Worship

Worship (Workshop) in a Nondenominational Tradition

Atla Annual Hymn of Praise 2024

Steve Jung, MSLS, MDiv, Associate Director of Library Services, Hope International University

Abstract This in-person worship service was constructed not to be a common devotional experience, but a workshop on hymn-writing. Employing an ancient method for constructing a hymn, the participants wrote down various virtues or characteristics of God and God’s activities based on those characteristics. Participants focused on virtues that were reflective of our professional lives: collecting, ordering, preserving, and making accessible knowledge and wisdom. The resulting hymn was then presented orally. After the workshop, the stanzas were collected, ordered, and are now available online. The goal of the exercise was to be intellectually stimulating and fun, but most importantly, to be worshipful.

Introduction

One of my areas of interest is the compositional approaches of first-century writers. What were students taught about rhetoric in the gymnasium, which offered intellectual and philosophical formation along with physical exercises? Rather than go over a devotion based on a text, I decided to make the worship service more of a workshop; we were going to workshop a hymn. I am not a musician, but this was not about music — it was about an ancient form of literature. My intention was to give a little explanation of enkomion (Greek, “hymn writing”; Latin, encomium), go over one hymn written in the New Testament that follows this style (Philippians 2.1–11, the hymn of the humility of Christ), and direct the participants in writing a hymn.

The Handout and Lesson

The handout for the workshop includes part of one lesson, “On Encomium and Invective,” written by a first century grammarian and teacher, Aelius Theon. The gist of the lesson is that when one composes an enkomion (for a person), it follows a certain pattern. When one does the same thing for a dead person, it is called an epitaphios, and, for a god, a hymn. First, one writes about the person’s birth. This is followed by praise for the person’s virtues and actions based upon those virtues. That would be followed by praises for the person’s appearance and health. And, lastly, one writes about the person’s luck or fortune. As we were going to praise God, we didn’t need praises about God’s appearance or health, and God isn’t “lucky.” That left us with finding virtues, or aspects of God’s character, to praise, and the deeds and actions based upon those virtues. I mentioned Johannine characteristics, such as love and light. I also mentioned the characteristics from Exodus 34:5–7: gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, faithfulness, and forgiving. Any of those would be wonderful to focus on, but we are a collection of librarians. I wanted us to bring attention to our librarianship: we collect, bring order, preserve, and make accessible all knowledge and wisdom. Therefore, we should focus on those aspects in God as creator of all of those things.

We took ten minutes to write down a list of virtues and deeds coming from those virtues. I had written out four simple formulaic lines to demonstrate a pattern to follow. After that silent time, I explained that we would read our “verse” of the hymn and that everyone would respond with the refrain “Your steadfast love endures forever.”

The Hymn We Workshopped

In person, we read our lines, one at a time. Each spoken line was followed by a refrain, “Your steadfast love endures forever.” After the closing prayer, I asked to take pictures of their worksheets, so that I could put the lines all together for preservation purposes. What follows is the lines from the participants, but I have arranged their order (because honestly there is no way that I could remember the order that they were read).

Atla Annual Hymn of Praise 2024

Thank you for your compassion in providing us with companions on our journey, both intellectual and spiritual, in our desire to be closer to you.