Toward a Theology of Christian Worship and the Improvement of Worship Participation in Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Africa

In the typical mission station in West Africa in the nineteenth and even in the early twentieth century, life was routinely patterned after the Western mode, hardly reflecting at all the life and routine of the surrounding villages. This was particularly true of their worship. It is the thesis of this doctoral project that an effective approach to promoting and advancing African Christianity is to proclaim the basic principles of Christian worship and faith in such a way that these principles can be understood and lived in any society or culture. Christian worship must be seen as transcending ethnic and cultural barriers. It was the purpose, of this project to introduce these basic principles of worship to the student body and faculty of the Adventist Seminary of West Africa. This school was viewed as having the potential to play a key role through its graduates in influencing the worship patterns of the church in Africa. An extensive statement of a theological nature was prepared as a position paper on worship and constitutes the first part of this report. The practical application of the implications stemming from this statement is reported in the second part of this paper. Certain key concepts are extrapolated from the position paper as the basis for a program of education for worship. Recommendations for incorporating such a program at A.S.W. A. included preaching (as at a student Week of Spiritual Emphasis), the formation of a worship committee, a worship seminar/workshop, Bible-study groups, and a prayer-meeting study series. The first; steps in the implementation of such a program were taken in a Week of Spiritual Emphasis during which twelve sermons on the subject were presented. The activities of this special week are reported, evaluated, and analyzed in this report.