Understand why Christians worship the way they do

If you have ever sat in a worship service — any worship service — and found yourself wondering why it is shaped the way it is, you already have the instinct that drives this school. Why does this congregation recite a creed and that one never does? Why does the Lord's Supper happen weekly in some churches and quarterly in others? Why do some Christians face east to pray, and why does the architecture of a Gothic cathedral make you feel something that a modern auditorium does not? These are not merely aesthetic questions. They are theological and historical ones, and they have answers — rich, layered, fascinating answers that stretch across twenty centuries of the Church's life.

I have spent years studying and teaching the history of Christian worship, and the conviction that drives this curriculum is simple: Christians who understand how the Church has prayed across history are better equipped to pray, to lead, to teach, and to think. The principle lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief — is not an academic slogan. It is a profound observation about the way communities are formed. What we do in worship shapes what we believe, often more powerfully than what we say we believe. That insight alone is worth a semester of careful study.

What you will find here is not a survey that skims the surface. We move carefully through the New Testament roots of Christian worship, through the patristic era's great liturgical documents and their remarkable sophistication, through the Byzantine East and the medieval Latin West, through the upheavals of the Reformation — Luther, Zwingli, Cranmer, the Anabaptists — through the Methodist revivals and the Great Awakenings, and into the modern landscape of Pentecostalism, the Second Vatican Council's liturgical reform, and the contemporary evangelical moment. Every major tradition is treated with seriousness and respect. I am not here to tell you which form of worship is correct. I am here to help you understand each tradition deeply enough to see the beauty and the logic within it.

I want to be honest about what this school asks of you. It asks for slow, attentive reading. It asks you to sit with primary sources — ancient church orders, Reformation-era liturgies, patristic homilies — and let them speak before you rush to evaluate them. It asks you to hold your own tradition with a certain scholarly openness, willing to be surprised, challenged, and enriched by what others have done. If you are willing to bring that kind of attention, I think you will find this one of the most rewarding intellectual and spiritual journeys you have taken.

Whether you are a pastor wanting to lead your congregation with greater historical awareness, a seminary student building a foundation for a lifetime of ministry, or a committed layperson who simply loves the Church and wants to understand it more deeply — this school is for you. Come with your questions. Bring your own tradition's practices and let them be illuminated by the long story of which they are a part. I look forward to thinking through this material with you.