Review of “Rhythms of Grace” by Mike Cosper

Cosper, Mike. Rhythms of Grace: How the Church’s Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2013. $15.99

Has the church forgotten the story of the gospel? While there may be a small aspect in most churches that explain the gospel, most have made it merely a secondary issue. Mike Cosper has noticed this trend and seeks to show that worship in the church should regularly tell the gospel story. Being the worship pastor of Sojourn Community Church, Cosper is well known for his contribution to the discussion of worship and music philosophy and practice. He contributes to the discussion of music through his unique way of telling the gospel story from creation to the ministry of Jesus and revealing the big picture of what corporate worship services should emulate. The gospel story is saturated with grace, thus worship in the church should represent this grace. Cosper concludes that there should be a connection between the gospel and worship in which the worship practices should regularly reflect the beautiful story of the redeeming work of Christ and His abundant grace.

Cosper does a beautiful job of clearly presenting the story of the gospel beginning with creation. The first four chapters are dedicated to show how worship changed from Eden, to the wilderness, to Israel, and to Jesus. After describing this story, there is an explanation of where the church is now concerning music and the ultimate goal of the gathering of believers. The following chapter then discusses the history of church music practices and how gospel shaped liturgy has been transformed through time. The remaining chapters deal with the specifics of music used in the church by addressing issues such as singing, musical styles, contextualization, the role of the pastoral worship leader. Altogether, the major premise of the book urges the reader to look beyond the details that so often cloud judgment and look at the story of the gospel and grace that affects every area of life, including worship.

In order to develop his argument for gospel shaped worship services, it is important the Cosper begins with the story of the gospel. He shares the story of the gospel in the style of a creative narrative while also interweaving philosophical comments concerning music practices. The very nature in which he tells the gospel story makes it compelling to the reader. In telling the gospel story, references to music practices or explained in a concise way especially when he explained the song of Israel. “begins with the starlit hope of the patriarchs as they sing bleary-eyed songs of their promised future…becomes a slave song…evolves into the road song of a tribe in the desert” (59).

The major focus of the book was to highlight the gospel story and show how the church has reflected this story in its history. With both of these historical ideas, Cosper gives a thorough yet concise overview. His transition from the gospel and the history of the church to practical issues is effective when he explains what gospel shaped liturgy looks like. He clears up terms associated with liturgy and gives solid examples of gospel shaped liturgies used today. The debatable aspect to the book comes when he concludes the support for his argument for gospel shaped liturgy with his own music philosophy. He addresses issues in the last few chapters that could have taken an entirely new book to fully explain. His remaining chapters could have been spent on issues more associated with the liturgy telling the story of the gospel.

In critiquing the way in which he handles the music debate, it seems that he did not address key issues that needed to be addressed in order to make certain conclusions. For example, he makes the conclusion, “when worship gets married to a particular style of music, the consequences are huge” (180). With statements such as the aforementioned, there would need to be more of an emphasis on his view of culture and the morality of music neither of which were expressed in depth. Also, some would argue that the revivalist characteristics of a service that he described are “compelled by a desire to stir emotions through other means” (115) is the type of service that he does not warn against later on in his book.

It was not Cosper’s intention to write this book from a completely neutral viewpoint. His philosophy of music was prevalent even though this book was not written for that purpose. In his declarative statements he oftentimes quotes Best which shows to the type of music philosophy he leans towards. In light of the current trends of church music, this is a great book to encourage the church to realize that rehearsing the gospel story is not solely a practice of antiquity but should be practiced on a daily basis in the local congregation.