What Happens When We Worship?

Many churchgoers assume that worship is inherently boring, something we need to make exciting. But as Jonathan Landry Cruse shows, churchgoing only seems monotonous and mundane because our eyes are blinded to the supernatural wonder that is taking place all around us.

In this book, Cruse helps us perceive the significance of worship and guides us through the spiritual actions of a worship service. Once you recognize how God is doing something to us and for us and through us in each element of the service, Lord’s Day worship will become the highlight of your week!

200 pages

View excerpt here.

“Jonathan Cruse has written a helpful, popular-level guide to corporate worship, which can only serve to enrich the worship of the Christian believer each Lord’s Day, and in turn the Church as a whole. This is a book every minister should encourage every member to read. It will help us all to worship through new eyes, appreciating more deeply why we do what we do when we gather together as Christ’s Church.”

— Jonny Gibson, co-author Reformation Worship

“This excellent book is a fresh, engaging, and thoughtful call to worship. It opens the importance, vitality, and character of worship in a very helpful way.”

— W. Robert Godfrey, Chairman, Ligonier Ministries

“Protestant worship can appear to be boring. The remedy for some is to add beauty and grandeur, for others to add excitement. The Reformers understood that biblical worship needed spice but that such pizzazz came not from externals or style but from Scripture, faith, and a right understanding of what transpires when God's people meet in his name on the Lord's Day. Jonathan Cruse uses the teaching of Scripture and the wisdom Reformed theologians to remind Protestants how extraordinary their simple worship is.”

— D. G. Hart, Hillsdale College

“As responsibility for the faithful transmission of Reformed ministry and worship passes from one generation to the next, Jonathan Cruse has shown himself willing and able to take up the mantle. He presents the old strengths of God-centered, gospel-structured, Spirit-dependent, word-filled, and Bible-regulated worship with a fresh voice, conveying to this generation the genius of worship that is Reformed ‘according to Scripture.’ ”

— Terry L. Johnson, Senior Minister, Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, GA

“I am amazed at how much solid material Jonathan Cruse has managed to pack into these few pages of What Happens When We Worship! Each aspect I think of on this vital subject is addressed succinctly and with biblical fidelity. I love the questions for further discussion. They turn you from a mere intellectual student into a fellow participant in a quest for authentic God-glorifying worship. Read this book and you will increasingly put mind, heart and soul into your worship with renewed enthusiasm.”

— Conrad Mbewe, Pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church, Lusaka, Zambia.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Michael S. Horton

Part 1: Introduction

1. What Happens When We Worship?

Part 2: A Brief Theology of Worship

2. The Most Important Thing We Will Ever Do

3. We Are Being Shaped

4. We Meet with God

5. God Renews His Covenant

6. We Submit to God’s Agenda

7. We Commune with the Saints

Part 3: The Parts of the Service

8. God Calls Us

9. The Verdict Is Pronounced

10. Jesus Gets Up to Preach

11. God Feasts with Us

12. We Get a New Name

13. We Sing a New Song

 Part 4: Conclusion

14. Extraordinarily ordinary Worship

15. Preparing for Worship