Worship as mission : an explication of the relationship between worship and mission, as seen in the "Evangelical Lutheran Book of Worship" and among some scholars within the fields of liturgy and missiology

Abstract

Worship and Mission are two terms that give a variety of associations. I, myself, have often understood the term “worship” in relation to a specific type of expression or genre that has more or less been related to a type of Christian music, “worship music”. I have also understood the term “mission” in a somewhat limited way; as the practice of some Christians in “carrying out” the Christian faith to people who still haven’t heard the gospel. Lately, however, my awareness and understanding of these two terms has been expanded, mainly, as a result of the year I had as a student at Wartburg Theological Seminary, where these two terms were understood more in the sense of “what it means to be church”. Worship was used as an expression of what I normally would associate with the Norwegian term “Gudstjeneste”, and Mission, on the other hand, was first and foremost understood in terms of being an expression of the nature of the church. The two terms were intertwined, and worship was fundamentally understood as mission in its very doing.