Worship in an Age of Anxiety
IVP Academic, 2024
By J. Michael Jordan
WHO: J. Michael Jordan, dean of the chapel and associate professor of religion at Houghton College.
HE SAYS: “It’s crucial that worship is informed by the experience of anxiety, and that Christians regularly encounter worship spaces as healing spaces.”
THE BIG IDEA: This book offers a practical theolog of worship within a healing framework that acknowledges and accepts anxiety and offers it to God.
THE PROGRESSION: Chapter 1, “Anxiety Today,” focuses on what anxiety means for evangelical young people. In Chapter 2, “Anxiety, Repentance, Relief, Repeat,” the author shows how anxiety has historically been woven into the gospel in American church life in ways that have distorted the good news.
Chapters 3-8 examine concrete worship practices that can be healing, looking at one liturgical element in each chapter.
“A healing approach [to worship] can help to form worshipers who understand the world as it is, accept and embrace that world, and engage with it in a way that honors God.”