mgpcpastor's blog

What does Rhythms Of Grace (Mike Cosper, Crossway Publishing, 2013) promise?
In 220 pages Mike Cosper, pastor and musician, seeks to relate the biblical and historical expressions that underpin a corporate worship that week by week retells the story that “God is holy, we are sinners, and Jesus saves us from our sins.”
What I liked.
Cosper clearly does not over reach. The focus of the book is on the elements of corporate worship and their capacity to communicate the framework of the Gospel time after time.
The first four chapters lay out the interactions of God with His people in Eden, the wilderness, the land, and how these reach their culmination and fulfilment in Jesus.
The fifth chapter introduces Cosper’s own contribution, the paradigm “Worship – One, Two, Three.” By this he means worship has one object and author; two contexts; and three audiences. Unpacked the one is the Trinity; the two are Christians scattered and gathered; the three are God, the Church and the World.
This paradigm seems balanced, affirming the vertical aspects of worship as well as horizontal, acknowledging all of life as worship while still affirming the unique aspects of corporate gathering, and understanding that the presence of God, believers and unbelievers in worship does not lead to either/or choices in content.
The remaining five chapters provide practical expressions which seem to follow contours of a dialectical covenant renewal observed in Bryan Chapell’s Christ Centered Worship.
Material at the end of the book reveals how these principles are finding expression in a variety of ways.
What I was unsure about.
Worship emerges from theology and nourishes that theology.
While Cosper’s paradigm is Gospel and redemptive centred, the elements of preaching and sacrament, along with issues of ecclesiology are need to fill out the response of Christian living which underpins corporate and all of life worship.
This limitation is recognised and other works which address this need are referred to.
It should also be noted that these principles at the heart of this book are very much a work in progress among many of these non-denominational start-up churches and it is expected that further time will see their trajectory more fully address these concerns.

Rhythms Of Grace is a well thought out and primer and introduction to the link between biblical theology and at the actions of worship. For those who already have a confessional background, the book informs how part of the contemporary calvinist movement find themselves progressing in gathered worship towards forms that are similar to our own. For those who are frustrated with corporate gatherings that are either primarily didactic or subjectively emotive Cosper points out biblical worship is both intellectually nourishing and emotionally expressive.

Crossway Publishing provided me with a copy of Rhythms Of Grace, though I’ve also bought another copy for myself.
A positive review was not a requirement.