Worship Weblog
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Come and worship Christ, the newborn King
Nicholas Kroeze, Time to Worship
All God’s people--
Boys and girls, women, men:
Come and worship!
Shepherds, Magi, saints, and angels:
Come and worship! Come and worship!
All who need the Savior, all who long for comfort:
Come and worship, come and worship Christ, the newborn King!
-from The Worship Sourcebook, E.1.1.2.
Monday, December 19, 2005
WOWAW 25: “A first-hand experience of God’s hand on your shoulder”
In this week’s Words Of Wisdom About Worship, Rev. Michael DeVries warmly reminds us of the necessity and the gift of the benediction in worship. His words, and God’s blessing, come to us with special resonance now as we prepare to enter a new year. They also have particular poignance this month as Rev. DeVries mourns the recent loss of his wife Marianne, who passed away in the weeks since this sermon was given. We pray for God’s hand to rest firmly on the shoulder of Rev. DeVries during these weeks and in the years ahead.
I would like to suggest to you that in our week-to-week rhythm of worship, let there be at its conclusion a pastoral benediction. After all, it provides you the churchgoer a first-hand experience of God’s hand on your shoulder as you venture forth into the community and into society and into your daily tasks, being blessed as you exit. It’s truly a pastoral gift to worshipers. And when we leave the sanctuary to enter that cold, competitive world where dog eats dog, in that world from Monday to Saturday, you in your life and I in mine, we need the assurance that God is, and God is present in our lives. Not deistically absent, far away, but present with us in our journey, clasping your hand and mine.
- Michael DeVries, ”The Beauty of the Benediction”
• Listen to an audio clip of this quote(mp3)
Earlier: WOWAW 24
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Friday, December 16, 2005
Preparing to Pray in Advent and Christmas Worship
In preparation for public prayer this Advent and Christmas, we offer this Advent prayer based on the Lord’s Prayer, loosely adapted from The Worship Sourcebook. Also see ”On Earth as in Heaven,” a service of Lessons and Carols based on the Lord’s Prayer.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace—hallowed be your name.
Christ our Lord, you descended to earth, to a lowly manger
to bring all nations under your rule
and draw us into your holy and perfect presence.
We bow at your manger in awe of your might.
Immanuel, God with us—hallowed be your name. continued...
Earlier: Preparing to Pray 12/9
More Resources for Preparing for Worship
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Thursday, December 15, 2005
CICW featured on CNN
CICW director John Witvliet appeared on CNN’s ‘Live From...’ program yesterday afternoon to discuss some megachurches’ decision to close for Christmas.
A portion of this interview is available as a video clip (2.6 MB), and the full transcript of the interview is provided by CNN.
Dr. Witvliet is also quoted at length in Terry Mattingly’s latest syndicated religion column, and was quoted earlier on this topic last week in the New York Times. CICW is grateful for the opportunity to play a small role in this broader public discussion about Christmas worship.
For more on this story, read this article by Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
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Reflections on Retreat at New Life Church in Grand Junction
On Saturday, December 3, leadership from New Life Church in Grand Junction, CO and I gathered for a worship retreat in a warm home on the foot hills of Colorado National Monument. Mark Quist, pastor of New Life Church, and his wife Deone were present along with three additional staff and four lay-worship leaders. The purpose of our gathering was to reflect upon the deep meaning and purpose of worship and apply our learning to the practicalities of worship planning and leadership.
New Life Church is a Christian Reformed Church planted only eight years ago. The congregation is made up of people from many diverse backgrounds. Those in the room with me represented at least four different denominational upbringings. New Life Church, however, is united by a Reformed vision for life and worship. Pastor Mark told me the story of one church member who after coming to learn about Reformed theology said, “I guess I’ve been Reformed all along!”
The style of worship of New Life Church is mostly contemporary and the church is blest with enough musicians to form four full worship bands. This is astonishing since the church has only 200 members! There is great enthusiasm in the church for the work of God in their community and there is a hunger for their worship to be vital and faithful.
The material I presented was readily received and discussion was profitable. There were five sections:
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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Intro to Christian Worship 3: Covenental Worship
From Day 3 of Intro to Christian Worship:
A good theology of worship, according to Dr. Witvliet, is covenental, Trinitarian, and inculturated. We’ll be unpacking those three themes throughout the coming week. Today, we discussed covenental worship.
Witvliet identified three purposes of worship in the world’s religions. First, some people worship using meditative contemplation. This kind of worship involves a cognitive process that brings us into God’s presence.
Others worship by accessing an emotional state. This is highly subjective and person-centered.
However, Christian worship, grounded in the Bible, is covenantal. “The God of the Bible, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus, does not just long for us to contemplate, but to be in a relationship, to interact. It’s the main metaphor that runs throughout scripture – that God speaks to us and we respond.”
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New Weblog: Bob Kauflin’s ‘Worship Matters’
Bob Kauflin serves as director of worship development for Sovereign Grace Ministries, and as a pastor and worship leader at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He writes and speaks about worship, music, and leading worship teams at various conferences and speaking engagements across the country. For years he has written a weekly Web column, Worship Matters (highlights below), and has just launched his new Worship Matters blog at www.worshipmatters.com.
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Intro to Christian Worship 2: Collaborative Worship Planning
On our second day of class, Howard Vanderwell led us in a discussion of collaborative worship planning. We began with historical perspective. Rev. Vanderwell recounted the 1960s, where the church he pastored repeated the same liturgy every week. Four hymns were inserted weekly with a new doxology changed once each year. Since then, worship planning involves many more people – preachers, musicians, artists, lay worship planners, and countless others. Reflecting on his work as a pastor, he made the case for collaborative worship planning.
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Monday, December 12, 2005
Intro to Christian Worship: The Use of ‘Worship’ in Scripture
[Editor’s Note:Kent Hendricks, a first year M.Div. student at Calvin Theological Seminary and student assistant at CICW, is attending John Witvliet’s seminar class, Introduction to Christian Worship. He will blog periodically about key themes from course lectures, readings, and discussion. For more of Kent’s blogging, see his personal blog.]
We began our quarter together by connecting worship practices with the implicit worldview of local communities. “Worship practices inevitably convey a sense of who God is, what the church is, and what scripture is,” said John Witvliet. “Worship always forms in us a certain way of seeing the world – it forms a certain theology.”
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A December Epiphany
[Editor’s Note: CICW research consultant Mary Hulst was pastor of Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 8 years; she is currently a doctoral student at the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is working on a book about communication and preaching. This post is cross-posted with her personal blog.]
I awoke this morning, stumbled into the kitchen, and looked out at the lake. What I saw took my breath away. The lake glowed a soft pink. Steam wafted from its surface. The home across the bay looked like a life-sized gingerbread house complete with snow-covered pine tree out front. I watched a pair of swans glide over the surface of the water, avoiding the growing patch of ice in the center of the bay.
What made this view so different this morning? It took me a minute to figure it out. The snow’s been around for days, same with the swans. But the pink, the light, what was THAT?
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WOWAW 24: “You’d think we might feel a little shocked …”
This week’s Words Of Wisdom About Worship:
I’m startled by the form of [some] manger scenes, but never the content. The content is always so entirely predictable—who’s there, where they’ll stand, what they’ll be doing. I’m not sure how it happens that something so full of wild content ends up seeming year after year so unsurprising, so nearly mundane. This is the story about God made flesh in the womb of Mary, God born into the world, as a baby, through the birth canal, in a barn. You’d think we might feel a little shocked every time we encounter it.
-Debbie Blue, Sensual Orthodoxy, p. 17
• Listen to a reading of this quote(mp3) by Sonja Arevalo
Earlier: WOWAW 23
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Friday, December 09, 2005
Preparing to Pray 12/9
O holy Child of Bethlehem
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in
be born in us today
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
our Lord Emmanuel
-last verse of ”O Little Town of Bethlehem”
The latest Vital Worship feature story calls us to pray for the Christian church in Egypt, particularly on these 8 issues:
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CICW quoted in NY Times piece on megachurches closing for Christmas
CICW director John Witvliet is quoted in this morning’s New York Times in an article on many megachurches’ decision to close for Christmas, so that worshipers can spend time with their families:
John D. Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College, asked: “What about the people in society without strong family connections? The elderly, single people a long distance from family, or people who are simply lonely and for whom church and prayers would be a significant part of their day?”
Additional statements from Dr. Witvliet:
This move reflects a lower emphasis on the liturgical calendar that has long marked evangelical worship; they place less emphasis on particular celebrations of events in Jesus’ life such as Palm Sunday and Ascension Day. This is also a sign of evangelicalism’s emphasis on personal faith, compared with a more communal sensibility that we are worshiping on the same day with people all over the world.
From a historical Protestant perspective, what is surprising is not that they are not worshiping on Christmas, but that they are not worshiping on Sunday.
Still, the bigger question is what they do when they do gather. From a theological perspective, the greater concern is about those who will meet but make their gathering more about contemporary cultural practices (Christmas trees, gift giving, and parties) than the Christmas gospel (that the world needs a savior and has one in Christ).
Related writings by Dr. Witvliet include Proclaiming the Christmas Gospel: Ancient Sermons and Hymns for Contemporary Inspiration, edited and introduced by Dr. Witvliet and David Vroege, and Praying the Lord’s Prayer During Advent, a meditation by Dr. Witvliet--among CICW’s Resources for Advent and Christmas.
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Thursday, December 08, 2005
The “ability to see what’s really been there all the time”
The Rev. Howard Vanderwell, CICW’s Resource Development Specialist for Pastoral Leadership, reflects on his recovery from one eye surgery, and preparation for another:
I’m in between two eye surgeries. Last week I had a cataract removed from my right eye and a new lens implanted. Next week they’ll do the same with the left eye.
But that means I’m in between the two. So I have two different ways of looking at things.
If I use only my right eye, everything is crisp, clear, bright and even has a slight bluish cast to it. Things haven’t looked that good for a long time!
But if I use only my left eye, everything looks rather dim, with a rather yellowish and tarnished cast to it.
Now I “see” more clearly. A deteriorating lens gives a poor view of things. A new lens gives a far better ability to see what’s really been there all the time.
Somewhere in that, there has to be a very good sermon illustration!
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Monday, December 05, 2005
‘Gilead’ wins Grawemeyer Award in Religion
From Louisville Presbyterian Seminary:
“Gilead,” a book by Marilynne Robinson that earned this year’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, also has claimed the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
It is the first time a novel has won the Grawemeyer religion prize, which is given jointly by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville.
Described as “profoundly theological but never preachy,” Robinson’s book takes the form of a diary written in the late 1950s by John Ames, a third-generation Congregationalist minister in the small town of Gilead, Iowa. As Ames’ heart is failing, he writes the diary as a legacy to his young son.
Note that Gilead will be the Book of the Quarter at Calvin Theological Seminary this coming spring, when Robinson will speak at the Seminary. Robinson will also speak at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing 2006.
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