Worship Reformation

Friends and family! Of the feedback I have received, one of the most repeated admonitions is to get a Substack set up for my articles on worship. So here we are.

I am beginning to seriously consider making it a goal to publish a book on the subject of Christian worship in the church—specifically singing—and the first question to answer right now is why I would spend my time on such a thing and why I think I would have worthwhile reading material.

What I would like to say has been said before by various people. But the average book or talk or article I have seen written on the subject is designed to equip a very specific audience—typically those people who are already convinced that the current way the average congregation performs corporate worship in America is not the correct way. Furthermore, I have also seen that these publications focus on one of two angles. One is a very high theological perspective which sounds nice and punches all the right faces, but there is little connection made to how and what songs we pick to sing on Sunday mornings. Typically after a deafening blast and the dust settles around the ruins of the contemporary Christian music style, we are only given the general impression that, of course, our style is best. But no connection is made from the high theology down to practical application. The other angle is to complain about the many ways in which contemporary worship has gone awry, but once again, no real solid argument for a positive application of good theology is made. It will be my attempt to work with the high theology that other people with more smarts have already figured out and bring it to the level of practical application. Sure, regulative principle of worship and all that—but why as a result remove “Be a Lamp” from the church’s rotation and replace it with a Psalm to some weird Genevan tune?

Although I have moved my old email chain to Substack, this platform hasn’t made me more intelligent by any stretch of the imagination. There are going to be theological errors and rather poor ways of saying things. I am relying on you to hold me accountable and bring my attention to these fallacies.

There are multiple ways to support this work. First off, make sure you’re subscribed to receive future posts. I will not be sending emails from my personal account anymore, so if you’re not signed up you will be left outside in the rain, listening to all the excitement going on inside. Send in feedback—especially if you disagree and especially if you have more sources of information for me. Share the page with your friends or forward them these emails. And lastly, you may donate to this project if you feel so led by upgrading to a paid subscription. As of right now, I do not plan on creating exclusive posts because I need all the intel I can get from you all. In order to write a full book on this subject, much more research will need to be done and a lot of time will need to be expended. So if you’d like to see this project flourish, I would welcome your support!