Pass the plate?

Abstract

At a time when many congregations are changing their practice of uplifting an offering during worship, this article offers a commentary on the history of the development of offering from the early church to contemporary Scottish Reformed worship. It will be demonstrated that in both early and recent church history, the offering was understood as an element of worship, part of the people’s response to God and symbolic of a broader offering of the self to God’s service, and the case will be made for its retention in the liturgy as an invitation to participation in the ministry of the church.