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Teaching Worship as a Christian Practice: Musing on Practical Theology and Pedagogy in Seminaries and Church-Related Colleges
John D. Witvliet
Perspectives
June/July 2006

The teaching of Christian worship is a relatively new phenomenon at church-related colleges, seminaries, and divinity schools. Prior to 1965, there were no full-time professors of worship in any North American school, Protestant or Catholic. Worship was generally ignored in church-related college curricula and tucked way into preaching courses at seminaries and divinity schools. Today, in contrast, many of the 300 members of the North American Academy of Liturgy hold full-time teaching positions. The last forty years has also been a period of unprecedented liturgical change in most Christian traditions. The Liturgical Movement associated with Vatican II, Charismatic renewal, various forms of church growth, neo-confessionalism, and liberation theologies have each transformed the practices, criteria, personnel, and polity that shape congregational worship. These institutional and cultural changes make for a time of both instability and innovation in the teaching of worship. In light of this ferment, I offer here some initial thoughts about how recent discussions of Christian practice might serve as a promising pedagogical foundation for courses on worship.