Quote of the Week Archives - The Institute For Worship Studies

Jun 8, 2026: Worship Does God’s Story

Kent Walters — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Worship sings, tells, and enacts God’s story, not my story. The primary focus of worship . . . is not me, the worshiper, but God, who redeems the world. Worship does God’s story, and God, who is the subject of worship, repeats, so to speak, his own story. God, through worship, works on me through his story to elicit praise on my lips and obedience in my living. When this happens, worship takes place. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 97-98.

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Jun 1, 2026: Jesus’ Victory

Kent Walters — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:45:00 +0000

The recapitulation accomplished by God’s Spirit is fulfilled by Jesus’s death and resurrection where he wins a great victory over sin, death and the devil. Because of this victory, which he accomplished in the flesh, he wins back his entire created order. The Garden of Gethsemane reverses what happened in the Garden of Eden, and now God will rule forever in his regained garden. His world is now the place of his habitation. His glory shows forth to the ends of the earth. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 97.

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May 25, 2026: Incarnational Theology

Kent Walters — Mon, 25 May 2026 09:45:00 +0000

God saves his whole creation. God has descended in the incarnation and taken union with humanity so that humanity may ascend into union with him. This profound theme of the incarnation has rich implications for an earthed worship. . . . Worship uses the substance of nature—water, oil, bread, wine, movement, symbol—to proclaim that all of creation has been redeemed. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 96.

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May 18, 2026: The Full Story of God

Kent Walters — Mon, 18 May 2026 09:45:00 +0000

From the structure of Word and Table we can discern the story of God. Word and Table follow revelation and the Christ event. . . . However, it must be admitted that neither Word alone nor Eucharist alone contain the full story. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 94.

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May 11, 2026: Worship Nourishes Spiritual Life

Kent Walters — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Worship nourishes the spiritual life . . . because it discloses Christ as the one who does for me what I can’t do for myself and “compels” me to doxology on my lips and to live in the pattern of death and resurrection. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 94.

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May 4, 2026: Worship Forms Spiritual Life

Kent Walters — Mon, 04 May 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Worship is not that which I do, but that which is done in me. That is, worship, which reveals Christ, forms me by making me aware that Jesus is my spirituality and that worship is to form my spiritual life into the pattern of living into the death and resurrection of Jesus. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 93.

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Apr 27, 2026: Honoring Bob Webber

Kent Walters — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:45:00 +0000

In Honor of Robert E. Webber (Nov 27, 1933 – Apr 27, 2007)

On the 19th anniversary of his death, we pay tribute to Bob Webber and acknowledge with thanksgiving the lasting impact of his life and work. Bob’s life verse: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecc 9:10).

“In his resurrection [Jesus] conquered the results of sin—which is death—so that death is not the last word written over our life.”-Robert Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 135.

Who Was Bob Webber?

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April 20, 2026: God Created Again

Kent Walters — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:45:00 +0000

The public worship of the [ancient] church took place on Sunday, the day of the resurrection. The day of worship itself is important. In the Hebrew tradition the day of worship was Saturday, the Sabbath. It is the day of God’s completion of the creation and, therefore, all his work. . . . Saturday is the day of rest. But on Sunday, the first day of the week (Mark 16:2), God who rested created again. This time the resurrection reveals that Christ himself is the “new creation.”. . . The very day of worship discloses that worship is not about me enthroning God in the heavens, but about Christ who has reconciled all things to God through his death and resurrection. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 93.

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April 13, 2026: Content. Structure. Style.

Kent Walters — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Worship brings glory to God because it remembers God’s saving deeds in the past and anticipates God’s culmination of his saving deeds in the new heavens and new earth. . . . If it is acknowledged that the content of worship is remembrance and anticipation, it should be an easy step to take to see that the structure of worship serves the content of worship. The Word remembers and the Eucharist anticipates. (This does not mean there is no anticipation in the Word nor remembrance in the Eucharist. It is a broad generalization that stimulates provocative thought about what worship does rather than a stiff, unbending framework,) The style of doing Word and Table is a matter of making the content and structure of worship indigenous to the local setting. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 86, 91.

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April 6, 2026: Radical Baptismal Living

Kent Walters — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:45:00 +0000

The biblical metaphor for Easter spirituality is found in baptism. The baptized life is a life that is lived in the pattern of death and resurrection. . . . This is a daily, existential, moment-by-moment experience as we choose in this or that situation to die to the sins for which Christ died and choose the life of the Spirit for which Christ was raised to a new life. — Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 146-147.

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