Worship Weblog
Monday, April 30, 2007
Remembering Robert Webber
All of us at CICW are saddened to learn of the death of Robert Webber late last week. Webber left an indelible mark on the North American church and its worship renewal over the course of his lifetime. Our prayers are with his wife Joanne and his family.
In a tribute at Christianity Today online, CICW’s John Witvliet praises Webber:
“In many ways, Robert Webber paved the way for many Protestants, especially evangelical Protestants, to take worship seriously as a primary occupation both in the church and in the academy,” said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College and Calvin Seminary. Witvliet called Webber “an inspiration” and “a real pioneer.”
Update: John Witvliet delivered a tribute to Robert Webber on April 10 in Wheaton, Illinois. This tribute will be published, and linked from this blog post. (Update: now posted.)
Update: Terry Mattingly’s May 2 column is an appreciation of Robert Webber.
Update: Christian History on ‘Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future Legacy
Update: Vital Worship feature story: Robert Webber’s Legacy: Ancient Future Faith and Worship
Update: Larry Sibley on Robert Webber
Related
Articles by Robert Webber in Reformed Worship
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Alban Weekly on ‘Becoming God’s Church’
In the first few months of [our] church’s organization, a launch team was developed to help discern how we could become God’s church together. During meetings, the launch team would pray, study, and discuss what it meant to participate in the work of God as the church. They drew heavily upon the book of Acts, and the text that seemed to jump off the page was Acts 2:42-43: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone….” The early Christian community was helping to form and inform the team about the good work of worship. This work was to be a participation in the story that transcends time and culture.
The core elements of the early worshiping community celebrated those things that were a means of grace. The center of this celebration was worship. Worship shared more about the church’s identity than any marketing strategy or brochure. Participating in worship had to be our center as well, so that is where we began—with worship. God had laid out, through these practices that transcend time and culture, a model for worship that is beyond human agendas.
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Eric Jacobsen’s reading list on cities
Eric Jacobsen, author and Symposium 2007 presenter, in Comment:
The space between: summer reading on cities
...
7. Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier
It can be argued that Frank Lloyd Wright, Ebenezer Howard, and Le Corbusier made more impact on the 20th-century North American city than all other urban visionaries combined. All three sought a viable alternative to the swelling oppression of the industrial city, but each advocated radically different visions for the future. In Urban Utopias, Robert Fishman takes us on a journey into the lives and the visions of each of these influential thinkers. Although of the three of them only Howard saw any of his visionary urban plans realized, their thinking exerted a major impact on the canon of modern urban planning.
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Friday, April 20, 2007
Jesus the Builder
John Buchanan, at Fourth Presbyterian Church:
Reynolds Price ... points out that “Jesus seems to have spent his youth working with his brothers in Joseph’s construction business. The Greek word so famously translated “carpenter” can mean, more broadly, a builder” (A Serious Way of Wandering, p. 13).
What a nice new thought. Maybe what Jesus actually did for thirty years was not only make tables and stools and bowls and spoons in a tidy carpentry shop, as I was taught in Sunday school. Maybe he and Joseph built houses, dug the forms for the footing, and built the frame for the walls and the supporting beams for the ceiling. Maybe Jesus built homes in which people lived. Maybe he and Joseph traveled to Sepphoris each day and worked on the Roman amphitheater. Maybe he built synagogues.
I believe he meant to build a church. ...
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Meditation on Psalm 26: Associate
Reading 8: Psalm 24-26
Psalm 26
focal phrase: “I will not sit with the wicked.”
focal word: associate
There’s an old proverb from Chaucer: “He who sups with the devil best use a long spoon.” I always imagined someone sitting at a long table—like the one Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale share in Batman, so long that Wayne has to get up and walk over to Vale to pass the salt. On one end is the devil, and way over on the other is the would-be-Faustian guest, reaching for the soup bowl with a spoon with a ten foot handle. (Ignore the fact for the moment that the proverb appears to tacitly permit dinner with the devil.)
I wonder if that proverb has its root in psalms such as Psalm 1, which warns those who “sit in the seat of scoffers,” and Psalm 26, where the psalmist boasts, “I do not sit with the worthless [meaning “vain, empty"], nor do I consort with hypocrites; I hate the company of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked.”
“Sitting with,” of course, means much more than just sitting with. There are overtones of complicity, intimacy, even conspiracy. Whether you’re at a family meal, a board meeting, or a card game, sitting around a table is an illustration of the connection you have with your host, and your part in what is going on at the table. You’re not just sitting, you’re associating.
But this prohibition on “sitting with” doesn’t, well, sit well with me. It’s not just the self-righteousness of the psalmist—he’s bragging again, which bugged me back in Psalm 12. The reason is that Christ modeled for us a ministry of sitting with sinners.
Matthew, or Levi, was one of those sinners. Mark recalls:
And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
I wonder if Psalms 1 and 26 were on the Pharisees’ minds as they questioned Jesus’ actions. I wonder if they used those psalms themselves to keep a pious distance from undesirable people.
But here Jesus is, sitting with sinners—associating with them—and defending it as the purpose of his ministry. And so you can’t follow Jesus if you walk through the world with long spoons.
Is Jesus contradicting Psalms 1 and 26 when he sits with sinners? I’ll play it safe and say “yes and no.” Yes, he says to the Pharisees, you don’t show your righteousness by staying away from sinners. For one thing, it’s impossible, because you’re one of those sinners; everyone is. For another, you don’t show your faith by keeping your shirt clean in this sinful world, but by rolling up your sleeves and working to grow the kingdom in its midst—the way Jesus did.
“Jesus encouraged the teachers of the law to see the public sinners as sick people who needed to be healed,” pastor Ron Ward says. “Jesus wanted the religious leaders to have a shepherd’s heart. Jesus wanted them to have hope for the healing of the sinsick souls.”
Jesus dined with Levi, and Levi became the gospel writer, Matthew.
But no, Jesus is not revoking the Psalms’ call for disassociating yourselves from the proud, the duplicitous, the cruel. Jesus purpose in sitting at their table is not to take part in their consortium of wrongdoing, but to change the agenda at the table, and to change the people around it. Jesus doesn’t just sit off to the side and content himself with a righteousness of abstinence; he takes David’s defiance of evil in Psalm 26 and passes it on to the people who need it. “When Jesus associates with sinners, Jesus does not get dirty—sinners become holy,” Ward says.
I think there’s a risk in taking a Psalm 26 mentality into the world, if we misunderstand it. One website tell Christians how to stay morally clean when ministering to sinners, as though they are encountering hazardous materials. Are we really to tiptoe around in a spirit of timidity?
On the other hand, we can’t be naive about our own sinfulness and vulnerability to temptation. Psalm 26 goes on to tell us what keeps us anchored in a world filled with evil. “O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides. ... My foot stands on level ground; in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.” As long as we stand on level ground, we don’t need long spoons.
More Meditations on the Psalms
Resources for the Psalms
The Biblical Psalms and Christian Worship
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Prayers for Blacksburg
From Betty Grit:
Through the Worship Renewal Grants Program, the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship meets church leaders throughout North America who seek ways to help people worship more deeply. Two grants awarded in Blacksburg, Virginia introduced us to this beautiful city.
Luther Memorial Lutheran Church received a 2006 Worship Renewal Grant for a year-long ecumenical process of worship renewal. Led by Project Director Samantha Quesenberry, representatives of each congregation met regularly to study worship and to report on the ways worship renewal was impacting their congregation. One of the ecumenical projects that came out of the grant was a prayer walk during the last week of Lent. The walk led people through the town prompting prayer about various issues. Each day during the week a designated person led the walk, but if people chose not to go as a group the brochures were available in each church to allow individuals or families to walk alone or together. Brochures were taken to shut-ins and people who can’t walk so they could pray without walking.
The events of this week in Blacksburg have touched the congregations and stretched them in ways they could not have imagined. They share this Holy Week Prayer Walk with the hope that it will help all of us better understand the community, the churches and the individuals who call Blacksburg home. We ask that you join us in praying for them as they cope with profound loss in their own lives and seek to bring comfort and healing.
Related
Holy Week Prayer Walk from worshipers in Blacksburg
Earlier
Visit to Blacksburg
Also see
Calvin College Stands With Virginia Tech in Prayer
Resources
- For prayers for healing, comfort, and lament, see pages 224-234 of The Worship Sourcebook (pp. 62-72 of Prayers of the People)
- Worship Resources in Response to the Tragedy at Virginia Tech from TextWeek.com
- Response to the Virginia Tech Tragedy from the PCUSA
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Meditation on Psalm 24: Fullness
Reading 8: Psalm 24-26
Psalm 24
focal phrase: “… and all that is in it.”
focal word: fullness
Just when you’re tempted to over-personalize and over-spiritualize the Psalms (especially after reading the tender, first-person Psalm 23, though see pages 26-28 of John Witvliet’s book The Biblical Psalms), here comes Psalm 24 with its cry that echoes throughout the cosmos: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it.”
Wycliffe’s translation of this Psalm, which was kept by the King James and RSV translations, gives us a helpful word for the phrase “all that is in it”: “fullness,” as in, “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof.”
Richard Mouw likes the connection here between the “fullness” of Psalm 24 and the “filling” of Genesis 1. After God created humans, he told them to “fill the earth.” Mouw says this command to “fill” meant much more than mere reproduction: “God placed human beings in his creation in order to introduce a cultural ‘filling’ in ways that conformed to his divine will,” Mouw writes in When the Kings Come Marching In. God created nature, and created us to fill the earth with cultural artifacts and cultural patterns: art, architecture, commerce, government, sports, philosophy, and on and on. Mouw says that the reason Isaiah’s vision of the New Jerusalem in chapter 60 includes so much culture, so many ships and goods and silver and gold, is because God is making his Psalm 24 claim on them, on these “fillings” or “fullness” of the earth, and purifying them to serve him in the holy city. (I reflected on this fascinating theme in my book Bringing Heaven Down to Earth.)
Psalm 24, then, shows us our mistake in restricting God, restricting faith, restricting pious or holy feelings, to certain places, like church buildings, or certain people, like nuns and ministers, in certain ways, like the odd modern idea that faith is only a private, personal thing. God’s kingdom extends throughout all the earth, and the fullness thereof—all that we have filled it with. Psalm 24 gives us faith as big as the equator, faith in a messiah “in whom all things hold together,” as Colossians 1 puts it.
Just yesterday I heard this concept put another way. John Witvliet looks at the broad range of things and people in the world that were prayed for in early church liturgies—other nations, other churches, the poor and the sick, travelers, enemies, new believers, and more—and wonders why we often shrink our prayer request list to contain mostly ourselves and our friends and acquaintances. Witvliet asks: what is your “implied range of divine activity”? Where does your God operate? Only in souls? Only in churches? Only nearby? Only faraway?
What if the “range of divine activity” were a Psalm 24 range—the whole earth, and the fullness thereof? How would that change our prayer? How would that change our idea of God’s kingdom, and our idea of our place in it?
Update: This Holy Week Prayer Walk prepared by worshipers in Blacksburg, Virginia, is a beautiful and meaningful example of praying with a Psalm 24 “range of divine activity” in your city. Read more about our relationship with churches in Blacksburg, and our prayers for that city in this time of tragedy.
More Meditations on the Psalms
References
Mouw, Richard. When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Revised edition) (Eerdmans, 2002).
Witvliet, John. “Embodying the Wisdom of Ancient Liturgical Patterns,” address at Wheaton College on April 13, 2007.
Resources for the Psalms
The Biblical Psalms and Christian Worship
BCL on ministering to those with disabilities
BCL on ministering to those with disabilities.
Related Resources
Worship and Persons with Disabilities
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Confession in the Bible translation wars
Confession: good for the soul, and good for debates among Christians (whether or not the subject is Bible translation)—seen at the Better Bibles Blog.
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Report from a Symposium based on Wolterstorff book on Justice
John Wilson’s second report from a symposium at the University of Virginia based on Nicholas Wolterstorff‘s forthcoming book Justice: Rights and Wrongs (also see Wilson’s first report).
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Monday, April 16, 2007
Report on “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference
Report from Greg Scheer from the “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference at Notre Dame University this past weekend:
What is good congregational singing? How do we train leaders to lead the assembly’s song well? These were the questions that occupied forty church musicians and scholars—including the CICW’s Bert Polman and Greg Scheer—at this weekend’s “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference.
Some of the presenters approached the question as music educators, laying out the principles that have guided their own church music programs. Paul Westermeyer, Carol Doran and Quentin Faulkner’s sessions addressed the power of liturgical music, the lack of music education in the larger society, and the splintering of the modern church’s song repertoire. Willem Speelman,
Frank Burch Brown and Tom Zelle used the fields of aesthetics, philosophy and communication theory to shed light on congregational singing. Especially compelling was Speelman’s comparison of verbal and musical communication. Music is vital to worship because it is a shared communication, in contrast to verbal communication, which is “oppositional discourse.” (It’s
complicated, but it is one of the few sound arguments I’ve heard for the value of music in worship.) We were also treated to a presentation on church architecture and its impact on congregational singing and an introduction to Jeanne Logan’s fabric art, which was beautiful even though it had little to do with congregational song. Conference host Charlotte Kroeker completed the
presentations with the initial findings from a survey she is conducting, which focuses on nine churches known for their healthy worship.
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‘Why pastors should blog’
Blogging pastor Paul Vander Klay on ‘why pastors should blog’:
I believe pastors should consider blogging. There are a lot of good reasons not to, and I understand that, but I think there are some good reasons why pastors and church leaders should blog. ...
I believe blogging can be of use to the overall building up of the church and the development of its leadership. The Internet in general allows pastors and church leaders to communicate in a way that gets around the obstacles of time and space. Communication is vital for the health and growth of church leadership and via the Internet church leaders can talk together, share ideas, share resources, challenge ideas, and post these things so that other can read them, and even refer them to others. Here are some ways that church leaders and pastors can use blogs:
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CH on ‘What Luther Said’
It was indeed this week, in 1521, when young Martin Luther was called before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms ("diet" meaning a formal meeting, not a weight-loss plan, and Worms being a city south of Frankfurt). Luther thought he would have a chance to defend his ideas. Charles would only accept an ironclad recantation. What Charles got was Luther’s defiant “Here I Stand” speech—or did he?
Dr. Scott H. Hendrix ... writes, “It’s possible they are genuine, but for almost a half century now, most scholars have believed they were probably not spoken by Luther.”
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Alban Weekly on ‘A New Story for the Church in the 21st Century’
Dorothy Bass, in Alban Weekly:
In the last three decades, the story of American mainline Protestantism was rewritten. Once considered the very definition of American religion, a host of late 20th century social trends and historical movements assailed venerable traditions of Protestant churchgoing, making mainline religion increasingly outmoded in a pluralistic and post-Christian society. These old-line churches lost the cultural power, prestige, and influence they previously wielded. Scholars identified, studied, analyzed, and debated the patterns of and reasons for the changes and the increasing irrelevance of America’s historic mainline denominations. Mainline Protestantism—including the story of its decline—became a sidebar in the epic of American religious pluralism, the growth of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and the emergence of secular postmodernism. ...
Thirty years removed from the initial studies of mainline ennui, the most precipitous drops seem now to be ending and these denominations may be entering, however tentatively, into a new period of their history. In some cases, numerical decreases have slowed or stopped, mainline church attendance appears to be rising, mainline theology is demonstrating new sophistication, and higher levels of commitment and giving are beginning to register among the laity. Quietly, without much attention from either an uninterested public or skeptical scholars, reports of emerging vitality are being heard across the old mainline.
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The “holy and faithful” in Colossians and Ephesians
Summary of a brief but cogent paper in Biblica (pdf):
[This] study has demonstrated that from grammatical, linguistic, theological and literary perspectives, the best translation of a{gio” in Col 1,2 and Eph 1,1 is as an adjective. ... ‘’to those [in Colossus/Ephesus] who are holy and faithful.’
Existing Translations of Colossians 1:2:
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