Worship and the World to Come: Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship (Dynamics of Christian Worship | DCW)
Overview
Christians sing because we are people of hope.
Yet our hope is unlike other kinds of hope. We are not optimists; nor are we escapists. Christian hope is uniquely shaped by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and by the promise of our own future resurrection.
How is that hope both expressed and experienced in contemporary worship? In this volume in the Dynamics of Christian Worship series, pastor, theologian, and songwriter Glenn Packiam explores what Christians sing about when they sing about hope and what kind of hope they experience when they worship together. Through his analysis and reflection, we find that Christian worship is crucial to both the proclamation and the formation of Christian hope.
- Explores how Christians experience hope when they worship together
- Examines how hope is shaped by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and by the promise of our own future resurrection
- Proposes that Christian worship is crucial to both the proclamation and the formation of Christian hope
Part 1: Setting the Stage
- What Is Practical Theology?
- Contemporary Paradigms for Congregational Worship
Part 2: Hope and Eschatology
- What Is Hope? Exploring Various Models of Hope
- What Is Christian Hope? Early Visions of Eschatology
- What Is Christian Hope? Eschatology in Contemporary Theology
Part 3: Evangelicals, Worship, and Hope
- Hope Espoused: Popular Evangelical Eschatology
- Hope Encoded: Examining Contemporary Worship Songs
- Hope Experienced: Exploring Contemporary Worship Services
Part 4: The Spirit and the Church
- The Spirit of Hope
- Carriers of Hope
- Conclusion
Worship and the World to Come is a timely and highly significant volume. Glenn Packiam shows us how there is a pressing need for careful, theologically sensitive studies that review the fast-growing contemporary worship scene.
—Pete Ward, professor at St John's College/Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, United Kingdom
In this book Glenn Packiam offers a deep and insightful perspective on Christian hope as it is lived out within real Christian communities. While there has been much useful conceptual work done on the theology of hope from the perspective of systematic theology, relatively little is known about what it means when it is lived out within worshiping communities. For Packiam, worship and hope are deeply tied together. Worship is the place where we rehearse our hope, a place where hope becomes embedded within us. It matters how we worship, and it matters that we look carefully at the ways in which we worship if we are to hope faithfully. By gathering rich and deep empirical data and using it as a locus for theological reflection, Packiam not only helps us to understand hope more fully, he also moves our understanding on in important ways. This book is an important contribution to the emerging field of theological ethnography and a worthy contribution to the church and academy.
—John Swinton, professor of practical theology and pastoral care, King’s College, University of Aberdeen
If it is fundamentally impossible to be a Christian without hope, then all Christians at worship are in the business of singing themselves into a new story that beckons from the future—the good future of God in Christ that the Spirit makes palpable here and now in our public worship. That’s the basic point that Glenn Packiam makes in this theologically learned, liturgically intelligent, and pastorally sensitive book—a book that deserves careful reading by scholars and pastors, along with every worship leader charged with the holy task of leading the people of God in song. Our calling as church leaders, as Packiam rightly sees it, is not only to announce our new future in Christ; our task is to enact and embody that new future in our songs of praise and proclamation. How and what we sing, then, become a singularly formative means by which the Spirit transforms our lives to be a sign and foretaste of God’s new creation. That’s the charge! That’s the hope!
—W. David O. Taylor, associate professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary
- Title: Worship and the World to Come: Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship (Dynamics of Christian Worship | DCW)
- Author: Glenn Packiam
- Series: Dynamics of Christian Worship
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 205
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Hope › Christianity
- ISBNs: 9780830849321, 9780830849314, 0830849327, 0830849319
- Resource ID: LLS:WRSHPWRLDCM
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-02-28T20:52:41Z