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For All God's Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church

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Nicholas Thomas "Tom" Wright is an Anglican bishop and a leading conservative British New Testament scholar. He has written 43 books including one with the liberal scholar, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar, entitled The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.
The word worship is a contraction of "worth-ship." It means giving God all he's worth. This book is a call to renewal of worship and witness--not in the sense of adopting this or that fad or introducing this or that new music, but a renewal that begins with a better knowledge of God. The book's first half entitled, "The God Who is Worthy of Praise," dwells on the greatness and love of God as these shine forth in the death and resurrection of Christ. The second half, "Reflecting God's Image in the World," shows how worship from the heart and mind leads to mission. "Are we ready," the author asks, "to speak up for the truth of the gospel over the dinner-table, and in the coffee-bar, and in the council-chamber?" In a January 2002 interview Wright compared prayer and worship to drinking a glass of fine wine:
If you have a wonderful bottle of wine, you could simply drink it out of a tea mug. But that isn't how you want to drink wine. Doesn't show it off to a good advantage, doesn't set off the flavor? It's best if you have the right sort of glass. It's the same way with . . . worship of the Almighty God -- you can worship him anywhere. You can worship him in a bathroom, you can worship him in the back room of a pub. Really, God is everywhere and wants you to worship him. But if we really want to do it, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a building that was designed for it, and preferably one that has been prayed in quite a bit already, so it has the resonance and the memory.
What we believe about God makes a great difference in the way we are in the world. If God is a distant being, one who made the world and left it, or intervenes rarely, then we have a banished god, a vacuum in our life that comes to be filled with the gods of war, money, sex, power or whatever else we come to worship with our time and energy.
I was talking to somebody not long ago who said, "You know, I used to believe in God; but then, as I grew up, I found it harder and harder to think of this old man up there in the sky, so far removed from all the pain and suffering down here in the world." And I said to him, "I don't believe in that god either! The God I believe in is the god I see in the middle of the pain and the suffering down here in the world. Without Jesus, the crucified Jesus, sharing and bearing the pain and sin and suffering of the world, I don't actually know who on earth or in heaven God might be at all." You see, if you envisage a god up there in the sky, detached from the reality of the world, any worship you offer will simply be a distant acknowledgment of majesty, like the ploughboy doffing his cap as the great nobleman rides by ignoring him. And if you go the other route, as my friend was inclined to, and say that therefore the word "god" can only refer to the impulse of goodness inside ourselves, then you'll find it pretty hard to sustain any real sense of worship at all. All you're left with is the ploughboy imagining himself to be a nobleman. But if Jesus is to be the lens through which you glimpse the beauty of God, you will discover what it means to worship, because you will discover what it means to be loved.
Wright says we are all called in one of three levels or varieties. First, we are all called to hold onto God with one hand and embrace those around us in prayer, generosity, teaching and caring. There is no one that we meet who does not need healing of some kind and the pain we all suffer is remarkably alike. Who in their lifetime has not stood close to Jesus feeling beaten, mocked, crucified and in the wilderness? This kind of healing does not take miracles or a life of spiritual heroics, for the best healers are weak and wounded -- just look at Paul, who was not all that healthy. This healing can be expressed in the ordinary ways we care for another, in cooking, humor, visiting and even playing.
The second level is to those who are called to Church Ministry. The church is desperate for ordained clergy, but it also needs people to step into leadership positions, as teachers, worship assistants, youth directors, etc.
The third level of calling is in prayers for those caught in crises and trapped in the middle of war, prison, unemployment, poverty, sickness. We need healing prayers to bring about the social and political changes that will bring the peace of the Lord to all. These three varieties can be seen as means to build a Christian community and bring God and the teaching of Jesus into all parts of the world. This is all about sharing and bearing the pain, the thorn in our sides.
G. K. Chesterton one of the most prolific and gifted writers of the 20th century said that the purpose of an open mind is like the purpose of an open mouth: that it might shut on something solid. Tom Wright (www.ntwrightpage.com) is as solid a writer on Paul and the New Testament as you can digest and I hope you will make this or one of his many other works part of your reading for pleasure and knowledge.

John Laughlin. Ph.D. author of Reading Thomas Mertohn

Wright is a skilled academic and researcher. He also is a man very committed to faith in action based on his deep understanding of the New Testament. For All God's Worth is Wright's call to all Christians to focus on worship and mission and to end divisive behavior. Wright recalls the healing and redemptive actions throughout the ministry of Jesus to illustrate how Christians should continue His work. He sees the redemptive consequence of Jesus as the Christians call to bring about the Kingdom Of God on Earth as it is in Heaven. Believers do this when they begin reflecting the one true God and not other gods of today.

This book is an easy read and can be broken into parts (each chapter is about 25 pages). It will inspire clergy, academic, and layperson alike.

A challenging and invigorating read, this book renews the christian's vision of God.

It made me think again about what Worship truly entails. I shall have to come back to this book and re-read it and meditate on what it says.

It does not matter how much you have read by N. T. Wright, I think you will find this book fresh. This is a collection of sermons on the worship of the Church which is covered in the first section of the book and some very insightful things are said about the Lord's supper and worship in particular. The calling of the Church is really what this book is about however. There is little about worship style, although what is there on that topic is very good. Wright really is able to get to the heart of what Jesus and the Church should really be all about. His stuff on the Middle East and Jewish-Christian relations need to be heeded. As always, with Wright you will get little tid bits that will change the way you view certain texts. I strongly recommend this book especially to preachers and those interested in the Churches vocation.

This book will find itself in my top recommendations (at least for a while). N.T. Wright's works are putting him in my favorite authors list. In this piece Wright tackles the subject of the Church and its mission.

Because the Church is one of my passions, I read a lot about it. In this book, I was given a taste and glimpse so inspiring that I fell in love with what the Church could be all over again.

If you are a follower of Jesus - this book will help crystalize what He invites us (His followers) to do and be in the world.

Get it, buy it, read it, love it, live it.

A refreshing explanation of what church is meant to be. A subject urgently needed nowadays that peoples is looking for answers that church as it is now, just can't offer.

A simple and fast read, higly recomended.

This book was an excellent read, my first of Tom Wright. From his context setting chapter on Levi, to his discourse on the church in Corinth, I was always challenged to reflect on my own views of the church. Taking from his leadership role at Lichfield Cathedral, Wright is able to describe the role of the church-goer and build a picture around "worship" and "mission". Deftly weaving in his New Testament scholarship, Wright leaves the reader with a fuller understanding of his role as a member of the Christian church.