Planning Blended Worship: The Creative Mixture of Old and New is a guide to planning creative worship for congregations that follow the traditional fourfold pattern of worship (gathering, word, table, and dismissal), or those who prefer a free-church, evangelical style, but who are also interested in the core practices (space, texts, and so forth) that have characterized Christian worship throughout the centuries. Robert Webber designed this volume to show pastors, music directors, and other worship leaders the practical, structural, and theological steps for designing worship services characterized by biblical depth, historical awareness, and contemporary relevance. The author includes charts and forms at the end of each chapter that clearly show how music and other arts can be integrated with liturgical texts.
Robert E. Webber (1933 - 2007)
was an American theologian known for his work on worship and the early church. He played a key role in the Convergence Movement, a move among evangelical and charismatic churches in the United States to blend charismatic worship with liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer and other liturgical sources. Webber began teaching theology at Wheaton College in 1968. Existentialism was the primary focus of Webber's research and lectures during his first years at Wheaton. However, he soon shifted his focus to the early church. In 1978 he wrote Common Roots, a book that examined the impact of 2nd-century Christianity on the modern church.In 1985 Webber wrote Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church, in which he described the reasons behind his own gradual shift away from his fundamentalist/evangelical background toward the Anglican tradition. Webber faced an enormous amount of criticism from evangelicals in response to this book. Nevertheless, his work was highly influential, and his ideas grew in popularity in evangelical circles. During the latter half of his life, Webber took a special interest in Christian worship practices. He wrote more than 40 books on the topic of worship, focusing on how the worship practices of the ancient church have value for the church in the 21st century postmodern era. Among his books are Ancient-Future Worship, Ancient-Future Faith, Ancient-Future Time, Ancient-Future Evangelism, The Younger Evangelicals, and The Divine Embrace.
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