Clarion Call to Worship

Welcome to Clarion Call to Worship’s first blog post. I am very happy that you have made your way to my website and hope that you find the private and public worship resources here helpful in your life, family, and church. I an effort to make this site even more useful, I intend to blog on a regular basis about topics theological, ecclesiastical, and liturgical. Subject material will range from the profound to the practical, but I aim to make them all support the goal of this website; which is to restore reverence and a commitment to the regulative principle of worship as the first rule in the life of the church.

It is my intention to start with a series of posts which will explain and justify the principles upon which the resources here are produced. Because the “why” of worship is even more important than the “what” or “how” of worship, I intend to first lay down a theological foundation for Christian liturgy. I begin from the axiom that the form which our worship takes does matter, and matters a great deal, to the glory of God and the health of His church. While few would dare deny this statement, the truth is, that the practices of most churches, both “traditional” and “contemporary,” are still very much dominated by preference and pragmatics.

I expect to focus initially and mostly on public worship, because this is where a great deal of help is needed. It is not my ambition to win the so-called “worship wars” for one side or another; for most belligerents in both camps of that debate are firmly swamped in one trench of this false dichotomy, or another. Rather, my goal is to help those tens of thousands of pastors and parishioners out there who, in spite of all the conflict, have given little sustained and serious thought to how their church worships week in and week out. With an admixture of sound doctrine and prudent advice, I hope to help recapture the worship of the Reformation which our congregations so desperately deserve, and God so definitely demands.

Further, for those readers who are already thoroughly familiar with the regulative principle and Reformed worship, I pray that you find little new here; for the highest virtue in theological scholarship is consistency, not novelty.