Worship Today : Understanding, Practice, Ecumenical Implications. This item is unavailable.Worship Today : Understanding, Practice, Ecumenical Implications

Worship is central to the church and to the churches; and issues of common worship are central to the ecumenical movement. Yet many discussions of worship reveal a lack of detailed knowledge about what unites -- and divides -- the churches in their worship today. This book offers a wide-ranging and fascinating survey of the contemporary state of Christian worship. Some thirty liturgists, theologians, church leaders and pastors present their church's current understanding and practice of worship. The impact of the liturgical renewal and ecumenical movements on worship is considered. Two ecumenical communities, Iona and Grandchamp, explain how their distinctive worship life is rooted in Christian tradition, and two essays reflect on the significance of worship in ecumenical contexts. In a concluding section, five prominent liturgists reflect on the current state of Christian worship and on opportunities and challenges facing the churches, both individually and ecumenically, in their worship today.

Thomas F Best is an Executive Secretary for Faith and Order in the World Council of Churches. Dagmar Heller was an Executive Secretary for Faith and Order in the WCC, and is now Regional Secretary for Mission and Ecumenism of the Protestant Church in Baden for Northern Baden, Heidelberg, Germany. Dagmar Heller, a former executive secretary in Faith and Order, is now executive secretary for ecumenical relations, and for bilateral dialogues with Orthodox churches, of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD).