The Meaning of Holy Communion in The United Methodist Church

E. Byron Anderson

Discipleship Resources

The 23 articles in Worship Matters, Volume I provide pastors and other worship leaders with a practical guide that looks at worship in the context of The United Methodist Church over the changing landscape of North-American culture. Volume I explores worship perspectives and practices in light of the denomination's official worship resources: The United Methodist Hymnal, The United Methodist Book of Worship, and Mil voces para celebrar: himnario metodista.

Worship Matters Vol. 1: A United Methodist Guide to Ways to Worship

Religion & Spirituality

Worship & Devotion

Common worship? Yes, because a broken church cannot repair a broken world. Common worship is evidence of our engagement with Christ's prayer "that we may be one."
Dare we think about "common worship" in a social context that more readily identifies polarization rather than commonality--traditional or contemporary, liturgical or non-liturgical, high church or low church, evangelical or sacramental, protestant or catholic, unity or diversity?
This book will help the church learn, through reflection on its liturgical practices, how to be a both/and community in a time when current discussion focuses on either/or: traditional or contemporary, liturgical or non-liturgical, evangelical or sacramental; and in which the diversity of the church receives more attention than its unity.
How and to what end might we speak of "common worship," of shared liturgical patterns and practices that express something of the unity of the church?
Common worship: idealistic? Certainly, but only if we believe that we are responsible for creating that unity rather than for receiving it as gift already given. But, to get to this requires that we learn to think and act differently as the church. We need to learn how to think and speak conjunctively rather than oppositionally, to speak and think of traditional and contemporary, evangelical and sacramental, protestant and catholic. In doing so, we will learn to live out of what Paul Ricouer calls a "second naiveté" or what James Fowler calls a conjunctive or paradoxical faith.

Common Worship: Tradition, Formation, Mission

United Methodist General Board of Higher Education

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Books by E. Byron Anderson