A Glossary of Christian Worship

The revivalist invitation to come forward and decide for Christ; it reordered the whole service toward response.

c. 339–397 · Bishop and popularizer of Latin hymnody; answered Arianism in song. Augustine wept at Milan's singing.

c. 660–740 · Byzantine hymnographer credited with developing the canon form.

The English choral form of the cathedral tradition: sung for the congregation rather than by it.

Two groups singing in alternation; an ancient practice of psalmody in both synagogue and church.

Finney's front-row seat for those under conviction of sin; an ancestor of the altar call.

1225–1274 · Theologian whose eucharistic doctrine became poetry; wrote Pange Lingua Gloriosi for the new Feast of Corpus Christi.

The teaching that the Son is a created being, condemned at Nicaea (325). Ambrose and Ephrem answered it with hymns, doctrine set to melody.

354–430 · Bishop and theologian; wept at the singing he heard in Ambrose's Milan, and the classic definition of a hymn as praise of God with song is attributed to him.

Los Angeles mission where the 1906 revival launched modern Pentecostalism, one of contemporary worship's five tributaries.

1685–1750 · Crowned the German chorale tradition with his harmonizations and cantatas; the parallel German story to Britain's hymn explosion.

The initiating rite of the church, given alongside the Lord's Supper; whether called ordinance or sacrament, one of the two practices commanded by Christ.

The Roman public hall adapted for Christian worship after Constantine; the church moves from living rooms into great spaces.

1640 · The Puritans' metrical psalter and the first book printed in British North America; psalmody crosses the Atlantic.

1090–1153 · Monastic reformer of devotional warmth; texts associated with him stand behind later passion hymns.

1549 · Cranmer's English liturgy, revised in 1552, 1559, and 1662; the ordered heart of Anglican worship.

c. 1510–c. 1560 · Chief musician of the Genevan Psalter; composer of OLD HUNDREDTH (1551), the most traveled tune in Protestant worship.

Costa Mesa congregation at the heart of the Jesus Movement; its label Maranatha! Music carried the new choruses to the wider church.

1509–1564 · Geneva's reformer: metrical psalmody, simplicity, and reverence, on the ground that no songs are more appropriate than “the psalms of David.”

The multi-day outdoor revival gathering of the American frontier (Cane Ridge, 1801); its songs and its call for decision reshaped worship.

Kentucky site of the massive 1801 camp meeting that became the template for frontier revival worship.

The Eastern hymn form built as odes on the biblical canticles; developed by Andrew of Crete and John of Damascus.

A biblical song outside the Psalter, such as the Song of Moses or Luke's four canticles.

The chanted recitation of Scripture in synagogue practice; Exodus 15 still carries its own special chant.

The early church's long period of instruction and preparation before baptism and admission to the Table.

Christian Copyright Licensing International (1988): licenses congregational song and, through its rankings, charts what churches actually sing. A marker of worship becoming a global industry.

The German vernacular congregational hymn of the Lutheran Reformation: sturdy tunes and doctrinal texts for the whole room to sing.

New Testament passages widely read as fragments of the church's earliest hymns: Phil. 2:6–11, Col. 1:15–20, 1 Tim. 3:16.

The late 20th-century adoption of business and marketing models for congregations; one of the five tributaries of contemporary worship.

The annual cycle from Advent through Pentecost ordering worship around the life of Christ; retained by Anglicans, pared back by many Dissenters.

c. 150–c. 215 · Teacher whose writings give the earliest theology of music in Christian worship.

The 8.6.8.6 stanza of English psalmody and hymnody; shared meters are why so many texts and tunes are interchangeable.

c. 272–337 · Emperor whose legalization of Christianity (313) moved worship from house church to basilica.

Capital of the Byzantine world and its worship; the home tradition of the kontakion, the canon, and the Oktoechos.

1731–1800 · Poet and Newton's collaborator on Olney Hymns (1779); “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”

1489–1556 · Archbishop of Canterbury behind the Book of Common Prayer (1549): the entire English liturgy in the vernacular.

1820–1915 · Blind poet of some 8,000 gospel songs; Blessed Assurance (1873).

The fixed cycle of daily prayer, from matins to compline, that ordered monastic life around the hours; also called the divine office or liturgy of the hours.

Psalmist-king of Israel and the Psalter's central figure; appointed the Levitical musicians of temple worship (1 Chr. 25).

Early church manual (late 1st or 2nd century) containing the oldest eucharistic prayers outside the New Testament.

13th c. · The sequence of judgment, sung at the requiem Mass; among the four sequences Trent retained.

1899–1993 · Father of black gospel music, grown from the same testimony impulse as the gospel song; “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” (1932).

A short formula of praise to the triune God; Thomas Ken's “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” sung to OLD HUNDREDTH, is the most familiar.

1703–1758 · New England pastor-theologian of the First Great Awakening, colleague in revival to Whitefield's field preaching.

c. 306–373 · The “Harp of the Spirit”: doctrine taught through hymns in the Syriac church.

From the Greek for thanksgiving; the church's oldest name for the Lord's Supper.

The conviction that congregations may sing only the biblical psalms; the position Watts's hymns eventually broke.

1792–1875 · Revivalist of the “new measures”: pragmatic technique, the anxious bench, worship organized around results.

c. 155 · Justin Martyr's defense of the faith, preserving the earliest full order of service: Scripture, sermon, prayer, then bread and cup.

c. 530–c. 600 · Latin hymn poet of the early medieval West; his passion hymns endured for centuries of Holy Week worship.

The 1215 council that defined transubstantiation, using Aristotle's recovered categories of substance and accidents.

Calvin's city: metrical psalmody, the regulative principle, and the psalter that carried Reformed worship across Europe.

Completed 1562 · All 150 psalms in metrical French, with tunes by Bourgeois and others; Calvin's songbook for the whole congregation.

1607–1676 · German chorale writer ranked second only to Luther; the Thirty Years' War turned his verse personal and devotional.

b. 1974 & b. 1963 · Leaders of the modern hymn movement, writing new congregational hymns as a doctrinal corrective; In Christ Alone (2001).

The simple, subjective, refrain-driven testimony song of revivalism; person-centered by design, abounding in “I,” “me,” and “my.”

1918–2018 · Evangelist who took the crusade model to global scale with song leader Cliff Barrows (1923–2016) and soloist George Beverly Shea (1909–2013).

The unified plainsong repertoire of the Western Mass and office. The “Gregorian” label is largely later legend: Gregory's name was attached generations after his death.

c. 540–604 · Pope whose name became attached to the Western chant tradition, largely by later legend.

1912–2000 · Proposed a decoding of the Masoretic accents as recoverable melody; the claim remains contested among scholars.

Psalms 113–118, sung at Passover; the hymn Jesus and the disciples sang before leaving for the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30).

1934–2023 · Pastor-theologian of praise; wrote “Majesty.”

c. 315–367 · Pioneer of Latin hymnody in the Western church.

1098–1179 · Visionary abbess and composer; unusually for the era, her music survives fully notated.

Sydney megachurch whose worship music went global in the 1990s; “Shout to the Lord” was its breakthrough.

c. 1400 BC · The oldest notated melody in existence, from Ugarit; a pagan hymn to the moon goddess Nikkal, not a biblical text, the backdrop against which Israel sang to YHWH.

In the classic definition attributed to Augustine, praise of God with singing; in practice, the congregation's strophic song of worship.

The congregation's book of songs; from the Reformation to the projection screen, the artifact that carried the church's repertoire and much of its lay theology.

1861 · The Oxford Movement's landmark hymnal, pairing recovered ancient texts with Victorian tunes; “Holy, Holy, Holy” with Dykes's NICAEA.

The era's label for freely written hymns as distinct from psalm paraphrase; Watts's “composures” broke the psalter's monopoly in English worship.

The early-1970s youth revival on the American West Coast whose simple choruses, guitar-led and Scripture-based, reshaped congregational song.

c. 675–749 · Byzantine theologian-hymnographer of the canon tradition.

c. 100–165 · Apologist whose First Apology (c. 155) preserves the earliest full order of Christian worship: the Word and Table shape.

Bergler's thesis that the youth ministry movement's style and expectations gradually remade adult American church culture.

c. 810–c. 865 · Byzantine abbess-hymnographer; the rare woman of the era whose hymns entered the liturgy and stayed.

1640–1704 · Baptist pastor who led his congregation into hymn singing over fierce objection; Baptists begin to sing.

d. 1594 · Exile psalmodist; “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” (1561), to Bourgeois's OLD HUNDREDTH.

A Byzantine hymn form: an extended poetic homily, sung; later largely displaced by the canon.

b. 1948 · Jesus Movement songwriter; “Seek Ye First” (1972), the movement's defining Scripture chorus.

A precentor sings each psalm line and the congregation echoes it back; singing for congregations without books, carried from Britain into American practice.

The 19th- and 20th-century Catholic renewal of worship that culminated in Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium.

The ordered public worship of the church; from the Greek leitourgia, public service.

Sunday, the day of resurrection; the church's weekly gathering day from the beginning.

The meal Jesus instituted within Passover; the Table half of Word and Table, called Eucharist, communion, or Mass across the traditions.

The four songs of Luke's Gospel: Magnificat, Benedictus, Gloria in Excelsis, and Nunc Dimittis; sung by the church ever since.

1483–1546 · Reformer of the chorale: music as the handmaid of the gospel. Wrote roughly 37 hymns and reworked familiar tunes so congregations would feel at home singing his theology.

Mary's song (Luke 1:46–55): Scripture sung back to God, and the first of the Lukan canticles.

Baptist layman and Keach's chief opponent, arguing in print against congregational hymn singing in the 1690s controversy.

Mother of Jesus; her Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) is Scripture sung back to God and the first of Luke's canticles.

The Western eucharistic liturgy; in the medieval period celebrated in Latin, understood as sacrifice, and carried musically by clergy and choir.

The psalms recast in rhymed, metered vernacular verse for congregational singing; Calvin's Geneva made it a movement.

Ambrose's see, where congregational hymn singing so moved the young Augustine that he wept.

D. L. Moody, 1837–1899, & Ira Sankey, 1840–1908 · Urban revivalism's preacher-and-singer model, the template that ran to Graham, Barrows & Shea.

Leaders of the song at the sea (Exodus 15), the founding song of redemption; the canticle tradition begins.

1818–1866 · Oxford Movement translator who returned ancient and medieval hymns to English congregations.

The earliest Western chant notation, appearing from the 9th century; melodic outlines before precise pitch, which is why performance practice remains partly reconstructed.

Finney's pragmatic revival techniques: protracted meetings, the anxious bench, publicity, worship organized around results.

1725–1807 · Slave trader turned pastor-hymnwriter; “Amazing Grace” (1772), written for a New Year's sermon at Olney.

c. 335–c. 414 · Bishop traditionally credited with the Te Deum; the attribution is debated.

Luther's rule for worship: whatever Scripture does not forbid may be retained.

The eight-mode system that organized Byzantine hymnody into a rotating cycle.

English parish where Newton and Cowper wrote the collection Olney Hymns (1779), including “Amazing Grace.”

1779 · Newton and Cowper's collection; “Amazing Grace” first appeared here under the title “Faith's Review and Expectation.”

The Baptist and free-church term for baptism and the Lord's Supper as practices commanded by Christ.

The fixed sung texts of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), as distinct from the propers that change with the day.

The 19th-century Anglican recovery of the church's ancient and medieval heritage; Neale's translations and Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) are its hymnic legacy.

Egyptian town whose ancient rubbish heaps preserved the earliest Christian hymn with musical notation, c. 250.

c. 250 · The earliest Christian hymn surviving with musical notation; modern recordings are scholarly reconstructions.

Apostolic missionaries singing hymns at midnight in the Philippian jail (Acts 16); the epistles preserve what many read as early hymn fragments.

The modern renewal stream born at Azusa Street (1906): expressive, supernaturally aware, revivalism's descendant and a tributary of contemporary worship.

3rd c. or earlier · “O Gladsome Light,” the evening hymn that is the oldest still in continuous Christian use.

Unaccompanied, unison liturgical melody; the medieval West's musical mother tongue. See Gregorian chant.

61–c. 113 · Roman governor whose letter to Trajan (c. 112) is the earliest pagan description of Christian worship: believers met before daybreak and sang “a hymn to Christ as to a god.”

Music in multiple independent voices, flowering in the later Middle Ages; glorious, and one more reason the laity listened rather than sang.

The conviction that sung praise is itself an encounter with God's presence, not merely preparation for the sermon.

The appointed singer who set the tune and pace for congregational psalmody; see lining out.

348–c. 413 · Latin Christian poet; his text “Of the Father's Love Begotten” (c. 400) was later wedded to the plainsong DIVINUM MYSTERIUM.

c. 780–856 · Frankish abbot and archbishop credited with Veni Creator Spiritus.

b. 1974 · British worship songwriter; “10,000 Reasons” (2011).

Calvin's rule for worship: only what Scripture commands may be included. Later the banner of the English Dissenters.

The Mass for the dead; the Dies Irae served as its sequence.

Worship reordered around conversion and decision; one continuous story in North America from Whitefield's field preaching to Graham's crusades.

The classical term for baptism and the Supper as means of grace, used by Catholic, Orthodox, and magisterial Protestant traditions.

1963 · Vatican II's constitution on the liturgy: the liturgy as “source and summit” of the church's life, requiring the “full, conscious, and active participation” of the faithful.

1650 · Psalmody's enduring monument in English; “The Lord's My Shepherd” is its best-loved text.

A short, repeated song setting a Bible text simply, built for a room singing from memory or a screen; Seek Ye First (1972) is the model.

A chanted poem sung after the Alleluia at Mass; the form flourished for centuries until Trent trimmed the many sequences to four.

American singing-school notation using shaped noteheads so untrained singers could read music; Southern Harmony (1835) is its most famous tunebook.

1st c. AD · A secular Greek epitaph song, the oldest complete piece of music to survive, from the New Testament's own century; not a Christian text.

1835 · William Walker's shape-note tunebook, which first married “Amazing Grace” to its now-inseparable tune NEW BRITAIN.

The song of the enslaved African American church, voicing suffering and hope in biblical imagery; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is the timeline's example.

1562 · The “Old Version,” England's dominant metrical psalter for a century and a half before Watts.

Scripture read, prayed, and expounded: the synagogue's order of worship, which seeded the Christian service of the Word.

4th c. · The church's great prose-hymn of praise, attributed to Niceta of Remesiana; the attribution is debated.

b. 1972 · American worship songwriter; “How Great Is Our God” (2004).

1740–1778 · Calvinist hymnwriter of “Rock of Ages”; fought Wesley over perfectionism in dueling verse.

The doctrine that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood in substance; defined at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.

“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal”: the ancient acclamation that remains a fixture of Eastern liturgy.

Bronze Age city that yielded the Hurrian Hymn (c. 1400 BC), the oldest notated melody in existence; a pagan hymn to the goddess Nikkal, the sound world around Israel's psalms.

9th c. · Invocation of the Holy Spirit credited to Rabanus Maurus; still sung at ordinations, councils, and papal conclaves.

The language of the people; the Reformation's demand for worship and Scripture alike, echoed by Rome itself at Vatican II four centuries later.

1674–1748 · Father of English hymnody; his “hymns of human composure” broke the psalter's monopoly. “When I Survey” (1707), “O God, Our Help” (1719).

1707–1788 & 1703–1791 · Some 8,000 hymns between them (counts vary); Methodism born singing. John called the 1780 hymnal “a little body of experimental and practical divinity.”

1714–1770 · Field preacher of the First Great Awakening; the open-air beginning of revivalism's continuous story.

Luther's city and the birthplace of the chorale Reformation.

The two-part shape of Christian worship, Scripture and sermon joined to the Supper; visible already in Justin Martyr's description, c. 155.

The late 20th-century conflict between traditional and contemporary styles of congregational worship.

Beginning with Youth for Christ in the mid-1940s, the first time churches earmarked money and energy specifically for the young; the first tributary of contemporary worship.

b. 1965 · Worship leader of Hillsong's global rise; “Shout to the Lord” (1993).

Zwingli's city, where Reformation worship was stripped of music entirely.

1484–1531 · Zurich's reformer; alone among the major reformers, he removed music from worship entirely.