Know Your Roots
Know Your Roots: Identifying Your Community’s Worship Stream & Enhancing Their Corporate Worship
Utilizing Pinson’s Perspectives on Christian Worship and White’s A Brief History of Christian Worship, you will clearly identify the worship stream(s) most associated with corporate worship in their own context. Write a reflective essay including the following:
1. Introduction: Begin the assignment with a brief introduction that includes a description of the demographics, denomination and approach to worship of your current church or ministry context.
2. Your Roots: Using White’s book to clearly define the specific historic era(s) (New Testament, Early Christian, Middle Ages, Reformation, Modern) most closely associated with your own church’s corporate worship. Describe why you would make this categorization.
Next use Pinson’s book to define which perspective/stream (Liturgical, Traditional Evangelical, Contemporary, Blended or Emerging) your church is most closely linked with. What specific values, theological-emphasis, acts of worship, styles of music or worship forms, etc. support your categorization?
3. Conclusions and Reflections: Conclude your paper reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of your current stream/perspective. What distinguishes your stream from other streams? What makes your stream unique?
What aspects of faith are encouraged in your approach and what aspects are limited? What aspects of other streams may be helpful to your current model of worship? How does understand the background of your worship stream enhance your weekly corporate worship?
You must submit a word document that includes ALL the elements as described above. Make sure all answers are answered to each question and also White’s and Pinson’s perspectives are also included.
Provide footnotes for this assignment which will be key evidence of engagement with the course readings and learning materials in this paper.