Is Christian worship best conceived as a creative, Spirit-fueled experience that any formalized structure necessarily inhibits, or are there any biblical prescriptions around for worship that Christians were meant to follow?

In light of recent research from various disciplines-including history, psychology, and New Testament studies - In Defense of Christian Ritual: The Case for a Biblical Pattern of Worship argues the latter.

Specifically, this book will demonstrate three things.

Readers will discover that the apostolic teaching embodied in the church's early ritual, as expressed in its liturgy, was never intended to be outdated or rendered irrelevant in light of current fads. It was never meant to be a relic of the ancient past, but a structured way of bringing the "memoirs of the apostles" -that Jesus died for sinners- to God's people in the here and now.