Worship and the World to Come - (Dynamics of Christian Worship) by Glenn Packiam (Paperback)

About the Book

How is our Christian hope both expressed and experienced in contemporary worship? In this Dynamics of Christian Worship volume, pastor, theologian, and songwriter Glenn Packiam explores what Christians sing about when they sing about hope and what kind of hope they experience when they worship together.

Book Synopsis

Christians sing because we are people of hope.

Yet our hope is unlike other kinds of hope. We are not optimists; nor are we escapists. Christian hope is uniquely shaped by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and by the promise of our own future resurrection.

How is that hope both expressed and experienced in contemporary worship? In this volume in the Dynamics of Christian Worship series, pastor, theologian, and songwriter Glenn Packiam explores what Christians sing about when they sing about hope and what kind of hope they experience when they worship together. Through his analysis and reflection, we find that Christian worship is crucial to both the proclamation and the formation of Christian hope.

The Dynamics of Christian Worship series draws from a wide range of worshiping contexts and denominational backgrounds to unpack the many dynamics of Christian worship--including prayer, reading the Bible, preaching, baptism, the Lord's Supper, music, visual art, architecture, and more--to deepen both the theology and practice of Christian worship for the life of the church.

Review Quotes

"Worship and the World to Come is a timely and highly significant volume. Glenn Packiam shows us how there is a pressing need for careful, theologically sensitive studies that review the fast-growing contemporary worship scene."

--Pete Ward, professor at St. John's College/Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, United Kingdom

"Glenn Packiam in this book Worship and the World to Come has embarked on a journey less traveled by a practitioner-scholar in the contemporary praise and worship (CPW) field. Often, CPW has been accused of valuing emotional experiences at the expense of robust theological thought. Through this work, Packiam has done much to redress this notion in the investigation of Christian hope as understood in normative theological thoughts and parsing it within the frame of CPW worship practices. It is an illuminating work that reflects his keen scholarship while staying true to his spirituality. This book showcases the maturation of CPW practice--or, if we dare, CPW worship tradition--with its practice undergirded by theological thought."

--Swee Hong Lim, Deer Park associate professor of sacred music and director of the master of sacred music program, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto

"In Worship and the World to Come, Glenn Packiam delivers an accessible, engaging integration of the eschatological work of leading biblical scholars and theologians N. T. Wright and Jürgen Moltmann within the key and context of the practices of contemporary worship. The result is an inspiring theological vision for worship that situates our present life together as the church within the transformational redemptive purposes of God for all of creation. Packiam's pastoral and theological work in this book will nourish worshipers for the journey of faith by reorienting our gaze toward the goal of salvation--the new creation--as it breaks into the present by the power of the Spirit."

--John Frederick, lecturer in New Testament at Trinity College in Queensland, Australia, and author of Worship in the Way of the Cross

"In this book Glenn Packiam offers a deep and insightful perspective on Christian hope as it is lived out within real Christian communities. While there has been much useful conceptual work done on the theology of hope from the perspective of systematic theology, relatively little is known about what it means when it is lived out within worshiping communities. For Packiam, worship and hope are deeply tied together. Worship is 'the place where we rehearse our hope, ' a place where hope becomes embedded within us. It matters how we worship, and it matters that we look carefully at the ways in which we worship if we are to hope faithfully. By gathering rich and deep empirical data and using it as a locus for theological reflection, Packiam not only helps us to understand hope more fully, he also moves our understanding on in important ways. This book is an important contribution to the emerging field of theological ethnography and a worthy contribution to the church and academy."

--John Swinton, professor of practical theology and pastoral care, King's College, University of Aberdeen

About the Author

Glenn Packiam (Doctor of Theology and Ministry, Durham) is the associate senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is the songwriter of more than fifty worship songs, including "Your Name" and "Mystery of Faith," and the author of several books, including Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus and Discover the Mystery of Faith: How Worship Shapes Believing. He is also a visiting fellow at St. John's College at Durham University and an adjunct professor at Denver Seminary.