Liturgy is one of those words that we often have an immediate, strong reaction to.

For some, the word stirs a sense of deep meaning, historical rootedness, and comforting familiarity.

For others, liturgy evokes far less positive notions, a form of worship full of archaic language, outdated

ritual, and dead repetition. In our interview today, I'm talking with Jonathan Gibson about why

liturgy, something he argues that we all already have, even if we don't know it, can be such a powerful

force for good in the life of the Christian when rightly

understood and practiced. Jonathan serves as associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster

Theological Seminary and is the author of Be Thoulogy Vision, a liturgy for daily worship from

Crossway. Let's get started. Well, Johnny, thank you so much for joining me today on the

Crossway podcast. It's good to be here, Matt. So today we're going to talk about this topic of

liturgy. It's a word that for some, I think, is encouraging. It's got a richness and a depth to it. But then for many others,

I think there's a suspicion around this idea of liturgy. It can evoke feelings of coldness or dryness

or Roman Catholicism or something like that. And so I want to kind of unpack that a little bit

and explore why you would say this is a really

valuable, valuable concept for all Christians. So maybe before we jump in to some of those other

topics, though, could you just define liturgy simply? What do you mean when you use that word?

Well, the first thing I would say is that it comes from the Bible. It's a Greek word,

liturgy, from which we get our English word liturgy. And it's used in two ways in the New Testament.

One way is in Philippians 2.30, where Paul says that Apaphroditus's self-sacrificial service,

work was a service to him, a liturgy.

It was like an act of worship.

And then it's used more narrowly in other parts,

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