This book was interesting, it covers contemporary worship and relates it to the world we live in. Was more academic than I was expecting, however I was still able to takeaway things from it. I think it would be really beneficial for those studying worship/theology

Worship and the World to Come
Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship
by Glenn Packiam
nInterVarsity Press
IVP Academic
Christian | Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 28 Jul 2020





I am reviewing a copy of Worship and the World to Come through InterVarsity Press and /IvP Academic and Netgalley:




We, Christians sing because we are a people of hope. But our hope is unlike any other kind of hope. We are neither optimists, nor escapists. Christian hope is founded on the promise that we like Christ will be raised from the dead. But how is that hope both expressed as well as experienced in Christian worship?




In this book Glenn Packiam, pastor, theologian, and songwriter 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.



I found Worship and the World to Come to be worthy of five out of five stars!




Happy Reading!

I know I downloaded this book a few days ago and I hard time getting into it. Not that the author of the book was terrible or the subject wasn't interesting, it was the format of the book on Kindle made it very difficult to follow. Paragraphs were cutoff and took a few pages to get to the next sentence which took another few to get to the one after that. I am going to wait till this book is released so I may get a hardcopy of it. I am only giving it a three star rating because I found the subject of the book very interesting.

I read a pre-launch version of this book, which is sceduled be released in July 2020. This is directed at pastors and song writers and is an intermediate book. It addresses research, the methodolgy (qualitative and quantitative), and outcomes leading to suggestions for worship. The author looked a songs that fell within CCLI's top 25 and two church groups: 1) Reformed, 2) Charismatic.

The book is directed at pastors and song writers and is an intermediate level book. It addresses research, the methodolgy (qualitative and quantitative), and outcomes leading to suggestions for worship. The author looked at songs that fell within CCLI's top 25 and two church groups: 1) Reformed, 2) Charismatic.

More analysis of the hymns we sing is needed: 1) individual or community oriented, 2) verbs active or passive, 3) content, is it thin or thick theology, and 4) tense, past, present, or future 5) false beliefs in hymns. More hymns, churches, how the songs we sing affect the outcome of our behavior should be included in any future studies

My reasoning is that our habits of thinking and being are shaped by repitition, and that repitition becomes habit and music we sing throughout the service can reinforce bad theology. Songs that use I or me can reinforce individualism, passive verbs can reinforce inaction, thin theology can stifle growth, and therapuetic themes can keep us from seeing the big picture of eschatology and/or keep us focused on ourselves.

We need to be cognizant of the fact that our situations and surroundings may affect the way we sing about hope. Next time you are in Church consider the songs of hope we sing. Packiam notes that If the majority of hymns are in the present tense it is important to remember that "focusing on the present tense is a luxury of the privileged."

He further notes that these songs of privilege "stand in contrast with the slave spirituals. "“The spiritual,” James Cone argues, “is the spirit of the people struggling to be free; it is their religion, their source of strength in a time of trouble. And if one does not know what trouble is, then the spiritual cannot be understood.” The rhetoric of the songs and the sermons of black preachers, taken together, makes clear that the grounds and object of hope were eschatological. By eschatology, Cone means not simply the future return of Christ, but the past resurrection of Christ, since it is the resurrection that shapes our hope at his return. Thus Cone writes, “The resurrection was an eschatological event which permeated both the present and future history of black slaves.” In fact, it was because “the black slave was confident that God’s eschatological liberation would be fully revealed in Jesus’s Second Coming” that “he could sing songs of joy and happiness while living in bondage.”"

"The spirituals are full of references to heaven, a place where “the oppressed would ‘lay down dat heavy load’”; “a place where slaves would put on their robes, take up their harps, and put on their shoes and wings.” It was a “home indeed, where slaves would sit down by Jesus, eat at the welcome table, sing and shout, because there would be nobody there to turn them out”; it was “God’s eschatological promise,” where there would be “no more sadness, no more sorrow, and no more hunger.” But heaven was not simply a place of future hope; it was also a metaphor that inspired action in the present. Heaven, in spirituals, “served functionally to liberate the black mind from the existing values of white society, enabling black slaves to think their own thoughts and do their own things.”"

This was a very interesting read and though I am not presently a pastor or song writer found it helpful. I surely recommend this book for anyone reading at the intermediate leven and has an interest in research data and analysis