Recapturing an Enchanted World: Ritual and Sacrament in the Free Church Tradition (Dynamics of Christian Worship)

How might our worship recapture and reflect the enchanted world of God's nearness in Jesus Christ?

In this first volume in IVP Academic's Dynamics of Christian Worship series, John D. Rempel offers a vision for this kind oftransformative worship. A theologian and minister in the Mennonite Church, Rempel considers the role of the sacraments and ritual within the Free Church tradition. While the Free Churches rightly sought to cleanse the church of the abuses of sacramentalism, in that process they also set aside some of the church's historic practices and the theology behind them, which ultimately impoverished their worship.

In response to this liturgically thin space, Rempel appeals to the incarnation of Christ, whose taking on of flesh can help us perceive the sacramental nature of our faith and worship. By embracing life-giving and peacemaking practices, the worship of not only the Free Church tradition but of the whole body of Christ might be transformed and become enchanted once again.

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.

John D. Rempel (ThD, Toronto School of Theology) is senior fellow at the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre at the Toronto School of Theology. He is the author of The Lord's Supper in Anabaptism, the editor of Joerg Maler'sKunstbuch: Writings of the Pilgram Marpeck Circle, and the coeditor of The Fragmentation of the Church and Its Unity in Peacemaking.

Gordon T. Smith is the president of Ambrose University and Seminary in Calgary, Alberta, where he also serves as professor of systematic and spiritual theology. He is an ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance and a teaching fellow at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of many books, including Institutional Intelligence, Called to Be Saints, and Your Calling Here and Now.