Held in the Midway Presbyterian Church sanctuary…these services demonstrated the usefulness of the historic reformed liturgies in our modern context.

While we live in a day when traditional reformed worship is charged with being irrelevant and outdated, October 21-24 pastors, musicians and congregants from 17 states and a variety of denominations rediscovered how very far this was from the truth as they gathered at the First Annual Reformation Worship Conference, at the historic Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, GA.

This inaugural conference featured a series of lectures taught by Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old on “Reformation Worship in the Sixteenth Century”, where he detailed the distinctive contributions of Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin and Knox to our worship.

But being more than a forum for the academically inclined, conference-goers were also provided the opportunity to choose from fifteen workshops which offered biblical support and practical instruction for leading and participating in corporate worship. Some of the workshops included:

· “Bringing the Reformation of Worship to your church.” David Hall, Pastor of Midway Presbyterian, dealt the implementing means of grace based worship in the local church.

· “Re-discovering Psalm Singing.” Terry Johnson, Pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, GA, stepped the participants through the basics of using God’s Hymnbook, to make singing psalms the blessing God intended it to be.

· “A Pastor’s Symposium.” T. David Gordon, Dr. Mark Ross and Terry Johnson (and at times Paul Jones) answered questions and at times entered into lively discussions on topics dealing with the role of choirs, the employment of non-Christian musicians, the frequency of communion and use of various elements of liturgy.

· “Help for the Church Musician.” Dr. Paul Jones, Organist and Music Director at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA, and Mrs. Judy Dodd, Music Director at Midway Presbyterian in Powder Springs, GA, gave practical advice to instrumentalists and vocalists who lead in singing praise to our Lord.

And that was really the beauty of how the conference was designed. For while the sessions were a great encouragement for the ministers who would return and put these ideas into practice, those planning did not forget musicians, choir members, and the average person in the pew who merely desire to engage in the worship of God in a more informed manner. And in no way was this more evident than in the nightly worship services which were truly the highlight of the conference.

Held in the Midway sanctuary, which was dedicated in 2009 and itself designed as an instrument to assist the congregation to reverently worship the Lord, these services demonstrated the usefulness of the historic reformed liturgies in our modern context.

Thursday evening, which began with a Psalm Service led by Paul Jones, featured a liturgy from Bucer’s Strasbourg Psalter of 1539 and Terry Johnson preaching from 2 Timothy 3:1-4:5, exhorting those gathered “to continue in the things you have learned”, both in the message and the method of lectio continua preaching.

Friday evening’s Hymn Festival led by Paul Jones on Midway’s great pipe organ with the accompaniment of two choirs, tympani and a brass ensemble, flowed nicely into a breath-taking worship service where Dr. Mark Ross of Erskine Seminary in Columbia, SC, delivered the message from 2 Chronicles 29, calling worshippers to understand how true worship is essential to restoration.

Saturday evening, preceded by an organ concert from Samuel Metzer, utilized the Genevan liturgy of John Calvin and heard Dr. John Payne, Pastor of Grace Presbyterian in Douglasville, GA, who had earlier in the day delivered a lecture entitled “Why Systematic Expository Preaching?”, give a fine example of expository preaching in his sermon from Acts 2:42, where the congregation was encouraged to “nurture a love for the means of grace”.

On the Lord’s Day conference-goers joined the Midway congregation for morning and evening worship, with Dr. Ross preaching from Genesis 15, and Pastor Hall preaching from 1 Samuel 15, using John Knox’s liturgy from the 1556 Form of Prayers.

The Reformation Worship Conference, while very informative, served as a powerful encouragement for those who desire to go against the spirit of the age and to continue to hold up the Biblical, Christ-honoring worship principles of the Reformation in their own churches.

The 2011 Conference is scheduled for October 20-23, 2011.

Mark Blalack is a PCA Teaching Elder serving as Pastor of Harmony Presbyterian Church, Kingsport, Tennessee. This article first appeared on the Johannes Weslianus blog and is used with permission. Source: http://johannesweslianus.blogspot.com/2010/10/review-first-annual-reformation-worship.html#more [Editor’s note: The URL to the source for this article is no longer valid and has been removed.]