Reformed Worship

Jonty Rhodes

Reviewed by: Andrew W. Canavan

Reformed Worship, by Jonty Rhodes. P&R, 2023. Hardcover, 152 pages, $15.99. Reviewed by OP pastor Andrew W. Canavan.

Many Christians rightly celebrate the Protestant Reformation’s zeal for recovering the biblical gospel. Few, however, realize that leaders like Calvin, Knox, and Bucer were also zealous to reform the worship of God.

These two Reformation emphases closely relate. The joy of salvation issues forth in wholehearted worship, while right worship rehearses the gospel story every Lord’s Day. Because the Bible reveals corporate worship as the joyful but serious business of heaven, the church on earth—an embassy of heaven—sets worship at the center of its life and ministry.

Yet Presbyterian and Reformed believers must face the facts: our worship patterns and practices can seem like a foreign language to others. The songs we sing, the ways we pray, and our firm commitment to worship according to Scripture can be met with incomprehension even by our fellow believers from other traditions. If we truly believe in the blessing of Reformed worship for all Christians and long to see our churches filled with worshipers, we need to help people clear common hurdles in understanding our worship.

Jonty Rhodes, a Presbyterian pastor in the north of England, provides a helpful guide to this central topic in Reformed Worship, one of the latest volumes in P&R’s Blessings of the Faith series.

This short book introduces key concepts in the Reformed approach to worship, such as its God-centered purpose, the regulative principle, the ordinary means of grace, and the pattern of a Reformed worship service. Throughout this work, Rhodes models clarity, charity, and Christ-centeredness. His explanations are appropriately detailed for an introductory book and never tedious. He writes with a warm, pastoral heart.

What most stands out about this book is Rhodes’s aim to root our worship practices in the biblical text. Though we learn much from our Presbyterian forebears, our commitment to Reformed worship is founded on the practices commanded by God and the patterns exemplified by his covenant people in the Scriptures. So, for example, Rhodes clearly connects the necessity of sacrifice for worship in the Pentateuch with the finality and perfection of Christ’s sacrifice. His atoning death grounds the frequent invitation in Hebrews for new covenant worshipers to “draw near.”

While some of the topics addressed and some of the turns of phrase employed will be unfamiliar or less relevant to a North American audience, Rhodes has done the church a great service by providing a warm, accessible introduction to Reformed worship. This book would serve well as a resource for a membership class or as a guide for interested visitors. Pastors will want to learn from Rhodes’s fresh explanations of the elements of a Reformed worship service. As with the other volumes in this series, Reformed Worship includes a lengthy section of frequently asked questions. These questions and answers are pastoral, accessible, and worth the price of the book. Reformed Worship demonstrates that biblical worship is one of the great blessings of the faith because it brings us to Christ and to every spiritual blessing found in him.