I met Professor Chris Hall at Eastern University a few years back and decided then and there that I’d read his stuff. A new book of his, Worshiping With the Church Fathers
, is one I want to use for a series on worship — and his focus will be  on what it was like to worship with the ancient fathers of the Church. This post is just a notice that we will do the series, but I want to begin with his own words:

My evangelical roots, first planted during the Jesus Movement of the late sixties and early seventies, have been nourished by the fathers’ perspectives. The Jesus Movement, for instance, had no ecclesiology. In many ways, Jesus freaks like me, though we loved Jesus himself, were highly suspicious of the church and authority in general, whether institutional or individual.

I have learned from the fathers that the church is much broader and deeper than I had ever imagined. My individualistic, evangelical bent has been tempered by a historical, theological and spiritual lengthening of memory. … This is not to say that I always find myself in agreement with the fathers. We still have our disagreements, but our quarrels now resemble family squabbles and in-house arguments (13).