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5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful, October 30, 2008
Douglas Wilson new book, "A Primer on Worship and Reformation", seeks to promote reformation in the American church by reforming our worship of God in the weekly covenantal renewal service .
For Wilson, the heart of true biblical reformation and global evangelization is a return to the centrality and potency of godly worship that "self-consciously renews covenant with God on a weekly basis." The life transformation that we all long for, according to Wilson, begins with God-centered worship at the center of life. While that may not seem all that insightful, Wilson does challenge many of our underlying beliefs and commitments that fostered the present superficial self-centered Christianity and worship.
Wilson's book shares a common starting point with Calvin's "The Necessity of Reforming the Church" where the reformer wrote that there were 4 vitals of the church that needed reformation: worship, gospel, ordiances and church government. What is striking to most modern readers is Calvin's view that worship must first be reformed even before the gospel. Calvin's argument simply stated is that right biblical worship will lead a person to the gospel but the right gospel does not necessarily lead to right worship. Like Calvin, Wilson puts forward the idea that true change begins, not with a process or an idea, but through faithful worship.
Wilson's book is short, only 76 pages, and can be easily read in a single sitting. It consists of 11 chapters: They'll Know We are Christians by Our Schlock, How We Got Here, High Church Puritans, The Reformation of Worship and Cultural Evangelism, Covenant Renewal, Thundering the Word, Bone of His Bones, The Psalms as Battering Ram, Feasting and the Sabbath, Worship Has a Future, In Closing.
As a primer, Wilson's book is not attempting to make a systematic defense for a God-centered covenant oriented worship service. Rather, making some observations on the state of the American church culture, Wilson describes the design and significance of a covenant-renewal service and how it is the remedy for many of the ills that plague the American church.
Wilson's suggests that true change in the believer's life and even for the non-Christian culture begins with an obedient God-centered worship. He writes, "As the worship of God in the Church is put right, it will have a dramatic affect the unbelieving world outside. Just as our current shenanigans are comforting to them in their disobedience, so will our reformation be profoundly unsettling. When the church abandons her disobedience, can the world be far behind?"
The book covers the subjects of; covenant and worship patterns, the role of preaching, hermeneutics, and Psalm singing in the transforming of lives, a viewing Sabbath as feast among other things.
Like in many of Wilson's books he seeks to provoke the reader to think about the subject from a fresh perspective. For example, on Psalm sing, Wilson writes, "We do not do this because we have to sing psalms. We do it because God lets us." How many churches sing the psalms at all? How many view it as a privilege to sing back to God the very spiritual songs that He wrote for His glory and our benefit?
In another chapter, Wilson demonstrates just how shallow and irreverent of the American church has become writing,
"And then there are the Veggie Tales. What is the issue here? That would become abundantly clear if someone seriously suggested a Veggie Tales version of Beowulf, or Lord of the Rings, or Prince Caspian. Modern evangelicals are reverent of everything except their religion. Just try to picture Aragorn as a cucumber. What does that do to the ethos of the thing? Or imagine Aslan as a beet. "We couldn't do that! It would wreck the story!" I see. Apparently, as far as modern evangelicals are concerned, the Bible doesn't have a story to wreck. If misguided evangelicals were to try to bridge current tensions by making a Veggie Tales version of the Koran, they would all now be in hiding because of the fatwa declared against them. In short, the Muslims would respond with outrage over what had been perpetrated on their holy book. But we are not outraged for two reasons - first, we are clueless, and second, we did it to ourselves."
The popularity of Veggie Tales among Evangelicals says something about how we view the eternal commitments of God in accomplishing His historical-redemptive acts culminating in the persons of Jesus Christ. Why are Muslims more reverent toward the Koran, a book of human origin and full of historical errors, than Christians are toward the Bible which is the word of God and an infallible record of His acts in history to accomplish our salvation?
Many readers have become afraid of reading Wilson because his involvement in Federal Visionism. As a Reformed Baptist, there are many points of disagreement that I have with Wilson. Some of the points of disagreement are evidenced in this book. However, the value of Wilson's book is not a 1:1 agreement with him but his ability to help us look at some of our own uncritically held presuppositions on the nature of worship, church, and global evangelization.
With deftness, Wilson calls us to rethink our understanding of worship which has become to be defined by pietistic individualism in a Gnostic culture and return to a Bible driven covenant informed worship that is central to our lives.
"A Primer on Worship and Reformation" is well worth reading and discussing, especially among a group of pastors and worship leaders. We all agree that there is nothing more important in our lives than the right worship of God. There is much in this tiny volume to push us to greater appreciation of the worship God has ordained for His glory and our transforming joy.
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