focus on Biblical reading in the vernacular and Justification by faith. 

Jensen focuses mostly on the Reformed, as opposed to Anglo-Catholic, side of Anglicanism. He makes a strong argument for it being the way Anglicanism started, but does a good job of putting things into a historical context as well as modern impacts. 

This is a short book broken into six chapters – The Heart of Christian Worship, Worship in the English Reformation, Reading and Preaching the Scriptures, The Gospel Signs: The Sacraments, Prayers of Grace, and Music: The Word in Song. There is also a brief introduction where he lays out his goal for the book. Chapter one, lays a basic theological groundwork on worship, based on the Trinity. The remaining five chapters are pretty clear by the title. 

My Thoughts

This was an interesting book to me. I am not an Anglican, but am in the Reformed tradition (though I understand there is a good bit of difference between the two). I’ve recently gained some interested in the Anglican tradition, mostly due to my recent discovery of the use of the Book of Common prayer. Jensen does a great job of weaving thoughts/writing from Cranmer and portions of the Book through each chapter (for those wondering why the BCP didn’t warrant its own chapter).

He doesn’t rely solely on Cranmer, but points to other Bishops at the time and even some writings from the royalty. I thought chapter three (Read & Preaching Scripture) was the most interesting. Knowing a good bit about the Reformation and continuing in the tradition, I was familiar with the focus on the Word Preached. Much less focused on, but apparently quite important in Anglicanism (especially as exhibited in the previous version of the BCP) is the direct reading of scriptures. This includes multiple readings from throughout the Bible at each service, as well as a reading plan that takes you through the OT once and NT three times a year; and the Psalms once a month. 

Sacramentalism is one of the divergent points between Anglicanism and Reformed traditions, but the chapter was interesting and informative. The Music chapter was the shortest, but was quite powerful. This is especially true if you are a member of church that freely uses ‘modern worship’. His critique is harsh, but completely accurate. He points out the irony of the fact (which I was unaware) that Reformation era churches were heavily focused on the performance of music, specifically coral music which can be hard to sing. Now, we’ve moved back to performance. The irony being, we fought to have the congregation be able to sing, to now, being focused on entertainment, with many songs that are not made for congregational singing (or are often hard to sign, but hey, guitar solo). 

The interest on this book would be fairly narrow, btu I do think everyone who cares about proper worship would benefit from this book. If you are interested in worship, you should certainly buy this book.  If you are Anglican, or Reformed, or have an interest in church history or the various aspects of the Reformation, put this on your list. 

*I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.