Worship Weblog
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
WOWAW 33: “Worship involves motion”
This week’s Words Of Wisdom About Worship:
Worship involves motion: humans move toward God in response to God’s movement toward humans. The total human person (embodied spirit) makes this gesture toward God and toward other humans.
-Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language: Introduction to Christian
• Listen to a reading of this quote
by Anne Zaki
Earlier: WOWAW 32
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Substantive contemporary worship music: “an enormously powerful witness to the gospel”
Ronald Wells, Calvin College professor of history and the current Calvin Worldview Lecturer, shared this story with us in response
to our Vital Worship feature story entitled “Contemporary Music Matures”:
In my work as The Calvin Lecturer this year, one of my presentations is “History, Memory and Hope: Stories of Grace and Reconciliation from Northern Ireland.” I don’t always use this story, but I thought youd like it. In 1996 and 1998 (for my book, People Behind the Peace) I spent a couple of weeks at each of the major residential peace and reconciliation centers in Northern Ireland, one each drawn from Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican traditions. The Anglican one, The Christian Renewal Centre, is a bit overly charismatic in its style to suit me; but I was there to be a participant observer, and not to insist on my own way, so I pitched in. On one particularly moving instance, the Centre had an open day when people who had experienced the violence of The Troubles could come and tell their stories. And, since they were Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, it was a safe place to hear each others stories and to find forgiveness, reconciliation and closure.
At the end of the afternoon meeting, all were asked to stand and face the wall of windows looking out at Carlingford Lough, which separates Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland. Out in the lough we could see a warship of the Irish navy, placed there because terrorists often smuggled guns through there. We were instructed to raise one arm, left if we were Protestants, right if we were Catholics. Then we were to find a person with the hand opposite to our own and clasp it. We stood in the British part of Ireland and looked out at the Republic, and we, hand in hand raised, sang Graham Kendriks’ Shine, Jesus, Shine. It was a deeply affecting moment for all present as we sang: “Shine, Jesus shine, fill this land with the Fathers glory; Blaze, Spirit blaze, set our hearts on fire; Roll, river roll, flood the nations with grace and mercy; send forth your Word, Lord, and let there be light.”
A song like that, with something to say, and in the right setting, can be an enormously powerful witness to the gospel. No one would accuse it of being gospel-lite. I am grateful that there are writers like Kendrick and Parry out there, and that your Institute is providing a forum for such good work to be studied. Thanks for letting me share the story.
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‘I Am The Bread of Life’: Setting is Everything
The 2005 Lessons and Carols service featured a stirring song that was new to me: “I am the Bread of Life.” I looked into it a little and found that the song originated as a Catholic anthem (the words and music are by Suzanne Toolan) and seemed to have a reputation as a folksy, sentimental song that represented what some Catholics don’t like about contemporary worship music. This clip I found via Google does have an around-the-campfire feel to it, and had I heard that version first, I doubt I would have taken to the song the same way. But the Lessons and Carols setting—with the choir, organ, trumpets, descant, and robust congregational singing on the final verse—gave the song a sense of grandeur and glory. It helped me worship, and made the promise of resurrection more vivid to me.
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The St. Joseph of Arimathea Pallbearer Society
Saturday, February 11, 2006 · Dan Sklenka is a member of the St. Joseph of Arimathea Pallbearer Society at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland. As a public service, students at Ohio school help staff funerals that lack pallbearers. Sklenka tells Scott Simon about the activity. Link
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Site seen: “Full-Bodied, Red-Wine Christian Orthodoxy”
The tagline across the top of the website of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Missouri (which meets at the University of Missouri
reads, “Full-Bodied, Red-Wine Christian Orthodoxy.”
The site quotes G.K. Chesterton’s term “the romance of orthodoxy,” and explains: “By “orthodoxy” he meant historic Christianity, “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” By “romance” he meant, well . . . romance—something both strange and familiar, something full of wonder and surprise. Something that storms the mind and captures the heart.”
It then quotes Chesterton as saying, “This is the thrilling romance of orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”
The site features various writings of Pastor Travis Tamerius, including an overview of worship at Christ Our King:
When we come together each week to worship God, we are not escaping from the real world. We are entering the real world. In worship we are “doing the world as it was meant to be done.” We are becoming truly human in the way that God intended us to be. Central to becoming truly human is recognizing our dependence upon God. Our most basic posture before God is one of need. We need forgiveness, we need direction, we need beauty, we need food and we need strength to carry on. Even more, we need him. The good news we hear each week is that God is wildly extravagant about giving to us. He loves to provide us with gifts—assurances of his grace, words of instruction, the food and drink of heaven, his blessing upon our work. More importantly, he loves to give us himself. In the weekly rhythm of worship, we are renewing our relationship with God. He gives of his love to us; we return our love to him.
This vision of worship shapes our priorities in worship. In the Lord’s Day Service we seek to be God-centered, biblically faithful, thoughtfully catholic, congregationally involved and counter-cultural. continued…
Also from COK:
Worship as Holy War: Dethroning false gods
Weblog: Tasting Life Twice
Project Zimbabwe
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WOWAW 32: “Worshipers are called upon…”
This week’s Words Of Wisdom About Worship:
From beginning to end, our best understanding of worship—what worship should be—is a very participative event, where the worshipers are called upon to invest, to speak, to bow, to do, to get busy, to get dirty, to do it. Worship is something that is done.
Constance Cherry, “From Passive to Participative Worship”
• Listen to an audio clip of this quote
Earlier: WOWAW 31
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More on multimedia in worship from Alban Weekly
This week’s Alban Weekly newsletter excerpts Michael Bausch’s book Silver Screen, Sacred Story: Using Multimedia in Worship. Also see CICW’s related publication High-Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely by Quentin Schultze.
Earlier: Boston Globe on high-tech worship
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Monday, February 13, 2006
New MRC resources on teens and religion
Ed Seely, director of the Ministry Resource Center, a CICW ministry partner, comments on two significant additions to the MRC. Also see this 7-point overview of the MRC.
The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) is the largest and most detailed survey of teenagers and religion ever undertaken. This project surveyed 3,290 teenagers and their parents, 1,988 of whom are Protestant.
The first of the two books to come from this survey is Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Smith is Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor and Associate Chair of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and principal investigator of the NSYR.
The other book is Portraits of Protestant Teens in Major U.S. Denominations, by Phil Schwadel and Christian Smith (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), the purpose of which is to follow up on Soul Searching in order to help church leaders and religion scholars and observers more accurately and completely understand the NSYR data. “The NSYR provides a baseline, descriptive map of the religious character of adolescents in the United States.” (Portraits, p. 12)
Major findings of the NSYR pertaining to youth and worship include these results:
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Friday, February 10, 2006
Preparing to Pray 2/10
And who is this mediator—true God and at the same time
truly human and truly righteous?
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given us
to set us completely free and to make us right with God.
-from Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 6, quoted in this week’s CICW worship service outline
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Cornerstone Weblog Devotions on Vertical Habits
Cornerstone Christian Reformed Church in Ann Arbor, as part of the Vertical Habits initiative, is doing an eight-part sermon series on the Vertical Habits, incorporating related art and multimedia into worship, and posting daily devotions and children’s artwork on its weblog. (Read more information about Cornerstone’s project.) Cornerstone’s blog entries on confession this week include: -Introduction by Young Kim -Children’s artwork: Pebbles Get in Trouble -Easy to Love, Hard to Confess -Take a Peek Into My Heart -More…
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“The work of the Spirit compels us to be involved in every area of life”
Last week Vincent Bacote of Wheaton College spoke at Calvin on the topic of his new book,
The Spirit In Public Theology: Appropriating The Legacy Of Abraham Kuyper. “Implicit in Kuyper’s theology of public life is the work of the Spirit,” Bacote said. “The Spirit makes possible this public engagement.” Bacote also said: “An underrated aspect of Kuyper’s work is the work of the Spirit in creation. ... The work of the Spirit compels us to be involved in every area of life.” This, he said, is “part of sanctification.”
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Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Reflections on worship workshop in Jersey City
From Kent Hendricks, at his personal blog, reflecting on the CICW workshop Sing and Pray Globally and Locally in New Jersey:
This past weekend, Emily, Bert, Becky, and I joined Jorge to lead workshops at three churches in the New York City area. Two of the three churches we encountered intrigued me.
On Saturday afternoon, we led workshops at Filipino CRC in Jersey City, New Jersey. This congregation is comprised of about seventy people who have emigrated to the States in the past five years. The church was originally a church plant by a pastor from Asian Theological Seminary in Manila. This church is located in a particularly poor area of the city in an old building that was originally a white Baptist church back in the mid-nineteenth century. This congregation is struggling to find their identity as Americans while retaining their Filipino heritage. I found them singing contempoary “praise and worship” songs by pop artists here in America. They’re operating under the delusion that this constitutes true worship. I listened to them, and wanted to say, “You don’t have to try to be American. Chris Tomlin is no better or worse than the songs you sang five years ago back in the Philippines.”
I played piano at their worship service yesterday. The service was a unique blend of very contemporary American music with a charismatic feel. We also recited the Heidelberg Catechism and something from the Westminster Confession on the authority of scripture. The leader asked the question, and every person answered at their own pace. They invited us up to serve communion, so we passed out hamburger bun-esque pieces of bread and grape pop. The thank offering, we learned, was for us. We sang a few songs in Tegala, sang the doxology, and then passed the peace - i.e. greet every single person in the church. The service was a unique mix of Filipino and American music and language, a blend of Reformed history and charismatic worship. It was a group of people trying to figure out what it means to be Filipino in America, to figure out how to sing a new song in a strange land.
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‘Worship Matters’: The Presence of God
Bob Kauflin sums up his six-part series on worship and the presence of God (not yet available at his website, www.worshipmatters.com):
The common practice of referring to corporate worship as “entering God’s presence” or “entering in” isn’t all that accurate or helpful. It might be more precise to say that we are gathering in God’s presence or meeting to acknowledge His presence in our midst. While we often enjoy a greater awareness of God’s nearness when we praise Him in song, and ought to anticipate an experiential encounter with the living God each time we gather to worship Him, we aren’t actually “entering His presence.” Jesus has done that for us (Heb. 10:19-22).
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Bono on worship
From Religion&Ethics Newsweekly:
Asked about his own past criticism of contemporary gospel music, Bono admitted he was referring to what he saw as “happy clappy” songs that lacked “grit.” He said such music doesn’t mean anything to him “without a truth telling of where you are and where you live in your life.” But he was quick to add that he has recently built new friendships with several evangelical musicians who have joined his advocacy campaign.
And he was also quick to draw a distinction between contemporary gospel music and worship music, something he said he loves very much. He said some of his favorite music includes hymns by Charles Wesley, Handel’s “Messiah,” and Jewish liturgical chanting.
With spontaneous eloquence, he said being a worship leader must be “the highest of all art forms, to worship and call people into the presence of God.”
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WOWAW 31: “Worship relates dynamically to culture in at least four ways”
This week’s Words Of Wisdom About Worship:
Worship is the heart and pulse of the Christian Church. In worship we celebrate together God’s gracious gifts of creation and salvation, and are strengthened to live in response to God’s grace. Worship always involves actions, not merely words. To consider worship is to consider music, art, and architecture, as well as liturgy and preaching. ... Christian worship relates dynamically to culture in at least four ways. First, it is transcultural, the same substance for everyone everywhere, beyond culture. Second, it is contextual, varying according to the local situation (both nature and culture). Third, it is counter-cultural, challenging what is contrary to the Gospel in a given culture. Fourth, it is cross-cultural, making possible sharing between different local cultures.
-The Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture
• Listen to a reading of this quote by Anne Zaki
Earlier: WOWAW 30
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