Countercultural Worship: A Plea to Evangelicals in a Secular Age - Paperback

by Mark G. McKim (Author)

While most people in the Western world affirm the existence of God or a "higher power," this conviction has little to do with daily life. God is marginalized in the public square and in the day-to-day lives of most people. This secular approach to life is the most serious challenge the church faces. McKim's contention is that what happens in many evangelical churches on Sunday mornings has also become deeply secularized, with an unrecognized shift in focus away from God to the needs, desires, and preferences of worshippers. Evangelical worship, McKim argues, has drifted far from both its biblical roots and historic origins, leaving evangelicals in danger of becoming mere chaplains to the wider culture, oblivious to the contradictions between what the secular culture says is real and important and what Scripture says is real and important. But McKim also believes the resources exist to step back from the abyss. Countercultural Worship provides a careful theological and biblical study of the purpose, nature, and elements of corporate worship, as well as myriad resources for worship focused exclusively on the God whom we know best in Jesus Christ. Such worship, by its very nature, will be, as it always has been, countercultural.

Author Biography

Mark G. McKim was educated at the University of New Brunswick, Acadia Divinity College of Acadia University, and Boston University. A Baptist clergyman, McKim has combined a life of scholarship with more than twenty-five years pastoring churches in Canada. He has taught in Canada, the United States, and Singapore in theology, church history, and apologetics. This background in both the church and academy gives him a rare vantage point from which to address the problems of evangelical worship.