Worship Weblog
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
September travels
At staff meeting today we rejoiced and reflected on a busy week of meeting with worship leaders and worshipers in a variety of events across the continent last week:
- In Seattle, Paul Ryan met with a worship leadership team at Seattle Pacific University
- In St. Catharines, Ontario, Howard Vanderwell and Norma de Waal Malefyt were joined by former CICW student assistant Steve Koster to lead a day-long Worship Workshop, covering topics such as media in worship, intergenerational worship, and the use of TWS and SNC in worship.
- In Tinley Park, Ill., some CTS staffers attended the Barnabas Foundation’s conference on stewardship.
- In Holland, Michigan, some CICW staffers attended a meeting of Christian Reformed churches from Holland and Zeeland, and reflected on worship renewal and Vertical Habits.
- In Grand Rapids, Michigan, some CICW staffers attended the Finding Our Place In the Biblical Story conference.
And it looks like October will be just as busy, and, we pray, fruitful. We’re grateful as a staff for all these opportunities to learn from worship leaders and worshiping communities.
Events • Leadership • News • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Alban Weekly on “Practicing Congregations”
For the past two years, Alban has been lifting up stories of mainline churches that are discovering new life and new purpose through an intentional engagement with traditions of Christian practice. In our best-selling book The Practicing Congregation, Diana Butler Bass shows how these churches are changing the face of mainline Christianity. In From Nomads to Pilgrims, which Bass coedited, she gathers some of the pastors of these “practicing congregations” to tell the stories of their congregations in their own words.
Now we want to share with you a short excerpt from Bass’s important new book, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith. In it, Bass takes you inside practicing congregations across the country to meet the people and learn about the signposts of vitality that mark their lives together.
Leadership • Reading • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Friday, September 22, 2006
New at CEP
New at the website of the Center for Excellence in Preaching:
- Report on The Preacher’s Oasis, Summer 2006
- Waiting for the Land: The Journey Begins in and Ends with Exile (Genesis)(PDF) and The Structure of Genesis: Generations of Blessing against the Curse(PDF), by Arie Leder
Interdisciplinary Application • Leadership • Preaching • Reading • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Productivity vs. Fruitfulness
I heard this excellent--and, for me, convicting--chapel talk last Friday at Calvin Seminary. It was a reflection on the distinction between productivity and fruitfulness in the Christian life. It’s well worth reading and reflecting upon. An excerpt:
Fruitfulness is what happens when we reach out with hope, courage and confidence from the anchored place of Christ’s love and acceptance. Fruitfulness is defined by Christ himself in John 15, verses 4 and 5.
‘Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a person remains in me and I in them, they will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’
Productivity seeks that which fruitfulness claims as its starting point - namely the assurance of God’s presence and love. Fruitfulness allows you to be fully present in the moment. Fruitfulness is activity deeply rooted in the soil of God’s grace. Fruitfulness is, as Henri Nouwen says, “The realization that I am worth more than the sum total of all my efforts.” Fruitfulness is enabled by a fundamental trust that it is the Holy Spirit, who is working at all times and in all places, is at work in us – busy or not.
Interdisciplinary Application • Leadership • Worshipers • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Polman pens anniversary hymn
We celebrate this hymn by Bert Polman, which has just been named the sesquicentennial anniversary hymn of the Christian Reformed Church:
God, We Sing Your Glorious Praises
Text by Bert Polman
Tune - Nettleton (usually associated with “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing")God, we sing your glorious praises
as we tell your awesome deeds:
you have fashioned all creation
and you meet each creature’s needs.
We rejoice in how your people
tasted your great faithfulness;
graced through every generation,
we your mighty acts profess.
Update: Press release from Calvin College
Liturgical Arts • Music • News • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Asia Trip ‘06 Update 6
Kent Hendricks and company are back from CICW’s Asia trip, but Kent continues to reflect at his personal blog. Here is his report on August 10:
This morning we went to the Union Church of Manila for the first time. The church is located in Makati City, which might be described as the lower Manhattan of the Philippines. Just like the church, it is the international stomping grounds of the Philippines, the center of trade, and the engine of the economy. Makati City is affluent, cosmopolitan, and diverse. ... We began to associate new faces with the emails we’d received. ...
CH on Early Church voices on the Eucharist
CH’s current newsletter includes a sample of Early Church writings on the Lord’s Supper:
In the early church, the celebration of the Eucharist was an essential part of the Christian life. In continuation of last week’s tremendously popular feature article, Divided by Communion, we are featuring selections from early Christian writings that shed light on how Christians in the first two centuries celebrated Communion
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CT on Dallas Willard
CT’s profile of Dallas Willard, and an accompanying essay by Neal Plantinga
Interdisciplinary Application • Reading • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Center for Social Research blog
The Center for Social Research here at Calvin has a new blog, including an entry about their project on worship sponsored by CICW.
Five ... faculty members are working together and partnering with ten local congregations in Grand Rapids to do a series of studies. The ten churches represent both urban and suburban locations as well as a variety of denominations. These studies cover worship’s relationship to everything from conceptions of community to issues of race. In keeping with the Worship Institute’s practical goals, the aim is to help congregations become more reflective about how worship can empower congregants to be transformative agents in society. CSR staff and student research assistants are providing research support, especially Gwen Einfeld, who is organizing tracking of recordings and transcripts. Read on for details of these studies and biographical sketches of the faculty conducting them.
Interdisciplinary Application • News • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Chapel Hill News article on grant recipient
From a Chapel Hill News article on grant recipient Orange United Methodist Church, and its stained glass window it commissioned as a way of learning the meaning of the Lord’s Supper:
”Holy communion is very real but filled with mystery,” Keck said. “There is kind of awkward balance. You might lose the mystery if you try too hard to understand. In thinking about this initially I thought that the arts would be helpful in trying to enter into that mystery to a deeper extent.”
The church applied for the grant and received it, whereupon a committee came up with the idea of commissioning a stained glass window, creating a hymn competition and having the entire congregation making a special study of the Holy Communion.
The Calvin Institute (www.calvin.edu/worship) doesn’t give grants simply to fund a commission, but the coordinators were happy to fund the piece of stained glass as one part of a project.
“For visual arts to be a fitting part of worship, our attention needs to move beyond just its form or style or the mechanics of how it was created to our focus on God,” said Elizabeth Steel Halstead, the resource development specialist for Visual Arts at The Calvin Institute. “In and through ‘seeing’ our awareness and participation in worship deepens. Nor is art just for decorative purposes. Visuals can communicate knowledge, stimulate our memory, evoke a sense of hope, complement the elements of liturgy, or even challenge us with the demands of the gospel.”
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‘Our Transnational Anthem’ (Christian Vision Project)
Introduction to Orlando Crespo’s article in Christianity Today, as part of the Christian Vision Project:
For 500 years, immigration has shaped the culture of North America. Recently, and not for the first time, the arrival of a generation of immigrants has sparked national debate. Fortunately, an increasing number of Christian leaders are working to bridge cultural differences. Many of these leaders have been nurtured by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical organization that has gone farther than most in living out the biblical example of interracial partnership on America’s university campuses. Orlando Crespo, a second-generation Puerto Rican American who is director of InterVarsity’s LaFe ministry with Hispanic students, exemplifies this commitment to both ethnic distinctiveness and multiethnic partnership, themes he explored in his 2003 book, Being Latino in Christ. Because multiethnic reconciliation is all too rare in mainstream culture and in the church, and because it is so evidently crucial to the flourishing of the common good in the United States’ third century, Crespo is an ideal person to respond to our big question: How can followers of Christ be a counterculture for the common good?
Interdisciplinary Application • Language • Reading • World • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Al Hsu on worship at Beijing International Christian Fellowship
At his blog, Al Hsu reflects on his recent trip to China, including worship at Beijing International Christian Fellowship. I met Al, who is an author and an editor at InterVarsity Press, in the Christian Proclamation in Contemporary Contexts seminar here at Calvin this past summer.
This morning we went to church at Beijing International Christian Fellowship, a church that is led and attended only by foreigners, not Chinese nationals. You need to show your foreign passport at the door in order to go in and worship. It’s a thriving multi-site, multi-congregation church with about three thousand attenders from sixty countries at two campuses, with main services in Chinese and English, plus additional Cantonese, French, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese and Russian services so people can worship in their native heart languages.
Notwithstanding a few amusing typos in the PowerPoint slides (“Yes, Lord, yes, ahem!”) the service was much like you’d see at any contemporary service in the States. I was particularly moved during the singing of “Salvation Belongs to Our God,” in which the lyrics went:
Language • World • Worshipping Communities • (1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Friday, September 01, 2006
Asia Trip ‘06 Update 5
Report from CICW’s Asia trip by Kent Hendricks:
After three weeks in southeast Asia, I’ve finally arrived home ... I managed to stay awake for over fifty hours and saw three sunrises in one day. Somewhere between the first and second sunrise, I said good-bye to Emily, Bert, Bette, Sir Jo-el, Anne, Jay, Machelle, and Jon. Somewhere between the second and third sunrise I said hello to my family and Shelly in Seattle. Since arriving, I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing, reflecting, and sorting through over 2500 photos and video.