Abstract

What does it mean to worship God? Why should we worship God? How should we worship God? These questions have troubled me for more than forty years. They haunted me even as a young child, the grandson of a country Baptist Preacher. I remember constantly asking my parents why some of us belonged to Methodist Churches, while others of us belonged to Baptist Churches, while still others of us belonged to Christian Churches? I wanted to know why they all seemed to have their own unique ways of worshipping God. Which church was right? The aspiration of this paper is to answer the "what," "why," and "how" questions in a biblical, theological and practical context. It has taken me almost a lifetime to discover a means by which I could began to search for and evaluate the findings. This Doctor of Ministry Project is that means. It has provided me with the professional and lay support needed in order to find credible answers. Since the doctrine of worship is such a broad area to deal with, I have decided to focus my attention on only two areas of worship: The rituals of baptism and The Lord's Supper. ;The title of this Project and the specific aim is to explore ways of transforming the Lord's Supper and baptism from mere ordinances into meaningful acts of worship for the Eagle Vision Ministries Congregation. The general purpose is to strengthen the meaning of the Lord's Supper and baptism for Eagle Vision Ministries Congregation through literary and biblical research, theological study, and liturgical implementation. The long term-purpose is to help our people develop a deeper interest in participating in these rituals, as well as others. ;This Project has already enhanced my life and ministry, the lives of the Lay Advisory Committee, and the Eagle Vision Congregation. Having worked through this Project, we no longer think of baptism and the Lord's Supper as "mere ordinances." We have developed and implemented a concept called "Human spiritualization of rituals," which helped us to deal with our "mere ordinance problem."