Analysis of responses to Q20. For those worship pastors who utilize Scripture reading as a part of their worship service beginnings, Q20 was crafted to discover whether a particular theme or focus characterized the Scripture passages typically employed in the service beginnings. As indicated in Figure 9, passages of Scripture that convey God’s immanence, God’s transcendence, or Christ and his gospel are rarely employed in the opening segments of worship. Instead, for those churches in which a generalization can be made, 47.1% of the worship pastors chose Scripture that could be characterized as adoration and praise. This selection seems to indicate that worship pastors are more predisposed in service beginnings to encourage their congregations in their role of praising God rather than to tell their congregations something praiseworthy about God, God’s character, or God’s work.

Slightly more than one-third of the worship pastors surveyed who use Scripture in their worship beginnings do not indicate a predictable or recurring theme or focus for that Scripture. I would postulate that this could be due to the strong value identified in Q18 of complimenting the pastor’s message or series theme, which would then predispose a worship pastor to select elements of worship, including opening Scripture passages, that are complimentary to that theme.

Figure 9. Themes or focal points that characterize Scripture reading employed as a part of worship service beginnings

One sphere of inquiry related to this research could be stated as follows: “Do worship service beginnings show evidence of being influenced by a goal, value, or objective held by the worship pastor that purposes to represent God in his transcendent otherness?” I would conclude from the data that the answer is no. Representing God in his transcendent otherness as a foundational or initial beginning point for a worship service is not a strongly influential goal, value, or objective for many worship pastors as they construct the beginning moments of their worship services. When asked to characterize the focus of the elements that most often occur as a part of worship service beginnings, transcendence ranks fifth (see Figure 7). In the group of five elements that worship pastors commonly chose to include in their service beginnings, transcendence ranks last (gospel, immanence, thanksgiving, announcements, transcendence).

The absence of grounding the worship service in God’s transcendence is also indicated in the response patterns to Q19 and Q20. Scripture is only typically used as a part of worship beginnings by only 37% of worship pastors. Of those 37% who do use Scripture as a part of their service beginnings, only 5.8% use Scripture that would convey God’s distinction.

A related sphere of inquiry can be stated as follows: “If the worship service beginnings do not represent God in his transcendent otherness, how do worship pastors most often initially represent God?” As stated earlier in the analysis of Q18, the characteristic focus of worship beginnings is more dynamically varied rather than singularly focused. Figure 7 showed five distinct characterizations of elements that often comprise worship service beginnings: adoration/celebration of the gospel, adoration/celebration of God’s immanence, thanksgiving, announcements/greetings, and adoration/celebration of God’s transcendence. However, the characteristic focus of the elements that most often occur as a part of service beginnings are the celebration/adoration of Christ, the cross, and the gospel and the adoration/celebration of God’s immanence. Not surprisingly, Southern Baptists are noted for a praiseworthy spirit of evangelicalism and a deep passion to tell others of God’s great love and Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross for the sins of mankind. Both of these expressions—God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice—can be characterized as immanent expressions of God to and for his people. However, the great danger of the passionate declaration of God’s immanent love and sacrifice is that they can be diminished in size, scope, and value when not properly contextualized by God’s transcendence. The responses to Q21 indicate that what God does for his people—he loves, he cares, and he sacrificially dies—is more present in worship service beginnings than who God is—his distinction, separateness, “wholly otherness,” holiness, glory, independence, et al.

In addition, scriptural beginnings (within the first ten minutes of a service) are absent in over 60% of the churches sampled. If used, the Scripture that worship pastors most often selected to begin a worship service was categorized as that of adoration and praise selected from the Psalms. A third of the worship pastors sampled report that no generalizations could be made about the Scriptural themes or focal points used to begin a service.

The high number of worship pastors reporting no common practice of Scripture reading during the first ten minutes of a worship service (62.7%) (Extrapolated from Table 6.) and the low occurrence of Scripture reading that points toward God’s transcendence (5.8%) (See Table 7) may be indicative of an overall worship design paradigm that is not governed by the principle of revelation-response or the rhythm of transcendence then immanence.

Presentation of Q20 and response bank. Worship pastors were asked to respond to this request:

Q20. If Scripture is read at or near the beginning of your worship service (within the first 10 minutes), please check the kind of passage that most often describes the flavor/theme/focus of that Scripture:

Worship pastors were asked to select from the following six thematic categories of Scripture. Categories were randomized to minimize sequence-related response bias.

1. We do not typically include Scripture reading at or near the beginning of a worship service.
2. Scripture of adoration and praise: for example, “Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!” (Ps. 98:1) or “Praise the Lord! Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Ps. 106:1) or “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs” (Ps. 100:1).
3. Scripture that conveys God’s distinction and separateness from his creation: for example, “….I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos. 11:9b) or “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth….He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Is. 40:22) or “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!” (Job 38:4-5b).
4. Scripture that focuses on Christ and his Gospel: for example, “Therefore, having been justified out of faith, we have peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1) or “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:8) or “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
5. Scripture that points toward God’s nearness and/or his care and provision for his creation: for example, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7) or “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5b) or “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mat. 11:28).
6. No generalizations can be made about the kind of Scripture passages we commonly choose to read at or near the beginning of a worship service.

Table 7 indicates the responses by worship pastors characterizing the kind of passage that most often describes the flavor, theme, or focus of the Scripture they select as a part of their worship service beginnings.

35. This table does not include the 41 responses to the answer choice, “Scripture is not included in service beginnings.”