Aiming to Please: A Guide to Reformed Worship

By Wes Bredenhof

In Aiming to Please, Wes Bredenhof explains in his unique, readable style, how Reformed worship aims to help us please God more and more. All aspects of the service come under scrutiny: Is singing hymns biblical? Should the congregation say the votum? Why collection bags? Lord's Supper in the pews? And what about the role of organists, drums, th

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Study
• Release date: Apr 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780886661236

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Aiming to Please. The title of this book deliberately invites some questions. Who is doing the aiming? Who is to be pleased? The subtitle, A Guide to Reformed Worship hints at the answers to those questions. We are going to be looking at the worship of our Reformed churches. This is our corporate worship that ought to be aimed at pleasing the Triune God.

The title emerges from several Scripture passages. 2 Corinthians 5:9 says, So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. In general, the life of a Christian is supposed to be geared towards pleasing God – how much more so when Christians gather together for worship! In Colossians 1:10, Paul also writes about how he prays that the Colossians will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him… Again, that passage is about our walk of life in general, but worship is surely included in that. When we worship, we must aim to be fully pleasing to the One we worship. The same thought is also found in 1 Thessalonians 1:4, Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. This book is about helping us to do exactly that in the time allotted every week for corporate worship.

This is a subject I have been meaning to write on for a long time. As a Reformed minister, I am responsible for regularly giving attention to the shape and progress of our worship services. I have always sought to be not only thoughtful about liturgical matters, but also respectful of history, and above all, faithful to the Scriptures. When the church gathers for worship, we do so as the holy people of God gathering in his presence. We are not a club of people with similar interests or ethnic background, but the bride of Christ. Recognizing that means our worship is elevated to something of the highest level of importance. Corporate worship demands both careful thought beforehand and holy, whole-hearted participation in the moment. It is surprising to me that more books have not been written on such an important subject from within our circles.

In years past, we have seen several helpful volumes on Reformed worship. Reaching back a long ways, there was Abraham Kuyper’s Onze Eeredienst (1911). Most of this book was translated into English and published in 2009 as Our Worship. Despite its age, it remains a good overview of many aspects of Reformed worship. Kuyper is especially useful when you want to try and understand the history of some of our practices.

In 1980, we saw the appearance of G. VanDooren’s The Beauty of Reformed Liturgy. Though a slim volume, this book highlighted one of the most important aspects of Reformed worship, namely its covenantal character. On that point, this little book has stood the test of time.

Mention must also be made of Where Everything Points to Him by K. Deddens. Originally published in Dutch in 1981, it was translated by Theodore Plantinga and appeared in 1993. Deddens also emphasizes the covenant character of Reformed worship, but he gives more attention to historical matters.

Since the last substantial book on worship in our circles was published well over 20 years ago, not much of a case needs to be made for a new book from the next generation. No one would say we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to this subject. In this volume, I will gladly make use of many of the insights of previous authors like Kuyper, VanDooren, and Deddens. Their names, along with others, will be mentioned often. I do not come at this subject as if nothing else has ever been written on it before.

That said, this book is different in three notable ways.

The first is that it is a new book which deals with newer challenges to Reformed worship. Over 20 years ago, Reformed worship was already under pressure from outside sources. Most obvious is what is commonly termed evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is a slippery term. Historian George Marsden once famously described an evangelical as anyone who likes Billy Graham. However, I am using evangelicalism here in the sense of Protestant churches afflicted with historical amnesia – they have no or little bearings in any history, and certainly not in the Reformation. They have no strength in confessional standards. Their worship typically takes place on a stage supported by an amplified band. None of the authors mentioned above really engaged with evangelical pressures on Reformed worship – pressures which have only increased with the passage of time. Somewhat connected with that is the rise of New Calvinism. Here we find churches that teach the doctrines of grace (TULIP), but are often otherwise still evangelical in the sense mentioned above. This is a phenomenon appearing only in the last decade or so – and we need to speak about it. This book will take into account these more recent developments.

This book is also different with regard to its approach. Unlike the previously mentioned authors, I maintain that the Regulative Principle of Worship is an important starting place for Reformed worship. The Regulative Principle is clearly stated in the Heidelberg Catechism’s Lord’s Day 35 on the Second Commandment: we are not to worship God in any other manner than he has commanded in his Word. This book takes that principle seriously. Yes, I also believe in the importance of the covenant of grace for Reformed worship. In fact, I am going to argue that there is a vital connection between the covenant and the Regulative Principle. I will also be addressing the argument some have made that the Regulative Principle is a Presbyterian or Puritan innovation and not Reformed. As we will see in chapter 2, this key principle is a part of our Reformed heritage that has been forgotten and now needs to be recovered. This book is a project in recovering the Regulative Principle of Worship in our Reformed churches. If, by God’s grace, I am successful, we will have a more robustly confessional understanding of public worship.

Finally, this book supplies a number of resources for pastors in the appendices. Early in my ministry, I noticed that Robert Rayburn did something similar in his book O Come, Let Us Worship. I have been adapting and expanding that work ever since. The results are in print at the back of this book and also freely available as editable MS Word files at my website, www.bredenhof.ca -- you can find them under the heading Liturgical Resources.

I have already used the word worship several times and perhaps you are wondering about my definition. Other authors spend considerable time on this question, but I will not. You may have heard the saying, Worship is a verb. This is meant to convey the idea that worship is something we do. The church gathers to worship God. So when we gather, we must prepare to be actively engaged – true enough. However, there is a shortcoming in this. God is at the centre of Reformed worship, not us. What God is doing is at the centre of Reformed worship. To address that issue, some Reformed writers have proposed that we call our Sunday meetings, the Service of the Word. But this is likewise deficient, since it does not fully capture either what God does or what we do. We seem to be left in a definitional quandary. There is, however, an easy way out. There is a rhetorical device known as synecdoche. Synecdoche is a way of speaking where part of something stands for the whole. As I am using it in this book, worship or worship service is a synecdoche. I am taking the praise, prayers, and offerings we give in our public church meetings as a convenient way of speaking about the whole of what goes on. While Service of the Word could be equally employed as a synecdoche, the reality is that worship or worship service are the commonly used terms in our context. They are also the terms adopted by convention in our Church Order and confessions.¹ So, by worship or worship service I am referring to what takes place (typically on the Lord’s Day) when God meets with his people to bless them and to be praised by them.

If you want a subject where opinions are strong, but often poorly substantiated, you can hardly find a better example than public worship. That can at least be partly attributed to the emotional power of music, an important element in worship. In the chapters following, you will find me stating positions strongly; you might be inclined to call them strong opinions. Perhaps some of these viewpoints will be new to you. Consider everything you read in the light of the Bible. While I will appeal to our Reformed confessions and our church history, our only authority is Scripture. Scripture is the standard by which everything must be judged, including the content of this volume. Dear reader, have the same mind as the Bereans in Acts 17:11 and search the Scriptures to see if these things are really so.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book originated in a ten-part series of articles written for Clarion in 2007. Afterwards, I continued doing further reading and research, intending to expand that series into this book. As the pastor of the Providence Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, Ontario I was looking forward to a sabbatical after seven years of service there. The sabbatical was going to give me the dedicated time I needed to write. However, that was all upended in 2014 when, two years short of my anticipated sabbatical, I received and accepted the call to the Free Reformed Church of Launceston, Tasmania. The consistory in Launceston was aware I had sacrificed my sabbatical to accept their call. They promised to make it good – and they did in spades. They granted me a lengthy sabbatical in which I could complete this book (among other things). I am thankful to the consistory for their thoughtfulness and to the congregation for their patience.

When those articles in Clarion came into print in 2007, there were a fair number of people who wrote e-mails giving feedback. I am not going to name them, but do want to recognize the value of this correspondence in sharpening my thinking and writing. In addition, there were a host of friends who answered my request on Facebook for feedback on issues that would need to be addressed in this book. I think most, if not all, of you will recognize your questions coming back at some point or other.

A few individuals deserve special mention. Above all, I heartily thank Richard Aasman for his willingness to proof-read the complete manuscript and provide feedback. Another colleague, Dean Anderson, gave some helpful input for chapters 4 and 16. Jim Witteveen, currently serving as a missionary in Brazil, was willing to read chapter 18 on mission and responded with some helpful insights. Ian Boersma has a great interest in architecture (including that of churches) and I benefitted from his knowledge when it came to that section in chapter 15. Professional musician Frank Ezinga shared some of his expertise when it came to musical accompaniment and I thank him as well.

Finally, let me thank the publisher. I have now worked on several publications with The Study and I am always grateful for your support and interest in my projects. It is always a pleasure to work with you. May this joint effort at pleasing our God in worship achieve its aim!

Wes Bredenhof

Launceston, Tasmania

May 2019

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1 See article 52 of the CanRC CO which speaks of worship services. Article 62 of the FRCA CO speaks of church services, but, in common with the CanRC CO, still has the heading of Worship over the section. With the confessions, see Heidelberg Catechism QA 96, as well as Belgic Confession articles 7 and 32.

Part 1 -- Principles

CHAPTER1

SETTING THE STAGE:

THE COVENANT OF GRACE

It may seem unusual, but I am going to begin this book on Reformed worship with a pair of Lutherans. True, technically they might not be regarded as Lutherans, but for practical purposes many would consider them as such. One of the pair was a remarkable woman named Katharina. A run-away nun, spirited away in a herring barrel, she found herself getting married to an ex-monk in 1525. She became Mrs. Martin Luther. He is the other figure in this pair. Individually, they were remarkable Christians, but together they were even more so. To understand how they together blessed so many lives, you would need to not only look at them individually, but also study the dynamics of their marriage. You would need to understand the Christian institution of marriage that bound them together. Together they sang praise to God, but it was the Christian institution of holy matrimony that gave them the lyrics and the music.

This parallels the relationship between public worship and the covenant of grace. Just as Christian marriage enabled the Luthers to be a blessing to so many people, so the covenant of grace sets the stage for God’s people to meet him in the worship service. Just as you would need to understand biblical marriage to understand the power of the Luthers’ relationship, so you need to understand biblical covenant theology to understand worship.

The importance of sound covenant theology cannot be over-estimated. As Reformed believers, we believe God engages his people by way of covenant. Any and all interactions between God and his church take place within a covenantal context. Any time God has anything to do with us there is somehow, some way, a covenant connection. Since public worship is an encounter between God and his people, it necessarily follows that covenant theology is going to have a bearing on how we think about and practice worship. In this chapter, I am going to introduce the doctrine of the covenant of grace and explain, in broad terms, the relevance this doctrine has for our worship.

I do want to keep this as simple as possible. When it comes to covenant theology, it is remarkably easy for a theologian to make things complicated quickly. Instead, I want to do the hard thing and present it in such a way that you can easily grasp it. As a result, there are some things I will pass by. I will leave aside such things as the covenant of works, various covenant administrations in history, the relationship between covenant and election, and so on. My focus here is primarily on the covenant of grace as Christians experience it today – and then the application of that to what we do when we meet our God as his people.

The Essence of the Covenant of Grace

I have already used the word covenant several times and before we go any further, we need to be clear about its definition. What is the covenant of grace? If we were to boil it down to its essence, what are we looking at?

This chapter began with a marriage and that was intentional, for the Bible leads us to think along those lines when it comes to the covenant of grace. At a wedding ceremony, there is an exchange of vows. Bride and groom make promises and commitments to each other. All of that is part of the legal foundation of the marriage. The other part involves signing documents from the relevant government authorities. The vows and the documents are important, but you would be wrong to say the marriage consists of those things. They do not constitute the essence of the marriage. The heart and soul of a marriage is a relationship. While marriages are legally established by vows and documents, the essence is the living connection between the two people involved. The same is true of the covenant. In its heart and soul, the covenant of grace is a relationship between God and his people.

You can see this analogy between marriage and the covenant in a number of places in Scripture, but perhaps nowhere so clearly as in Hosea. Hosea prophesied in a sad time. God’s people were unfaithful to him in unprecedented ways. To illustrate this broken relationship in a shocking way, Hosea was commanded to marry an unfaithful woman. God directly compared his relationship with Israel to such a marriage as Hosea experienced. The amazing thing is that, in spite of his people’s lack of love and faithfulness, God continued to go after his bride. He graciously promised that a day would come when he would again say, You are my people and they would say, You are my God (Hosea 2:23).

We therefore say that the relationship between God and his people takes the form of a covenant.² The covenant of grace is all about the manner in which God is going to interact with and engage his people. This covenant relationship was established already in the Old Testament, it went through different administrations, and it then carries on into the New Testament era, even to today. Thus, in Galatians 3, the apostle Paul draws a direct line between Abraham and believers today. Those who have faith are the sons of Abraham, he writes in Gal. 3:7. Moreover, in Gal. 3:29, he says that those who belong to Christ through faith are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. The promise in that verse is the covenant promise made to Abraham: I will be God to you and to your offspring after you (Gen. 17:7).

The Origins of the Covenant of Grace

Also important to consider is where this covenant of grace comes from. An unbelieving biblical scholar would argue that covenant thinking in the Bible is merely a product of its human context. After all, the Ancient Near East used covenants in political life. Two kings might enter into a covenant with one another. The more powerful king would impose his will on the less powerful. There would be mutual promises and expectations. This type of covenant is sometimes called a vassal or suzerainty treaty. There certainly are remarkable parallels between Hittite suzerainty treaties and especially the passages establishing the Mosaic administration of the covenant in Deuteronomy.³ However, those parallels should not lead believing Bible readers to the conclusion that the covenant of grace is, at its roots, a human invention.

After the fall into sin, it was God who pursued Adam and Eve to restore his relationship with them. God took the initiative to create man, but God also took the initiative to redeem man and restore his relationship with him. We therefore insist that the origins of the covenant of grace are from above, from the sovereign God. This has been evident in every administration of the covenant of grace – with Adam, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and right down the line to us. No matter how we have come into the covenant relationship with God, no credit for it ever goes to us. God has taken the initiative to pursue us and bring us into this people who have a unique bond with him.

The origins vividly reveal why we call it the covenant of grace. Adam did not deserve to have God pursue him in the garden. Adam had slapped God in the face with his distrust and disobedience. Therefore, God was under no obligation to do anything other than destroy this rebellious creature. Was Abraham any better? Before God approached him, he was worshipping idols in Ur of the Chaldeans (Josh. 24:2). There was no outside compulsion for God to set his love upon Abraham and call him out of his sin. Abraham was undeserving. Similarly, none of us deserve a covenant relationship with God. We do not have a right to it and he does not owe it to us. Once we realize this we can understand why it is called the covenant of grace. It comes from God. We have not deserved it. In fact, we have done everything to forfeit it. Yet he sets his love on us and says, I am your God and you are my people. We have an everlasting bond. That is grace and that should always astound us to the core of our being.

The Parties in the Covenant of Grace

Since it has that relational nature, it only follows that the covenant features parties in relationship. The identity of these parties should be obvious from what I have already written above. On the one side there is God. He begins and establishes the covenant of grace. Then there is us, the people of God.

But more must be said. In both the Old and New covenant administrations, the children of believers are included on the human side. This is evident in Genesis 17 and Acts 2:39. As another example, we see that the child of even one believing parent is regarded as covenantally holy in 1 Corinthians 7:14.⁴ The covenant of grace includes believers and their children. As we will see at the end of this chapter, that has implications for worship as well.

There is also someone else involved in the covenant of grace, a Mediator. By nature, we are at war with God. In ourselves, apart from the Holy Spirit, we hate our Maker and we wage war against him. That makes it impossible for a holy God to have fellowship with us. We need a Mediator, someone who will bring the parties together in peace.

That is what Jesus Christ does for us. Hebrews 8 reminds us that he is the Mediator of the covenant administration we experience and live under today. Christ came with the sacrifice that could turn away God’s wrath from us. He makes propitiation on our behalf – that means God’s wrath is turned away and his favour is restored. With Christ’s redemptive work, we are reconciled to God. That word reconciled speaks of a friendly relationship – a covenant relationship. Without Christ the Mediator, there would be no covenant of grace. There would be no relationship of peace with our Creator. Christ is in the centre of this relationship and, as we will see momentarily, this too factors into how we think about and implement Reformed worship.

Covenant and Worship – Four Starting Points

From the summary of covenant theology above, we can already observe four important points that must guide our thinking about Reformed worship. Most of these will be worked out further in subsequent chapters.

First, we must observe that God is sovereign in the covenant relationship. In his grace, he initiates the covenant relationship and maintains it. It is vitally important to realize that the covenant relationship is not between equals.