Dependent Upon Revelation

Since worship is the Church’s obedient response to the saving acts of God, these saving acts must be set forth before the response can be evoked: the Wort must precede the Antwort. It follows that the Bible, in which God’s redemptive action is declared, must be read early in the service if the praise, prayer and offering of the congregation are to be a true response to the divine Word. Failure to grasp this simple principle results in liturgical chaos. The writer has on his files a collection of Orders of Service gathered in both hemispheres. While some are excellent, others are little more than a string of ‘items,’ the arrangement of which displays neither liturgical nor any other kind of logic. And the most common defect is that there is no reading of Holy Scriptures until relatively late in the service. The proper order of Wort and Antwort is thus reversed. When Thanksgiving, Intercession and Offering precede the reading and hearing of the Word of God to which they are essentially the response, the theological basis of worship is destroyed. Worship ceases to be dependent upon revelation. —Raymond Abba, Principles of Christian Worship, 48