A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

by Michael S. Horton

Now in paper!

"There is a distinct weariness with market-driven, showbiz worship. The pendulum has swung to the longing for transcendence, substance, challenge, and biblically driven worship. Michael Horton shows us the way." --Robert Webber, president, Institute for Worship Studies; author of Ancient-Future Faith

"Horton's enlivening wisdom is surely a godsend to all evangelicals." --J. I. Packer, Regent College

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Paperback, 252 pages

Published May 1st 2003 by Baker Books (first published 2002)

tags: theology, christianity, church, religion, ecclesiology, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“He came down all the way to us, saved us by the death and resurrection of his Son, and continues to provide for our temporal and eternal welfare. But that’s not all: After this he still accommodates, coming all the way down to us again here and now as he uses the most everyday and common elements that are familiar to both the uneducated and the academic: water, bread, and wine. Here God even accommodates to our weakness by allowing us to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” to catch a glimpse of his goodness as he passes by. The writer to the Hebrews calls it tasting of “the powers of the coming age” (Heb. 6:5). Isn’t it a bit arrogant, therefore, for us to respond to this gracious condescension by asking, “But what about the teenagers? How can we make the gospel relevant to people today?”

― Michael S. Horton

“Vagueness about the object of our praise inevitably leads to making our own praise the object.”

― Michael S. Horton

“Many evangelicals have a problem with sacraments precisely because they regard them chiefly as human works, but Scripture presents them as God’s testimony to his work.”

― Michael S. Horton

“It is the preaching of God’s commands that brings conviction, while the proclamation of Christ in the gospel creates and keeps on creating faith and its fruit.”

― Michael S. Horton

“Notice the integral union of the sign and the thing signified: To sin against the bread and cup is to sin against the body and the blood. In order for that statement to hold up syntactically, one cannot simply dissolve the sign into the thing signified (as in the Roman Catholic view), for they are clearly distinct in Paul’s mind: The bread and wine are one thing, the body and blood are something else. Nevertheless, they are not separated (as in the memorialist view) but are bound by Word and Spirit, so that the physical eating of the bread and wine in an unworthy manner constitutes the eating and drinking of God’s wrath for “not discerning the Lord’s body” (v. 29).”

― Michael S. Horton

“Most Americans—professing Christians—for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply “where people are these days.” Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren’t interested in learning it.”

― Michael S. Horton

“In its character, therefore, the Sabbath is not cessation from activity but cessation from a particular kind of activity—namely, the six-day labor that is intrinsically good but has suffered the curse after the fall. God did not rest because he was tired; rather, it was the rest of completion, the rest of a king who has taken his throne. Representing the consummation, this sabbatical pattern was the way not only of hoping for the new creation but of experiencing it and participating in its peace.”

― Michael S. Horton

“A sentimentalized law proclaimed as gospel is disastrous.”

― Michael S. Horton

“Works are witnesses to, not the basis of, our right standing before God.”

― Michael S. Horton

“The choice is not between drama and no drama but which drama? Is it a drama that God is staging for the redemption of a people, or is it a drama that we are staging for God and for each other or for the unchurched? The show must go on, but whose is it?”

― Michael S. Horton

“Whether we are “traditionalists” or “progressivists,” the deeper question is whether we regard the service primarily in terms of God’s action and our response or in terms of our action and God’s passive appreciation.”

― Michael S. Horton

“the Sabbath should not be treated as a blank space in the week but as the one space that is filled and overflowing with the richest gifts of divine activity.”

― Michael S. Horton

“We do not come to church to affirm our faithfulness, our devotion, our praise, and our up-to-the-minute emotional state but to be addressed, undressed, and re-dressed by God.”

― Michael S. Horton

“When the style of our music is always upbeat, loud, and ascending in enthusiasm, we miss the range of biblical teaching about God, ourselves, worship, and the Christian life.”

― Michael S. Horton

“We need to really hear the law in all its threatening power, and then we will be prepared to flee to Christ for safety.”

― Michael S. Horton

“These then are the two grand narratives: “in Adam” and “in Christ.” One is a narrative of pointless rebellion against a good God and his creation, leading only to frustration and death; the other is a narrative of redemption and reconciliation, consummated in everlasting life with the Triune God in a restored cosmos.”

― Michael S. Horton

“Losing confidence in the external world as providing a narrative plot, moderns turned inward, and when they couldn’t find anything inside to make any sense of their lives, they became aimless wanderers, seekers who are “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).”

― Michael S. Horton

“As a receiving instrument, faith comes by hearing, while idolatry is engendered by the impatient demand for that which is seen and experienced directly by the senses.”

― Michael S. Horton

“An evil and adulterous [idolatrous] generation seeks after a sign” (Matt. 12:39 NKJV),”

― Michael S. Horton

“Often, this cry for more practical preaching is the call of the old Adam for more self-help.”

― Michael S. Horton

Michael S. Horton

Dr. Horton has taught apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California since 1998. In addition to his work at the Seminary, he is the president of White Horse Inn, for which he co-hosts the White Horse Inn, a nationally syndicated, weekly radio talk-show exploring issues of Reformation theology in American Christianity. He is also the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. Before coming to WSC, Dr. Horton completed a research fellowship at Yale University Divinity School. Dr. Horton is the author/editor of more than twenty books, including a series of studies in Reformed dogmatics published by Westminster John Knox.... Show more

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