History of Worship

Definition and Meaning

The history of worship is the field that examines how the forms and content of public worship offered to God have changed from one era to another. It is treated chiefly within practical theology and historical theology, and it helps explain the origins of the orders of worship that churches observe today.

Biblical and Historical Background

• Old Testament period: Israel's worship centered on the sacrifices offered at the tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem. After the Babylonian exile, synagogue gatherings devoted to reading the Law and to prayer are believed to have become established.
• Early church: Acts 2:42–47 records that believers "continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." Believers gathered on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, on which Jesus rose from the dead. In the mid-second century, Justin Martyr described the order of the Sunday gathering as Scripture reading, preaching, prayer, and the Eucharist.
• Middle Ages: The Latin Mass, the Eucharist-centered worship of the Roman Catholic Church, became standardized. The congregation largely took the role of observers.
• Reformation: The Reformers emphasized worship in the vernacular, preaching, and congregational singing. Martin Luther retained the structure of the Mass in revised form. Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin established simpler, Word-centered worship, and in Calvin's Geneva the congregation sang metrical psalms.
• Modern period: The revival movements of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and America spread a revival-meeting style of worship centered on hymn singing, preaching, and calls for decision. In the twentieth century, a movement to recover the liturgy (the prescribed rites of worship) of the early church emerged alongside praise and worship services using contemporary music.

Practice in Korean Churches

Under the influence of American missionaries in the late nineteenth century, Korean Protestant worship took shape in a simple form consisting of hymns, prayer, Scripture reading, and a sermon. The early morning prayer meeting, which Kil Sun-joo and others are believed to have begun in Pyongyang around 1906, became, together with the revival meeting, a distinctive feature of Korean Protestantism. From the 1990s onward, open worship services led by praise teams became widespread. After the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, online worship came into wide use.

Among Korean denominations, the Anglican Church of Korea and the Lutheran Church in Korea maintain liturgical worship centered on the prayer book and the Eucharist. Presbyterian and Methodist churches are generally sermon-centered, although the extent to which denominational service books and the church year are used varies by denomination and by local congregation. Pentecostal churches are known for worship that emphasizes simultaneous audible prayer, fervent praise, and the work of the Holy Spirit.