Worship Conference

The LCMS held a big worship conference in St. Louis this week. For those interested, Dan at Necessary Roughness has posted some of his notes from the first lectures. For instance:

Dr. Jeff Gibbs, professor of Exegetical Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, held the first presentation in the gym, so I couldn’t post snippets on Twitter. His presentation, “Worship that is Scriptural and Confessional,” was golden. If the audio is made publicly available, it will be worth your time to download and listen to it. Because I couldn’t Twitter his points, here are some notes:

  • Theology is like the first shingle of a house: if it is allowed to be off even a little bit at the beginning, the row of shingles will be completely messed up down the road.
  • Christianity is not an escapist religion. Just dying and going to heaven is not the complete story. We also have the resurrection of the body. Death is a separation of body and soul as judgment of the sin still in it. Jesus begins the new creation in his own body. Worship is a piece of God’s story for all creation.
  • Corporate worship is inevitably shaped by tradition because our God is the God of history. Corporate worship began in the gap of Scripture between Malachi and Matthew. God did not demand weekly worship, but God used and uses that tradition to build the church.

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