256 - Open to Glory: Renewing Worship in the Congregation

Open to Glory:
Renewing Worship in the Congregation
By Carol Doran and Thomas H. Traeger
Valley Forge, Pa., Judson Press, 1983. 160 pp. $9.50.

Doran and Troeger, the musician and professor of preaching at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, here take us through a parish workshop in which the subject is the worship of the church. The readers join the participants in the workshop, being asked to share in such experiences as stepping into a Rembrandt etching of the risen Christ, to identify with a boy who can't wait for the wind to fly his kite, to raise the question, "what does our worship reveal…?"

There is some history here, some theology, some psychology of worship, but this is not a book that supplies answers or that provides foundational theory. It is a process book, a common sense approach to the creation and modification of worship in the local parish.

The goal of the authors is to expand the repertoire of experiences which can be incorporated into worship. It is an appeal for the worship planner to see alternative possibilities, to consider new modes of expression, new music and new words. In the book itself the authors draw from the arts poetry, and new rhythmic and spatial settings. They employ and evoke strong metaphors for the act of worship, asking that we enter the cloud, whether of witnesses (learning from various confessional and historical facets of the church), or of glory (which gives substance to the title).

This is a book which is "Free Church" in its orientation. It speaks naturally and easily of pastors who are women. It uses few social, world, ethical illustrations, though it admonishes us to be cognizant of community, and it closes by saying that justice must flow from worship. Its strength is in its integration of the arts and in providing an integrating experience for the reader.

Arlo D. Duba
Dubuque Theological Seminary
Dubuque, Iowa.