Worship Weblog
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Report on ‘With a Shout!’ Ascension conference
Scott Hoezee began the conference ’With a Shout: What Difference Does the Ascension Make for Everyday Life?‘ conference with a stirring meditation this morning entitled “Ascension Audacity.”
“This is not a day for modest claims,” Hoezee said, asserting that to celebrate Christ’s ascension is to celebrate his rule over the entire cosmos.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
‘Jesus, Son of God and Son of David’
From the Journal for the Study of the New Testament:
Jesus, ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of David’: The ‘Adoption’ of Jesus into the Davidic Line
Yigal Levin, The Academic College of Judea and SamariaThe authors of both the first and third Gospels, by insisting on both Jesus’ divine paternity and his Davidic descent, pose a conundrum: if Jesus was not Joseph’ biological son, in what sense is he the Davidic Messiah? Most modern scholars assume that Joseph must have adopted Jesus in some form or another, thus giving him Davidic status, and many even point to such adoption as a ‘Jewish custom’. This article examines this assumption and shows that adoption was unknown in Jewish law of the period. Furthermore, such adoption was well known in Roman law, especially among the aristocracy. In the case of such emperors as Augustus, whose adoptive fathers had been deified posthumously, this gave them the status of divifilius, ‘son of god’. The inclusion of such a Roman concept into the Gospels may be an indication of the Gentile, rather than Jewish, cultural backgrounds of the evangelists.
Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Vol. 28, No. 4, 415-442 (2006)
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Slate blogs the Bible
Christianity Today’s Weblog recommends Slate’s series ‘Blogging the Bible’. CT says:
It’s really quite interesting to read the non-observant Jew’s reactions as he goes through the first few chapters of Genesis. He’s a wonderful writer, if not the world’s most trained exegete. ...
It’s fun and refreshing stuff, especially for us Protestants who have a long history of believing that all the answers to Scripture’s mysteries are self-evident if we’d only read it for ourselves. For now, Plotz is only up to Genesis 25—we’ll be even more impressed if he gets beyond Leviticus, the bane of many a “read through the Bible” project.
(That’s non-observant Jew, not non-observant writer...)
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Monday, May 22, 2006
Alban Weekly on Praying Congregations
Author and spiritual director Jane Vennard believes that a time of reflection about the nature of prayer is needed before a congregation can develop and strengthen its prayer life. Her book A Praying Congregation: The Art of Teaching Spiritual Practice is designed to help congregations create a safe and meaningful period of exploration into questions about prayer. She begins by helping readers delve into their earliest memories on prayer; from there she outlines a process that readers can use to deepen and expand their beliefs about prayer. The book culminates with explanations of different prayer forms and tools for those who feel a calling to become teachers of prayer. In the excerpt below, Vennard explores how our early prayer memories can continue to have a profound impact on our prayer lives today.
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Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Thoughts on Liturgy Response
Nicholas Wolterstorff, the 2006 commencement speaker at Calvin College, has a sizeable collection of works in the Hekman Library on topics spanning Ethics to Education. But my most recent reading from Wolterstorff came from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music Colloquium Journal. Wolterstoff responds to an essay by Christopher Dustin “The Liturgy of Theory” in which Dustin explores the formation of liturgy and how the term theory applies to liturgy. Now it’s my turn. What is liturgy? Why bother with theory? Can I really make a synopsis of a 2 page response? Oh, you bet I can!
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
CH on the Nicene Creed
As a follow-up to our Vital Worship feature story on creeds, see this article from Christian History and Biography on the background of the Nicene Creed, featured in a recent CTLibrary newsletter.
The question, “Do you know whom you worship?” has been a perennial one for Christians, but it came to the forefront at the beginning of the fourth century when there was as yet no doctrinal consensus about the divinity of Christ.
All Christians asserted that Jesus was God and worshipped Him as such, following the understanding laid down in an early second-century sermon known as II Clement: “brethren, we ought to think of Jesus as we do of God.” However, those baptismal creeds which have come down to us from local churches said very little beyond the basic wording: “of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” (Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus). Such confessional statements left many questions unanswered. ... There was no agreement among Christians about the Bible’s teaching on these issues. It was inevitable, therefore, that the early church would eventually require a more universal statement of faith like the Nicene Creed. ...
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Monday, May 15, 2006
Leadership in an Attentive Congregation
From Alban Weekly, adapted from the Alban book Paying Attention: Focusing Your Congregation on What Matters:
In a powerfully distracting culture, leaders seeking to help a congregation be attentive to the reign of God face daunting challenges. Leaders cannot count on members walking in the door with roomy, strong capacities to attend. ...
In order to attend with love to God and to neighbor, Christians need capacities (1) to enter with hope into suffering, (2) to practice emotional intelligence, (3) to engage the discipline of relinquishment, (4) to practice thankfulness in small things, (5) to “cook slowly,” (6) to persist, and (7) to think theologically. How might we foster such capacities? The first way is to pay attention to them, beginning with yourself and the other members of your leadership team.
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Mother’s Day bulletin note
I thought this bulletin note for worship on Mother’s Day yesterday at Eastern Ave CRC here in Grand Rapids was notable and meaningful:
In honor of all mothers, a bouquet of flowers has been placed in the front of the sanctuary by “The Mother’s Loss Group.” We recognize that this is a bittersweet day for many women who grieve the inability to bear a child or have suffered the loss of a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, illness, abortion, or relinquishment through adoption. Our prayer is that all may find Christ’s healing love in and through this community of believers.
Also see a related post and prayer from WorshipHelps.
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Friday, May 12, 2006
Reformed Worship website relaunch: full-text of 80 issues now available!
We’re celebrating with our ministry partner, Reformed Worship magazine, the web relaunch of www.reformedworship.org. For the first time ever, the complete full-text archives of all back issues of Reformed Worship are freely available online—that’s over 2,000 articles you can search by author, department, issue, season, or subject. CICW provided support for this relaunch and encourages worship leaders and all worshipers to use this site for preparation, reflection, and learning.
CICW is also grateful to our colleague Emily Brink, who marks the end of her 20 years of service to RW as editor-in-chief. We have been blessed by her wisdom and leadership, and we give gratitude for God for her many gifts and her faithful service—which we’re happy to say will continue as Emily stays on as a senior research fellow.
Reformed Worship is a quarterly magazine published by Faith Alive Christian Resources that provides practical help and support to worship planners, with ideas, tips, and nuts-and-bolts advice for planning, structuring, and leading your church in worship.
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‘Ekklesia,’ ‘Hypocrites,’ and other tricky translations from New Testament Greek
At my language blog: Kenny Pearce on the translations of the Greek words ekklesia, kerux, hypocrites, and talanton in the New Testament.
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
CTS Forum Spring ‘06: ‘Always Reforming’
The new issue of the Calvin Theological Seminary Forum is now available as a PDF. The lead article is entited “Reformed and Always Reforming” (beginning on page 3)
For readers who are native speakers of Latin (and must age gracefully, since they’re pushing 1,600 years old!), this comes from the Latin motto Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda.
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Soundness
Last week I was in a small group that included Ed Seely, discussing a list of goals for CICW that included an item on “theologically sound” music in worship. One member questioned whether “sound” was the right word (not just because it can be a pun in relation to music!), but Ed thought the word was apt. I asked him afterwards if he would be interested in writing his reflections on the word “sound,” and he agreed:
Logic, a subfield of philosophy, distinguishes between validity and soundness. Validity refers to the premises of a deductive argument providing irrefutable logical evidence for the conclusion of the argument. A deductive argument is valid if the premises necessarily require the conclusion, regardless of whether they are true or false. In fact, a deductive argument may contain all false premises and a false conclusion and still be logically valid. A well-known illustration is provided by University of Michigan professor of philosophy, Irving M. Copi: “All spiders have six legs. All six legged creatures have wings. Therefore all spiders have wings.” (Introduction to Logic , p. 11) This argument is valid, because even though all the statements are false, the (consequently false) conclusion is required by the premises.
Soundness refers to a valid argument that has a true conclusion and true premises. An argument that contains any false premises cannot be sound. Thus, an argument can be valid but not sound.
A logician is more interested in the logical relationship between and among the propositions of an argument than in whether or not they are true. In our work in the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, we are interested in truth as well as logic. This reality is why soundness is vital for us in regard to theology and in the other aspects of our work in worship. It is one reason why CICW urges worshiping communities to “sing more theologically sound songs,” using the word sound. Truth has always been a nonnegotiable imperative for God’s people (e.g., John 4:24, 2 Thessalonians 2:10). Especially in this postmodern age, which disregards claims of universal truth, we need to be very accurate, sound, in our witness to the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (John 14:6)
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Alban Weekly on ‘the post-construction blues’
Few projects excite and galvanize a congregation more than a new building or a major renovation. People complain about construction delays, capital campaigns, and the general din and dust, but their blood pumps, their wallets loosen, and their enthusiasm rises. Lyle Schaller went so far as to generalize that congregations that build capital are happier than those that spend it. Most congregations in the midst of a construction project illustrate his point: as they convert their members’ cash into real estate, their spirits rise, peaking at the dedication service.
But what happens then?
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‘Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture’
Ron Rienstra on Dell deChant’s Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture; related post on worship on Mother’s Day at WorshipHelps.
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EPA ‘06: ‘Web 2.0’ and its implications for ministry and learning in community
Another workshop I attended in Orlando was called “The Next Big Thing,” and introduced a term I hadn’t heard before: “Web 2.0"--a shift from the first phase of the Web, with top-down content providers, to a phrase of more open-source, user-edited, user-customized content--"flipping the funnel,” as one writer describes it. (The PowerPoint and related links for this workshop are available on the presenter’s website--see esp. slides 16, 19, 20, 24, 25, and 69). (This isn’t really a new development, the speaker said, but more of a mainstream embrace of some of the principles of the open-source movement.)
Here’s one definition (or description, at least) (more from Wired):
Web 2.0 is characterized by the following themes:
The Read/Write Web: In which the Web is seen as a two-way medium, where people are both readers and writers. The main catalyst for this is social software, allowing communication and collaboration between two or more people.
The Web as Platform: In which the Web is seen as a programming platform upon which developers create software applications. The main catalyst for this is Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, allowing communication between two or more software applications.
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