Corporate Worship Is ‘Transferable’

So far in our Advent series, we have seen that God’s glory could be described one way as God showing up. God’s glory fills people with awe, strikes them with fear, and promises peace through Jesus Christ. God shows up in our midst in the corporate worship service each week. We experience it in an unmatched way when we are gathered together, but the power of God’s glory as displayed through the liturgy of the corporate worship service is certainly not confined to the sanctuary. In the same way that God’s glory showed up in those fields in Bethlehem to mostly-forgotten shepherds, the liturgy of the corporate worship is transferable across circumstances, contexts, and cultures.

I recently shared with you the story of a dear woman, Mrs. Austin, who came to faith in Christ late in life through the ministry of her daughter, Eleanor, and one of the churches I have pastored. However, before she could make a public profession of faith she was hospitalized. She would not leave there until she went to heaven. From her hospital bed, she requested to be baptized and receive her first communion. Our elders eagerly agreed to grant her request, so three of us brought the congregation and the sacraments to her. Eleanor was there as a member of the church. A ruling elder was there with the elements of the Lord’s Supper and a basin of water for baptism. With a bulletin from Sunday, the day before, we led her through the worship service and as part of that service we baptized her. I shared a shortened form of the sermon I preached and then we all took the Supper together. The fellowship, hymns, prayers, sermon, and sacraments that brought us joy the day before were now shared inexpressibly by all of us as we reenacted them with Mrs. Austin. You could say the Spirit brought the glory we experienced in the sanctuary on Sunday to Mrs. Austin in her hospital bed on Monday. Jesus showed up in that hospital room as really as he did in that sanctuary as the gospel was preached and served.

The word “transferable” as I use it here comes from a section of the book Give Praise to God. In that section, Ligon Duncan explores this same idea. It is worth quoting at length:

Reformed worship has worked and is working in every situation and culture where there is a historic Protestant church committed to scriptural principles of worship…It is easy to provide example of how this principle is applied globally. You can find it in the following kinds of diverse settings. Alonzo Ramirez’s little congregation in Cajamarca, Peru, up in the Peruvian Andes, gathers in a building they made with their own hands. Sometimes they sing straight out of the text of the Psalms in their Spanish Bibles, sometimes they use Peruvian tunes, sometimes American and British tunes…Or go…to West Philadelphia and visit Lance Lewis at Christ Liberation Fellowship, and you will find a faithful African American pastor, deliberately committed to historic Reformed worship.

You will also see it in any of the many congregations planted by Khen Tombing in India. In the simplest of structures, often in dangerous conditions, people wracked by poverty and terrorism gather every Lord’s Days to hear the doctrines of grace proclaimed. Their worship? Read the Bible, preach the Bible, sing the Bible, and pray the Bible…It is displayed in St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, Scotland, where David Robertson now ministers. Once the pulpit of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, this venerable old building houses a young, growing, postmodern, psalm-singing congregation that features people from the widest conceivable cultural backgrounds. A dozen or so languages can be heard on their grounds, and they are reaching out to inner-city Dundee and fostering a church-planting movement across Scotland. Their worship is, of course, read the Bible, preach the Bible, sing the Bible, and pray the Bible.

You will find it in the Los Olivos congregation in the slums of Lima, where the faithful William Castro labors. Street children abound, poverty is rife and this faithful local church is reading, preaching, praying, and singing the Bible. The new Peruvian psalter, it should be said, features tunes from Peru, America, Scotland, Wales, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and medieval Jewish origins. Then there is Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where Cambridge-educated Mark Dever gathers a congregation…Go across the Atlantic to Grove Chapel, Camberwell in London, England, where Mark Johnston faithfully proclaims the word. What do you find there? Historic, simple, reverent, Reformed, Protestant worship.

Move south, deep into sub-Saharan Africa into the cool green of Malawi. What do Augustine Mfune’s congregations of thousands do as they gather on Sunday mornings? They read, hear preached, sing, and pray the Bible. Then there is St. Helen Bishopsgate, back in London (where Dick Lucas ministered), and I have not spoken of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, with its Genevan-inspired order of service, or Rowland Ward’s congregation (Know Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia) in Melbourne, Australia, or Reformed churches I know of in Japan and Israel. Do not let anyone tell you that historic Reformed worship will not transfer or that it cannot work outside of Anglo-American culture or in the context of a postmodern generation.[1]

Or move into 2020 when our worship has looked different than ever before, yet we continue to engage in this same type of worship, whether together or at home. God’s plan to redeem all things to himself and our call to worship him have not been thwarted by this pandemic, because God has given us a way to worship him that is transferable across centuries, cultures, and circumstances. No matter where we are and no matter at what time of history of day, we can continue to cry out, “glory to God in the highest.”

[1] Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship, eds. Philip Graham Ryken, Derek W.H. Thomas, and J. Ligon Duncan (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2011), 70-72.