Helpful Books for Planning Ancient-Future Blended Worship

At Holy Joys, we encourage churches to use or adapt a historic liturgy (see “Service of the Word and Lord’s Supper“), but we do not press anyone to follow one and only one tradition. For example, we do not believe that faithful worship requires a return to the Book of Common Prayer exactly as it is written. We do, however, believe that not all approaches to worship are equal, and that every church should strive to plan worship that is biblically faithful, historically rooted, and deeply formative yet flexible and fresh. Such worship transcends the artificial distinctions of “liturgical” vs. “free” or “contemporary” vs. “traditional” and may be referred to as “ancient-future blended worship.” The following books reflect this approach to varying degrees (though, as always, the recommendation of a resource is not an endorsement of all of its contents).

1. Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Baker Books, 2008).
2. Robbie F. Castleman, Story-Shaped Worship: Following Patterns from the Bible and History (IVP Academic, 2013).
3. Constance Cherry, The Worship Architect, 2nd Edition: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services (Baker Academic, 2021).
4. Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (Baker Books, 2004).
5. Andrew Wilson, Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship (Zondervan, 2019).
6. More coming soon