Ruth Lester - Lovin on Jesus

This history of contemporary Christian worship is without rival. It highlights the obvious but also pulls out the obscure elements that shaped todays worship movement. Masterfully researched, this thorough work ensures the powerful forces that shaped the ever-evolving worship movement will be honored and valued.

Bob Sorge, author, bobsorge.com

Contemporary worship means many things to many people. Some wholeheartedly embrace it; others reject it outright, and over the years, these competing emotional responses have made it nearly impossible to discuss the topic objectively. That is, until now. With a historians eye for detail and a musicians ear for tone, Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth have written a book that fills one of the most significant gaps in worship scholarship today. Meticulously researched, accessibly written, generous in its praise, and balanced in its critiquesthis is the book for which many of us have long been waiting.

Melanie C. Ross, Assistant Professor of Liturgical Studies, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT

In their history of contemporary worship, Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth have hit the sweet spot between the academic study of liturgy and a practical guide to understanding and even implementing this form of worship. Particularly useful for teaching is the way Lim and Ruth organize their account by practices of time, space, music, prayer, technology, and scripture. The penultimate chapter on The Sacramentality of Contemporary Worship offers a compelling explanation of why many congregations have found this mode of worship so compelling, while others see it as superficial. This will immediately become a required textbook for the courses I teach on Christian worship.

Ed Phillips, Associate Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology and Coordinator of the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology, Candler School of Theology, Atlanta, GA

Whether you love, loathe, or ignore contemporary worship, readers will find Lim and Ruths one-of-a-kind history convincing and rigorous; the authors show how a modern genre of Christian worship claimed its place with structural, musical, sacramental, poetic, ecumenical, multiracial, transnational, and technological ingenuity and why it matters now to consider what it all means and where it is heading.

Gerald Liu, Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ

Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth have skillfully researched the roots of contemporary corporate worship: past and present. Lovin on Jesus is an important book for every pastor, worship leader, and worshipper. A big reason for worship methodology getting out of control and becoming the focus of ones worship is ignorance. This wonderfully prepared study will help you keep your worship experience biblically centered, dynamic, and growing.

Rick Muchow, Founding Worship Pastor, Saddleback Church; worship leader and coach

Early Methodist Life and Spirituality

A Little Heaven Below

SWEE HONG LIM & LESTER RUTH

A CONCISE HISTORY OF
CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP

LOVIN ON JESUS:

A CONCISE HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP

Copyright 2017 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Permissions, Abingdon Press, 2222 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., PO Box 280988, Nashville, TN 37228-0988, or e-mailed to .

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.

ISBN: 978-1-4267-9513-8

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from the Common English Bible. Copyright 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com .

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com . The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crowns patentee, Cambridge University Press.

The image of Saints in Praise Volume One as recorded by The West Angeles Church of God in Christ Mass Choir and Congregation is courtesy of Sparrow Records. Album produced by Patrick Henderson and designed by Nick Newton Design. Art direction by Barbara Hearn and photography by Mark Tucker. Used by permission.

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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

We wish to thank the many people who helped make this book a possibility and enriched its content greatly:

Those who read portions of the text and offered suggestions for improvement including Courtney Tepera, Taylor Burton Edwards, Carrie Steenwyk, Filip De Cavel, Steve Phifer, and Stephen Proctor;

Our conversation partners on Twitter and Facebook who gave us feedback on raw ideas and initial conclusions;

Our editor at Abingdon, Constance Stella, whose enthusiasm for this project from first mention to final manuscript continued to encourage us throughout the writing;

The eighty-plus persons we interviewed as we researched the book, providing insights that enabled us to speak more confidently about the history of contemporary worship;

Our graduate student and research assistant, Adam Perez, whose review of the chapters and their citations was invaluable; and

Our wives, Maria Ling-Lim and Carmen Ruth, whose steady, loving presence continued to cheer us and whose reading of early drafts made the final text a better one.

Is it a contradiction in terms to write a history of something that is still called contemporary? To call something contemporary suggests that it is of the current time, something so now that it has no past. Surely having a past is a prerequisite to have someone write a history. But the thing called contemporary worship does have a past, even if its name suggests otherwise. For one thing, contemporary worship has been around for half a century, even by that label, and some of its roots can be traced back even further. For another, over that time there have been significant developments in contemporary worship. Contemporary worship in 2017 is not what contemporary worship was in 1977 or 1997. (Feeling the inevitable pull of middle-age nostalgia, we sometimes jokingly tell our students that we want to find a worship leader who can do traditional contemporary worship.)

And so, thinking that writing this history is no contradiction at all, we offer to you Lovin on Jesus. We hope to plow a new field with this book. Publications detailing the history of contemporary worship are few; most deal just with the musical aspects of contemporary worship. But telling the history of its music does not tell the full story. Other prior attempts have been case studies. They go deep on a particular example but do not explore the development of a range of liturgical issues over time. And that is exactly what we hope to do: provide a concise history of multiple dimensions of contemporary worship.