Worship Weblog
Monday, October 31, 2005
‘E-mails from Korea:’ Banner cover story
Earlier this year at this weblog, we posted e-mail excerpts from CICW part-time assistant Katie Ritsema from her trip to South Korea. Portions of Katie’s e-mails have just been published as the cover story of The Banner, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church. As always, we’re proud of Katie and struck by her insight in these reflections.
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WOWAW 19: Worship as God’s ‘language school for life’
This week’s Words of Wisdom About Worship:
The way we talk in worship affects the way we talk in the rest of our lives, and vice versa. In the place of worship, we cannot pray or sing faithfully without our words being full of the sorrows and joys of life. Conversely, the words of worship--prayer words, sermon words, hymn words, Bible words, creedal words, words of praise and penitence, protest and pardon--are like stones thrown into the pond; they ripple outward in countless concentric circles, finding ever fresh expression in new places in our lives.
Worship is, as I have said, a key element in the church’s ‘language school’ for life. The point is not to go through life speaking in a ‘stained-glass voice.’ The point is to let the language of worship shape our witness outside the sanctuary.
--Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, p.47
• Listen to a reading of this quote(mp3)
by CICW’s Nathan Bierma
Earlier: WOWAW 18
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“It’s your existence I love you for”
In a sermon Friday at the Calvin Seminary chapel (which CICW staff attended with a contingent of visiting worship leaders), Scott Hoezee of the Center for Excellence in Preaching said that our love for friends or family members “goes beyond the specific things we like about them” to a “fundamental delight that this unique person is there at all.” Hoezee quoted a character in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead who says, “It’s your existence I love you for.” Loving God, Hoezee says, “begins with a sheer delight that God exists and has made himself known to us.”
It was a helpful introduction to the first of the 8 things we say in worship: Love You//Praise.
Also see: Practicing Right Relationship from Alban Weekly
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Preparing to Pray 10/26/05
Jesus stays with us in the Spirit,
who renews our hearts,
moves us to faith,
leads us in the truth,
stands by us in our need,
and makes our obedience fresh and vibrant.
-from Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, art. 31, used in the Reformation Day 2003 worship service outline from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
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Tuesday, October 25, 2005
A Visit to Caldwell Chapel in Louisville
I made my first visit to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary last week for a
consultation of religion websites supported by Lilly Endowment (as ours is).
This included my first visit to the soaring and sturdy Caldwell Chapel. The most striking thing about this worship space is its verticality—the sloped beams, which supply the chapel’s architectural energy, thrust your eyes and your soul upward. But while this chapel is an allusion to Gothic cathedrals, the space does not overly compromise the horizontal commonality of worshipers the way cathedrals often do.
As I stood in solitude in the empy chapel, the wood around me creaked, splitting the silence; it felt like the building was breathing.
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Podcasting, as begun in 1825
David Morgan, Professor of Christianity and the Arts and of Humanities and Art History at Valparaiso University, and author of The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, writes in Sightings:
A recent New York Times article on downloading missed church services to one’s iPod, called “godcasting” by one Protestant pioneer of the medium, reminded me of a pamphlet published by the American Tract Society around 1825 on how best to spend the Sabbath when one is unable to attend church (tract no. 34, “A Sabbath at Home"). One imagines that the iPod
provides an experience preferable to the one illustrated in the tract, where a man is depicted kneeling before a chair, praying with face buried in hands. But the intention remains the same in each case: Convenient media are deployed to provide useful substitutes to church services—though not enduring ones, since both Protestant purveyors of pious media artifacts—tract and iPod—would have their “customers” attend church often.What’s new about podcasting besides the convenience of novel technology to match the hurried lives of people today? Essentially nothing—and that is important, because it ensures that the new medium fits the old message.
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“The glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit”
The Summer 2005 issue of Christian History includes a brief appreciation of J.S. Bach by Patrick Cavanaugh. It quotes Bach as saying, “Music’s only purpose should be the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit.”
Calvin Stapert probed the theology of Bach in his book for CICW’s Liturgical Studies Series with Eerdmans, entitled My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach. Stapert writes:
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Monday, October 24, 2005
Baltimore Basilica Restoration
I picked up a brochure for the Baltimore Basilica at the Baltimore Visitors Center on the Inner Harbor earlier this month, but found out the cathedral ("America’s First Cathedral,” the brochure announces) is closed for renovation. It is scheduled to reopen in November 2006.
The Baltimore Basilica was the site of the Third Plenary Council, which wrote the Baltimore Catechism. That catechism includes this description of prayer:
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WOWAW 18: Worship as ‘Vital Instinct’
This’ week’s Words of Wisdom about Worship:
Some worship to meet somebody else’s expectations. Some worship out of pure habit. Some worship in spite of—or because of—the fact that they are locked in some kind of struggle with God, whom they experience as an adversary.
But many feel themselves drawn to worship—though they may not be able to say why. Some vital instinct rises up to praise the One from who our lives—and all lives—have sprung. The majesty of the Divine evokes praise, much as a spectacular sunset moves even the atheist to a sense of awe. A deeply rooted human impulse urges us to bless the power that formed the universe and keeps it in motion. People worship because it comes as naturally as eating and drinking. We simply can’t help it.
—Ronald Byars, Christian Worship: Glorifying and Enjoying God
• Listen to a reading of this quote(mp3) by CICW’s Nathan Bierma
Earlier: WOWAW 17
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Report from ‘Worship Matters’ in Milwaukee
“Welcome to this transformed place, a place for transformation,” Pastor
James Rand greeted the more than 60 guests who had come together at
Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church. Traveling from Indiana, Illinois, Iowa,
and Wisconsin, we were here to talk about Worship Matters: Planning Worship that Connects with Your Congregation.
The beautifully redesigned space provided a place to worship and to talk
about worship. Rocking chairs in the back of the sanctuary with quilts
hanging over the back told us that all ages are welcome in this place.
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Preparing to Pray 10/21/05
No longer will violence be heard in your land
nor ruin or destruction within your borders,
but you will call your walls Salvation
and your gates Praise.
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
-from Isaiah 60:18, 20, opening sentence to CICW service outline, The Kingdom that Cannot Be Shaken
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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Reflections from the Psalm Festival
This past Saturday night I worshiped God in every style imaginable. I was stretched to sing words that I might not have meant at the time in styles that were unfamiliar and, at times, quite uncomfortable. I was forced to resonate with people of other times and places as I stumbled through new languages and music. I spoke and heard words that I did not always fully mean, and listened to the difficult words of Psalm 88. At the same time, the Holy Spirit enlarged my vision for the church, and I became more acutely aware of what it means to be a child of God within the community of the church. I heard, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, “the Gospel in a nutshell."* I found myself in familiar territory, speaking to and about God using the language of God.
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Monday, October 17, 2005
A Visit with Keith and Kristyn Getty
On Friday our staff was delighted to sit down with Keith and Kristyn Getty during their visit to Calvin’s campus. Keith shared with us their mission of “creating hymns for the modern church"—writing worship music that has depth and lasting value, and reflects “a wealth of wonder.” He said he and his wife (he writes music; she writes lyrics) have two aims in their work:
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Friday, October 14, 2005
Preparing to Pray 10/14/05
Jesus Christ,
You are high priest forever,
you presented yourself in our name
to pour out your precious blood
for the cleansing of our sins,
as the prophets had predicted.
As we worship this week, we say with Paul that
we “know nothing but Jesus and him crucified.”
-adapted from Belgic Confession article 21, used in this week’s CICW worship service outline, ”Jesus Enthroned on High”
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Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Worship in Historic Dickeyville, Maryland
The steeple of Dickey Memorial Presbyterian Church rises among a series of modest Victorian homes along a secluded two-lane road in Dickeyville, a National Historic District on the western outskirts of Baltimore.
Inside the colonial-style church, its wooden floors and benches split by a strip of regal red carpet up the center aisle, worship is intimate. The singing reverberates off the wood; the congregation, most of which lives in the district, shows its comraderie by applauding joyous announcements of births and weddings made from the pulpit.
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