The Worship Maze: Finding a Style to Fit Your Church

By Paul Basden

Book Overview

Worship has become a problem.It is the center of the Christian life, but like so much else in our kaleidoscopic late-modern world, worship has gotten complicated. Confusing. And even controversial. Church leaders and laypeople have joined the debate over "traditional," "contemporary" and a growing array of other worship styles.Pastor (and professor) Paul Basden believes worship should be the occasion of praise and celebration, not conflict. In this book he gently, insightfully and encouragingly leads all of us bewildered church folk through today's worship maze. First he carefully delineates five prominent approaches to worship

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Then he lays out the essential hallmarks of genuine worship (of any style), sifts out the strengths and weaknesses of each major style, and shows how churches can arrive at a faithful and fitting style for their own worship.Nothing we do is more important than our gathered praise of God. Basden's sensitive, positive, much-needed book will help confused congregations restore worship to its rightful place. And it will help churches who have yet to encounter conflict over worship to road-check and fine-tune their Sunday-morning "work of the people."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830822046
• ISBN13: 9780830822041
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: IVP
• Length: 158 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Different Roads Leading to the Same Goal

Paul Basden has written with clarity a book that will help churches to understand how the central role of worship in different congregations takes different but equally valid forms. Two values can flow from reading this book. One is a better understanding of the particular worship style of your own church. A second is the opportunity to evaluate other worship styles that might be more effective for your congregation. "The Woship Maze" is a practical addition to the genre.

A Dependable Guide

Dr. Paul Basden is a dependable guide through the difficult questions concerning forms of worship that many churches in the United States today are facing. He is both a pastor and a professor, and he is familiar with the rich worship legacy that all churches have inherited. His typology of styles of worship--liturgical, traditional, gospel, contemporary, and seeker--is a masterpiece of analysis. There is nothing extreme or thoughtless in his book, and his discussion of blended forms of worship is very wise and practical. I think that all churches who are reviewing their forms of worship would find this book very useful, as would students who want to learn the church's heritage about worship and the issues that churches today are facing.

Insightful Analysis for Confused Worship-Seeker

For the confused worship-seeker, this book is first very well organized. The skeletal outline of this book is secure and provides to the reader a foot-hold to ponder particular worship styles. The author certainly writes within the context of our time; however, the progressive nature of worship and the future of worship styles are recounted in each chapter. I highly recommend this book for those needing the complex, emotional world of worship prepared in a digestable format that feeds the mind as well as the soul.