Classical Worship for Today: It’s Time to Tell the Story -- By: Wilbur Ellsworth

Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 12:4 (Fall 2003)
Article: Classical Worship for Today: It’s Time to Tell the Story
Author: Wilbur Ellsworth


Classical Worship for Today: It’s Time to Tell the Story

Wilbur Ellsworth

Early twentieth-century evangelical Christians often sang, “I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love.” This beloved old gospel hymn at least suggests that the love of the earthly man Jesus and the unseen glory of his mission, person, and experiences form the controlling passion of Christian worship, life, and witness. However, that seems far less so than it used to be. The “story” often is reduced to the most basic facts of Christ’s death. While secular culture has given, some prominence to his birth, it seems that even his resurrection hardly plays the life-shaping role in the Church that it should. Not long ago a widely-connected evangelical leader remarked with a considerable degree of surprise that throughout his Christian life he had never heard a sermon on the transfiguration of Christ. For a number of reasons, evangelical Christianity has greatly diminished its love to tell the “story.”

Telling the story of the Lord Jesus Christ has a wonderful and historical depth that we need to recover. Our church calendars tend to fill up quickly either with highly-focused attempts to do ministry and outreach or with the unintentional drift of whatever happens to be going on. And with full awareness that I raise a point of great controversy, I suggest that simply preaching expository sermons through one book

of the Bible after another actually keeps the Church from telling the story of Jesus Christ in its worship life.

While still in the first century of its new life, the Church continued the Jewish observance of Passover with its now glorious fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The death and resurrection of Jesus became anchored securely in the worship life of the Church. From that seed of eternity marking earthly time, the story of Jesus began to be rehearsed in the life of the Church. As the Church deepened its reflection on the life of Christ it took on the Psalmist’s delight in telling all God’s wonderful works in his earthly experience. As the Church began to establish days of specific remembrance for specific moments in Christ’s life, a calendar for worship began to develop that today we call the Church Year. The history of the development of the Church Year is a fascinating story in itself. It is told by people such as Thomas Talley in The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Pueblo Publishing Company). There have been times of controversy in the Church Year’s dates and development. There has always been a degree of freedom for some rearrangement according to local need. But the order and guidance that the Church Year offers to the local congregat...

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