Robert E. Webber - Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting Gods Narrative

ANCIENT-FUTURE SERIES

Series Titles

Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a PostmodernWorld (1999)

Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-FormingCommunity (2003)

Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the ChristianYear (2004)

The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (2006)

Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting GodsNarrative (2008)

Related Titles by Robert E. Webber

The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (2002)

2008 by Joanne Webber

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2011

Ebook corrections 03.29.2018

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0068-6

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture marked NLT is taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword reprinted from John D. Witvliet, Bob Webber: Memory & Hope, Books & Culture 13, no. 4 (July/August 2007), 8, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/004/7.8.html. Used and slightly adapted with permission of the author and Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.

Ancient-Future Worship is lovingly dedicated to
my children, their spouses, my grandchildren,
and a few select pets.

John and Isabel Webber
Natalie and Raquel

Alexandra and Jack Wilson
Quinn

Stefany and Tom Welch
Tommy, Jack, Ben, Lexie

Jeremy and Susie Buffam
their dogs, Condi and The Gipper

I have always loved you in life,
and I will love you still in death.

Contents

: Bob Webber: Memory and Hope

Foreword
Bob Webber: Memory and Hope

The following tribute was presented at the Wheaton College Theology Conference banquet in April 2007 and later presented via videotape to Bob Webber, who was unable to attend. The conference theme, Ancient Faith for the Churchs Future, was one of the central motifs in Robert Webbers writings. Webber died the following week.

D ear Robert,

Two of lifes best gifts are memory and hope. This is true in psalmody and eucharistic praying but also in personal and professional friendship. It is a great honor to practice both of these gifts with respect to your life and work, especially here at Wheaton College.

When I think of your written and published works, I remember with deep gratitude opening up Worship Is a Verb at about age eighteen and feeling an Emmaus-like burning of the heart over its conviction about our risen Lord and its catholic vision for worship.

Publishers Note: Bob Webbers passion for what he termed an ancient-future faith had an evangelistic impact over the years on many students and readers, especially in contemporary church worship circles. The following tribute sets Bobs contributions in perspective and was delivered just prior to his death in 2007. For this his last book in the Ancient-Future series we thought this remembrance to be a fitting foreword to Ancient-Future Worship. May Bobs ministry and legacy live on through these pages.

Some years later, I remember receiving seven boxes of files, which became the last volumes of the Complete Library of Christian Worship, and sensing the breadth of the landscape that you exploredthe whole Bible, all of systematic theology, two thousand years of church history, every one of the churchs various ministries, in one hundred or more denominations (all, it seemed, in a single summer). Later, I remember arriving at a hotel in Carol Stream on Monday to learn that we would be starting and finishing our outline of the Renew songbook in four days. I remember how you said then (and many times since), I love a project.

As I think about all of your published work, I am struck by some particular charisms that you have shared so freely with us.

First, you have introduced so many of us to the early church as a period of unique theological insight, spiritual vitality, and prophetic correction. You did so in a way that energized practicing pastors and lay Christians. It was said of Princetons Peter Brown, He rescued the past from the tyranny of stereotypes. That is also true for you, especially when it comes to worship.

Part of your work has been simply to get us up to speed with a new set of terms. You taught us that epiphany and Eucharist are useful terms. You taught us to pronounce epiclesis, anamnesis, and Hippolytus. You also exercised restraint, sparing us the frustration of feeling that we had to use the words catechumenate and mystagogy when all we wanted to do was lead people on a Journey to Jesus.

You also coined phrases about our emerging love for the early church, leading the way as blended worship became convergence worship and then ancient-future worship. Many publishers wanted to know what you were calling ita sign that you were not only describing a movement but shaping it.

In all of these projects, you were especially adept at writing for people with little previous exposure to the material, a pedagogical skill very much undervalued in the academy. So often when writing reaches out to broad audiences, it ceases to be compelling. But Ive found that people who read your material actually end up learning things, rather than simply having their prior assumptions confirmed.

Part of your skill is your ability to map big stretches of territory (historically, conceptually, geographically), never letting us miss the forest for the trees. Your most recent book, The Divine Embrace:Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life, gathers the fruit of a lifetime of teaching this material in congregations. Youve chosen a set of the most crucial themes for promoting vibrant Christian faith and life, and you pursue them doggedly. Some of your many students will later come along to study the leaves on some of the trees in the forests you describe. But I hope they do not forget that a map of the big picture is vitally important for the life of the church.

Second, you did not shrink back from honest criticism and polemic. Like Irenaeus, you have been against heresies. Providentially, you have been against some of the same ones he was against.

Reading your work again this winter, I have been struck by the multiple objects of your published indignation: spirit-matter dualism, ahistorical mysticism, experientialism, legalism, romanticism, narcissism, McSpirituality, privatism, Gnosticism, and love songs to Jesus. You reserved equal ink to protest intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. You even put your feelings in your titles, giving us a 1984 Christianity Today article, Lets Put Worship into the Worship Service: Lets End Gospel Pep Rallies and Sunday Morning Variety Shows, a 1985 book