Scott Aniol

Scott Aniol is the founder and Executive Director of Religious Affections Ministries. He is Chair of the Worship Ministry Department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses in ministry, worship, hymnology, aesthetics, culture, and philosophy. He is the author of Worship in Song: A Biblical Approach to Music and Worship, Sound Worship: A Guide to Making Musical Choices in a Noisy World, and By the Waters of Babylon: Worship in a Post-Christian Culture, and speaks around the country in churches and conferences. He is an elder in his church in Fort Worth, TX where he resides with his wife and four children.

Author Archives: Scott Aniol

Notes from sessions at the Wilds Music Conference

Notes from sessions at the Wilds Music Conference

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This past week I spoke at the Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center Music Conference. I was the keynote speaker for the pre-conference on Monday, I presented one general session, and I taught three workshops. Several people, both at the Wilds Music Conference and online, have asked for copies of my notes from sessions I… Continue Reading

The Good and the Bad of Missional Worship

The Good and the Bad of Missional Worship

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This entry is part 12 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

There is little doubt that the missional church movement has been influential in evangelical churches, and that it continues to grow. Having surveyed the history and theology of this important movement and specifically its impact upon the worship of the evangelical church, the question remains as to whether this influence has been beneficial or not.… Continue Reading

The Incarnational Mode of Missional Worship

The Incarnational Mode of Missional Worship

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This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

With regard to the missional movement’s understanding of Christendom, it is important to recognize that they saw what happened during this period as little more than the church contextualizing worship to the dominant culture of the civilization. Since Christianity happened to be the dominant religion of the western world, the church was able to easily… Continue Reading

Twenty-first Century Western Post-Modernism as Missional Worship Context

Twenty-first Century Western Post-Modernism as Missional Worship Context

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This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

According to missional authors, the Christendom model significantly affects how the average 21st century American church practices worship. During the Christendom period, the church dominated the culture, and therefore the forms used in worship were in many ways indistinguishable from the forms of Western culture. According to Murray, “Sunday” as a holy day, the clergy/laity… Continue Reading

The Missionary Imperative of Missional Worship

The Missionary Imperative of Missional Worship

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This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Part of the difficulty in attempting to synthesize a philosophy of missional worship is that many different groups have adopted the term missional to describe their approach to church ministry, not all of which ascribe to the fundamental characteristics of the missional movement. For example, while missional church advocates discussed in this series repudiate an… Continue Reading

The Missional Philosophy of Culture

The Missional Philosophy of Culture

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This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Inherent in the missional church’s insistence upon incarnation and contextualization is the idea that no aspect of culture is inherently sinful, or at very least unredeemable. Missional proponents believe that there are very few aspects of human culture that are actually sinful in and of themselves; they might cite pornography or something similar as an… Continue Reading

The Incarnational Mode of the Missional Church

The Incarnational Mode of the Missional Church

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This entry is part 7 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

If the “why” of mission is the fact that God sends the church, and if the “where” of mission is post-Christendom Western culture, then for the missional advocates the “how” of mission is incarnation. By incarnation, missional writers mean that a truly missional church is one that is embedded in its target culture. Hirsch notes,… Continue Reading

The State of Mission Today

The State of Mission Today

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This entry is part 6 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Missional authors argue that the church today has failed to recognize that the Christendom era has ended. It no longer enjoys the level of influence and status it once did, but its structures, ministries, philosophies, and methods nevertheless remain the same. Mead notes, We are surrounded by the relics of the Christendom Paradigm, a paradigm… Continue Reading

The Rise and Fall of Christendom

The Rise and Fall of Christendom

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This entry is part 5 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Understanding this missionary imperative for the church leads missional writers to ask the question, “Is the 21st-century North American church fulfilling its place in the mission of God?” Guder answers bluntly, “Neither the structures nor the theology of our established Western traditional churches is missional.”1 Rather, the church today is locked in the mode of what… Continue Reading

Did Luther use tunes from love songs?

Did Luther use tunes from love songs?

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It is irresponsible to claim that Luther used tunes from secular loves songs for his hymns and compare it to today’s situation. If there is one argument in defense of bringing secular musical forms into the church that I’ve heard more than any other, it is certainly one that insists that Luther used tunes from… Continue Reading

The Missionary Imperative of the Missional Church – the Church as Sent

The Missionary Imperative of the Missional Church – the Church as Sent

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This entry is part 4 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Flowing naturally from the idea that God has an overarching mission for mankind, thus rendering that mission God-centered, is the assertion that the church, as one component of that mission, is sent by God to help accomplish the mission. Newbigin saw a natural flow from the idea that mission begins with God’s purpose of reconciling… Continue Reading

The Missionary Imperative of the Missional Church – Missio Dei

The Missionary Imperative of the Missional Church – Missio Dei

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This entry is part 3 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

The first principle that drives the missional church is what it considers the biblically-mandated missionary imperative. But while the evangelical church has traditionally considered evangelism and missions a critical reason for its existence, the missional church understands such an emphasis as not just one ministry among many but as the overarching idea of what it… Continue Reading

A Brief History of the Missional Church Movement

A Brief History of the Missional Church Movement

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This entry is part 2 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

In order to understand the driving impulses behind the North American evangelical missional church movement and its impact on worship, I will begin with a brief survey of the history of ideas embedded in missional. Contemporary missional thinking began within the larger ecumenical missions debates in the early twentieth century. Critics of standard missionary methods… Continue Reading

The Influence of the Missional Church on Worship

The Influence of the Missional Church on Worship

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This entry is part 1 of 12 in the series Missional Worship You can read more posts from the series by using the Contents in the right sidebar.

Most church leaders readily recognize that God has tasked the church with several different purposes, yet how those purposes work together has equally mystified them. One of the most potentially difficult ministry relationships to reconcile has been of that between worship and evangelism. The church growth movement answered the question by insisting that the church’s… Continue Reading

To sing or not to sing, that is the question

To sing or not to sing, that is the question

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An interesting online discussion has emerged in the past few weeks about the issue of not singing a particular song in a service when that song expresses sentiments you do not believe to be true. The discussion began with Roger Olson, who argued that we should not sing a song when the doctrine does not… Continue Reading

The Hebrew Worship Textbook

The Hebrew Worship Textbook

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The books of Chronicles are very important for anyone desiring to study Hebrew worship. For the average reader of the Old Testament, however, the books may seem redundant, simply repeating material found in 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Why would God include another two books recording the same events? A couple… Continue Reading

Man’s purpose is to worship and obey

Man’s purpose is to worship and obey

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In the creation account of Genesis 1-2, most English translations make it seem like Adam was put in the Garden for gardening purposes, since Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” However, there may be something more beneath the… Continue Reading