Review: Worship Together in Your Church as in Heaven

The Christian Church is becoming increasingly diverse. Particularly in the United States, multiethnic encounters are forcing a monoethnic culture into better representing the diversity of its people. This can be an arduous challenge for worship leaders not trained in ethnodoxology, a relatively nascent area in the field of worship studies. In Worship Together in Your Church as in Heaven, Josh Davis and Nikki Lerner assert the necessity for diverse worship and offer practical suggestions for letting a church’s service reflect the richness of all God’s people.

The first section of the book is an argument for multiethnic worship. Davis and Lerner maintain that the biblical precedent of worship makes room for ethnic diversity. The second section of the book discusses how diverse worshipping communities operate, including their benefits and challenges. The third and fourth sections address the process of implementing a multiethnic worship experience, and the fifth section defends the benefits of a hard—but worthwhile—endeavor.

This book is short, applicable, and accessible. Davis and Lerner create a compelling case for multiethnic worship, and they do not hide their points amidst complicated prose. Pull quotes, list of ways to implement the book’s ideas, and “reflect” sections at the end of each chapter make this book useful for individual worship leaders or pastoral teams looking to be diverse in a biblically faithful manner. Davis and Lerner have created an excellent introduction to applying the principles of ethnodoxology in the American church, and all worship pastors would greatly benefit from their insights.

(My thanks is given to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy in exchange for an honest review.)

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