WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE WORSHIP
By Jonathan Landry Cruse
Reformation Heritage Books. 200 pages.
£14.50
ISBN 978 1 601 788 160
Do you ever wonder whether your Sunday gathering is really achieving anything? Sometimes – maybe often – it feels like the answer is ‘not a lot’.
Jonathan Landry Cruse carefully and Biblically mines the Scriptures to reveal God’s intention for – and work in – our gatherings, and in so doing this clear and warmly-written book has the potential to awaken us afresh to the profound joy of meeting God and His people for weekly worship.
If, like me, the effects of being deprived of gathering for Sunday worship are still all too fresh in your memory, I can’t think of a better time to pick up this book.
Cruse delves deep into a Reformed theology of gathered worship and succeeds in showing us how it is utterly formational for our Christian lives. He demonstrates from the Scriptures how something really is happening when we gather: God shapes us as His people, and we meet with Him in a unique way – a covenantal way – where God is ‘calling us’ afresh into relationship with Him’, and we respond with ‘faith and obedience’ (p.54).
His brief survey of the different Biblical elements of our services reveals how God is at work in and through us when we gather for corporate worship. I found this gave me fresh eyes with which to see the preaching of God’s word, times of singing, the call to worship and communion. And I was given fresh expectation that ‘God is doing something to us and for us and through us in each element of the worship service’ (p.10).
Realistic and pastoral
He is also realistic: this isn’t a call to fantastical hype or mystical over-exuberance; he calls us to see these profound, heavenly realities in the ‘extraordinarily ordinary’ weekly worship of your local church.
And Cruse does all this with a pastoral heart, manages to avoid unhelpful quarrels over words, and remains rooted in practical applications for ordinary pastors and church members. The discussion questions at the end of each chapter make it ideal to read in a small group setting or as a music or staff team. (Or you could read it yourself in that week between Christmas and New Year; it’s just the right size!)
Many of us are just delighted and relieved to be back in church after a rubbish year-or-so, but we’re simultaneously just trying to find our feet again after an exhausting stretch that has raised some big questions about what we’re even doing when we gather. If you feel that you’ve lost something of the joy of gathering with God’s people to worship Him – perhaps you’re even asking: ‘What are we even doing here?’ – then you’ll find in this short book fuel for the fire of your heart and, I hope and pray, a renewed excitement to meet with God and His people each week.
