Worship in the Disciples of Christ denomination was shaped by the conditions of the American frontier during the early nineteenth century. Only in the second half of the twentieth century has the widespread use of the Christian year appeared. A worship calendar that became popular in the 1950s helped prepare the way, combining some historic Christian festivals with national and denominational observances. Since the 1960s, Disciples’ participation in ecumenical worship renewal has encouraged the full embrace of the Christian year.
The early Disciples on the frontier of western Pennsylvania and western Virginia did not use the Christian year as the basis for worship. They followed the style and practice of frontier worship with the exception of participating in the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s Day. The presence of the Lord’s Supper became, and has remained, the defining aspect of Disciples worship. This fact is important for understanding the Disciple’s recent embrace of the Christian year and the lectionary.
Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Disciples joined a number of other churches in evolving an informal calendar that consisted of a combination of Christian holy days and cultural holidays. While these days provided a focus for organizing worship on given Sundays, the week-to-week worship tended not to follow an organized pattern. Preaching tended to be based on a random selection of texts or topics.
The Service Book: Preparation for the Christian Year
A landmark for Disciples worship came in 1953 when its denominational publishing house brought out Christian Worship: A Service Book, edited by G. Edwin Osborn. The book was not officially authorized by the church’s deliberative body—the International Convention of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ—but it did have the approval of the publishing house and a number of leaders in the church’s general offices in Indianapolis. While specifically “designed for the voluntary use of nonliturgical churches,” the book carried with it the impetus of informal but impressive sanction. Its approach to worship followed the psychological model popularized by von Ogden Vogt a generation earlier. This pattern prevails in some congregations even today.
The Service Book began with a calendar for the Christian year. This calendar included some of the most prominent historical days and seasons of the Christian year such as Advent, Christmas, and Lent, but also virtually canonized national quasi-religious holidays like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving and denominational emphases including Race Relations Sunday, Rural Life Sunday, and Christian Literature Week. The latter components of this calendar were widely followed among Disciples through the 1960s. Few congregations attempted to follow the traditional Christian year in a systematic way.
The Service Book also contained a five-year lectionary that was designed to run from January 1 to December 31. The readings were not closely correlated with the historic lectionary. This lectionary was used in only a handful of pulpits. The bulk of the Service Book consisted of worship materials (e.g., litanies and responsive readings). Some of these materials do relate to the historic Christian year, but most are designed either to serve the calendar in the book or to be used independently.
Whatever its shortcomings, the Service Book helped prepare Disciples for the introduction of the Christian year. Although it respected the freedom of local congregations, the book symbolized a common approach to Disciples worship. It helped Disciples realize that the worship of a local congregation is not idiosyncratic but is a part of a larger ecumenical expression. Through its use of litanies and responsive readings and other printed materials, the Service Book moved Disciples toward a more formal style of worship. It also acquainted them with the basic themes of the Christian year and familiarized the idea of a lectionary.
Convergence with Ecumenical Renewal
Disciples leaders joined leaders of the ecumenical churches in the 1960s in rediscovering the Christian year, the lectionary, and the Hippolytean liturgical tradition. Keith Watkins, a professor of worship at the Christian Theological Seminary, took a leading role in adapting the recovery of these traditions to Disciples worship and in adapting Disciples worship to these traditions. In particular, he sought to connect the historically prominent role of the Disciples lay elder at the Lord’s Table with the broader Christian tradition.
These developments were welcomed by many Disciples leaders for three reasons. First, the Christian year, the lectionary, and the Hippolytean tradition are all centered in the Lord’s Supper. The same is true of Disciples worship. While Disciples practice had customarily been much simpler than the new developments, Disciples had both logical and intuitive affinities with the emergence of the historical perspectives. Second, the emerging developments provided a way for Disciples to embody their ecumenical consciousness. Third, the recovery of the Christian year and the lectionary and Hippolytean liturgy connected with it came at a time when Disciples leaders were becoming aware of increasing lethargy, anemia, and sterility in Disciples worship (as in other denominations which had practiced similar styles of worship). Disciples leaders noticed vitality in worship in the liturgical churches that were recovering these historic patterns.
Thankful Praise and Contemporary Practices
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the denomination’s office of worship published occasional materials that helped Disciples appropriate the contemporary renewal of worship. In 1987, the denominational publishing house issued Thankful Praise, edited by Keith Watkins. Following the lead of Watkins’s earlier work, the book adapted the historic liturgy for Disciples practice and vice versa. It followed the Christian year and included the Common Lectionary. Like Christian Worship: A Service Book, Watkins’s volume is not officially sanctioned by the General Assembly, the denomination’s central deliberative body. But it does represent an approach that is gaining growing approval among Disciples leaders.
Response to Thankful Praise and the movement it represents has been mixed. Many denominational leaders, ministers, and lay leaders are enthusiastic. Approximately half of the Disciples’ congregations make some use of its approach to the Sunday service. But a good many other leaders and congregations find it too big a step to go from Osborn to Watkins in one movement. Some decry the spirit of Thankful Praise as too formal and stiff for the more easygoing style of recent Disciples worship. However, while many of the latter congregations do not embrace Thankful Praise, they do embrace the practice of the Christian year. Some denominational leaders informally estimate that at least three-fourths of Disciples congregations mark some of the major seasons and days. The same leaders estimate that about half of Disciples preachers follow the new Common Lectionary.
A congregation tends to respond positively to the Christian year, lectionary, and Hippolytean approach to worship when the new developments are introduced sensitively and with a program of education that helps the congregation understand their purposes.
The Christian year will likely remain the pattern for Disciples worship for some time. Disciples will discuss, with considerable energy, the degree to which it is appropriate to incorporate the approach to the service represented in Thankful Praise. At present, the seminary professors responsible for training in worship as well as the denomination’s leaders in its general (i.e., international) offices lean towards Thankful Praise. But clergy and the church as a whole have yet to come to a consensus.