God commands His people to worship and our response to that call is much more about obedience than our feelings. One could argue that when we do not feel like going to church or participating in worship that that is indicative of our very need to do so—to obey the command to worship, to heed …
Throughout the history of the church it has traditionally celebrated certain feasts in order to commemorate and remember portions of the biblical narrative. Through the years the number of feasts grew to burdensome levels. At the time of the Reformation there were close to fifteen major feast days, plus nearly every day marked a “saint’s …
The Advent of Harmony and Polyphony In this lesson, I cover the advent of harmonypolyphony as well as the different kinds of music—from monophony to homophony to polyphony. Aspects of the Ars Antiqua, Ars Nova and notation are covered. In addition, I reference the idea of thematically linked compositions of liturgy and use the Franklin …
Codification of Church Music In this Sunday School Lesson on Church music from Cornerstone Presbyterian, we go through a quick overview of liturgical and musical reforms by Ambrose and Gregory, Augustine and Boethius. This includes the parts of the mass and how they were linked to Psalms and Scripture readings as well as the idea …
A version of the following article was published on Christward Collective. “God’s intention was to bless his people through the constant and conscientious observation of the [Sabbath], week after week and year after year. Believers are sanctified through a lifetime of Sabbath observance. In other words, the Sabbath is designed to work slowly, quietly, seemingly …
From Synagogue to Early Church Recently, I had the opportunity of teaching a short Sunday School series here at Cornerstone Presbyterian. The topic was a short history of music in the Church. The goal was to give an overview of how music has historically been used in the Church but more importantly to lay a …
The name, Practicing Worship, conveys at least two ideas: repeating and improving. Repeating A common command in the Scriptures is to ‘remember,’ implying, of course, that we forget. I have joked that a perk of being a naturally forgetful person is that old jokes are always new. However, it’s not a trait that the Lord …