Public Worship: Fire and Form Columns

Fire and Form Worship Columns

Welcome to Fire and Form—Spirit-led Worship. I am excited to share what I have discovered in more than forty years of worship study and practice.

Fire and Form Columns are weekly exhortations to the congregation to help inspire them to worship and to inform them about worship. Teaching on worship and leading worship are not the same so most worship leaders and pastors spend more time preparing and leading worship services than they do teaching the people about worship. Fire and Form Columns provide a short instructional/inspirational essay that can be posted on the church website each week. Over the space of a year, the congregation can become an informed Holy, Royal Priesthood! Pastors can unify the expectations of their congregations.

You can find the Fire and Form Columns by clicking here.

How to use Fire and Form Worship Columns

Pastors and Worship Leaders

The columns are yours to share with your people in an y way you choose; on your church’s web site or publication.

What is their purpose?–a united vision for worship!

Pastors and worship leaders have to deal with conflicting expectations in the worship service. If there are 500 worshipers in the congregation, there could be several hundred competing visions for what should happen in the service. The answer to this is to preach, teach and model a unifying vision for the worship service. This can only be found it the Word of God. There is truth to be had there that can make us ONE just as Jesus prayed we would be.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:20-21 NIV

Fire and Form Worship Columns are a direct and simple way to teach on Worship.

The Worship Leader needs to lead worship and the Pastor needs to preach the Gospel, I know full-well the burden of each. Many Pastors preach yearly sermon series on worship and well they should–but worship happens every week in church and should happen every day in the lives of the people. These columns encourage and inform on both areas of worship.

Bible not Tradition

My purpose is not to promote my personal brand of public or private worship. My purpose is to bring the light of Scripture to the subject. I write from a Pentecostal background and I will not short-change the ministry of the Holy Spirit in worship. Neither will I make this a Pentecostal polemic. Again my purpose is to unite, not divide. If you should find a column that you disagree with, simply skip it that week. I ask that you not correct it! It still has my name on it!

Proper Attribution

Please put this notice on each use of a column:

© by Stephen R. Phifer All Rights Reserved
More worship helps available at stevephifer.com

Worshipers!

You need not be a pastor or a worship leader to be enriched by these columns–There us so much Bible knowledge to acquire. As the Angel said to John on the Isle of Patmos:

“Worship God!” Rev 22:9 NIV

God bless you as you continually honor Him!

Semper Reformanda!
Stephen Phifer
Fire and Form 101