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 Byzantine Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land used mosaic floor maps to find biblical sites. This map is in St. George's Church, Madaba, Jordan, built on 6th century church ruins. |
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Robert E. Webber’s Legacy: Ancient future faith and worship
Ancient future worship, according to the late Robert E. Webber, who coined the term, isn’t about candles. It’s about rooting our worship as the early church did—in God’s story—so we embody not our culture but God’s mission.
Pentecostal churches following the liturgical calendar. Episcopalians rocking at a U2 Eucharist. Baptists draping the sanctuary cross in purple for Lent. Bible churches celebrating weekly communion. Young adults raised on praise bands now chanting the Psalms. Protestants becoming Catholic or Orthodox.
What’s behind all this interest in worship from other traditions, especially the early church? The late Robert E. Webber defined it as tasting the “communion of the fullness of the body of Christ.”
Always a step or three ahead of the church, Webber devoted his life to inviting believers to worship as “one body,” joined through “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:4-5).
Webber was an American theologian, author, Worship Leader columnist, and founder of what is now the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies. His courses and 40-plus books were variations on the same themes.
Inventively, patiently, repeatedly, (and, to some, annoyingly) he stirred up worship renewal by focusing on “roots, connection and authenticity in a changing world.” As he so often put it, “the road to the future runs through the past.”
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Common roots
Webber immersed himself in many Christian traditions. Born to Baptist missionaries, he graduated from Bob Jones University, earned degrees at Anglican, Presbyterian, and Lutheran seminaries, and taught at Wheaton College and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.
His book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church chronicled his journey from fundamentalist to Episcopal Church membership. And once inside, he invited fellow worshipers to re-embrace the evangelical core of Anglicanism.
Some Christians sample traditions in a “not this, not that, yuck, let’s move on” way. And in describing worship practices, Webber managed, at one time or another, to offend almost everyone. But he kept looking for what Christians have in common.
In the 1970s, Webber’s book Common Roots reminded Protestants that Christianity didn’t begin with the Reformation. That’s why he said it makes sense to study early church life, spirituality, witness, and worship—and see how it flowered from Jewish liturgical roots.
To help believers bridge biases that bruise Christ’s body, he joined the Convergence Movement. He persuaded evangelical leaders to jointly develop “The Chicago Call” (1977) and “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future” (AEF Call, 2006). Both documents make a case for reconnecting with historic Christianity.
Webber invented the terms “blended worship” and “ancient future worship.” In one version of Worship Old and New (he often re-issued or re-wrote books), Webber advised learning from “the entire worshipping community…liturgical worship, worship of the Reformers, the free church movement, Pentecostals, and charismatics.”
 In Jerash, Jordan, the Temple of Artemis was built after Jesus healed a local demon-possessed man and before Christians built churches here. |
Pagans then and now
Webber used a paradigm to explain connections between our culture and the pagan Greco-Roman culture in which the early church took root. His paradigm looks at successive epochs of Christianity, each filtered through cultural principles dominant in a certain era.
“The story of Christianity moves from a focus on mystery in the classical period, to institution in the medieval era, to individualism in the Reformation era, to reason in the modern era, and, now, in the postmodern era, back to mystery,” he wrote in Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern Generation.
Christians often freeze-frame an epoch, “make it the standard of expression of faith, and then judge all other movements or periods of time by our standard.” Most Protestants, for example, root their faith understanding in a post-16th century movement, whether Reformers, pietism, revivalism, or fundamentalism.
Webber offered his paradigm as a way to break free of a freeze-frame and “affirm the whole church in all its previous manifestations…as a dialogue and encounter that may inform and strengthen our Christian understanding in a different culture.”
The allure of mystery, he noted, is often paired, in the classical era and now, with cultural ambivalence about the idea of eternal truth. The classical era, like ours, was marked by political upheaval, competing world religions, moral breakdown, and huge gaps between rich and poor.
“Classical Christianity was not an accommodation to paganism but an alternative practice of life. Christians in a postmodern world will succeed, not by watering down the faith, but by being a countercultural community that invites people to be shaped by the story of Israel and Jesus,” he wrote.
Webber loved talking with people from different generations and perspectives. As those raised in rational Christianity questioned propositional approaches to faith, Webber charted generational differences among evangelicals.
To people buzzing about postmodernism, Webber reminded, “There’s no such thing as postmodern worship. There is only biblical worship.”
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The only story that matters
In Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, he wrote, “Rather than perpetuate the divisions that exist between the traditionalists, the pragmatists, and the emergents, the best we can all do is to join the conversation and learn from each other, affirming that we all stand in the historic faith as we seek to understand it and apply it to the new world in which we minister.”
For Webber, applying historic faith to the world in which we minister is the touchstone of authenticity. He found that story is a wonderful way to communicate authentic faith.
While fewer people today are eager to argue about religion, many “spiritual but not religious” people are nevertheless intrigued by the idea that every religion has its own story. Conversations with all kinds of people helped Webber sum up these stories in The Divine Embrace:
- Secularism: There is no god who has created, who has revealed himself, and has redeemed the world. Reason and common sense help us make a new world of peace and prosperity.
- Eastern or New Age spirituality: We are all part of the problem, and we are all part of the solution.
- Christianity: We are all part of the problem. Only one man is the solution, and his name is Jesus. He stretched out his arms on a hard wood cross so that all of us could enter God’s divine embrace.
As Webber said on his Ancient Future Worship blog, “May the church not be formed by the world in which it lives, but by the narrative to which it belongs, the story of God.” This spiritual formation happens, in the words of the AEF Call, in “public worship that sings, preaches and enacts God's story.”
The story continues... Darrell Harris and Chuck Fromm Explain Ancient Future Worship
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
Don’t miss the bonus story on how to apply ancient future worship concepts to your church.
Listen to brief mp3 audio interview excerpts. The Darrell Harris interview happened on April 24, 2007, three days before Bob Webber died.
- Darrell Harris on how Robert Webber expanded his view of worship, 5:34
- Darrell Harris on Robert Webber’s personal legacy, 6:21
- Darrell Harris on how Robert Webber taught about dying, 5:40
- Darrell Harris on Robert Webber’s favorite worship experience, 4:42
- Cheryl Brandsen on how Christian philanthropy developed, 2:41
Bloggers, the Chicago Sun-Times, Christianity Today, Webber’s colleagues and students, religious columnist Terry Mattingly, Larry Sibley, and more have written about Robert E. Webber. Touchstone, an online magazine, critiques Robert Webber’s ideas. Read more tributes to Robert Webber.
Download audios and other worship resources from The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies. Read how Webber described generational shifts in the relationship between Christianity and culture. Learn how he dealt with cancer. Browse articles he wrote for Reformed Worship magazine.
Read the joint document “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future.” Gather a group to discuss one or more of Webber’s Ancient Future books, which include The Divine Embrace (2006) and Ancient Future Worship (Baker Books, 2008). Attend the Ancient Evangelical Future conference, “The Primacy of the Biblical Narrative,” November 30-December 1, 2007, in Chicago.
Learn more about early Christian art, church fathers, justice and philanthropy, music, and worship:
- Art. Understanding Early Christian Art by Robin M. Jensen; The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art by Paul Corby Finney; Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries by Rodney Stark.
- Church fathers. Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many early church fathers resources and publishes a newsletter.
- Justice and philanthropy. Read fascinating translated sermons from the Cappadocian fathers in Susan R. Holman’s The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia.
- Music. Listen to Calvin Stapert’s lecture on what early Christians can teach us about music. Read his book A New Song for an Old World.
- Worship. David Rylaarsdam reveals early Christian worship practices that “were strikingly different but perhaps more biblical than ours today.”
Study excellent essays on the Anglican Eucharistic ordo (liturgy), differences between low church and high church liturgies and contemporary Northern hemisphere and Southern hemisphere Christianity. Here’s a thoughtful ancient future approach in a Presbyterian church plant.
Join online discussions among ancient future Catholics. Listen to Ancient Faith Radio, an internet radio station that streams Orthodox music all day, every day.
Browse related stories about communion, congregational singing, letting story form your worship, reciting ancient creeds, and Trinitarian worship music.
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your staff, council, worship, or education committee meeting. These questions will get members talking about how to apply ancient future worship concepts.
- Where would your congregation fit on a scale of we-follow-received-worship-tradition to our-worship-is-culturally-relevant? Would you like to shift the balance in any way?
- Discuss the difference between worship style and core worship concepts as it applies to your congregation…and, perhaps, to your religious denomination or tradition.
- Which of Robert Webber’s ancient future worship concepts ring most true (or problematic) for you?
- Which early church practices would you like to learn more about or like to make relevant in your church context? How might these practices shape your congregation in line with God’s story and redemptive mission?
What is the best way you’ve found to use historic worship practices in culturally relevant ways? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Did you find a conference, workshop, book, multimedia series, or other resources that helped you learn how to apply ancient future worship concepts?
- Did you create a worship or education series to help people experience worship using more of their senses? Which new worship ideas have most engaged your congregation? Which show the most promise for spiritual formation?
- Have you developed a grid to help you identify your church’s default worship system, compare it to historic Christian practice, and find ways to fill gaps or right imbalances?
- Which methods have worked best to move your congregation toward a greater sense of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” unity? This could apply to your church worship, life, or relationship to culture or your local community.
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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/.