Worship Weblog
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Uganda Trip ‘07 Update 3
Third report from Uganda by Greg Scheer:
• Report 3
(2:42, 3.1 MB)
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Toledo Blade coverage of grant recipient
Montpelier church gets grant to enhance services
MONTPELIER, Ohio — First Presbyterian Church of Montpelier has received a $13,882 grant to enhance its worship services.
The grant was one of 58 totalling $700,000 awarded nationwide by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“The proposals we receive from all over North America offer us an expansive education,” said CICW director John Witvliet.
“They show us how prayerful, resourceful leaders in a remarkable variety of contexts are thinking about the needs of the church and opportunities for ministry.”
Deanna Kohlhofer, family life coordinator at First Presbyterian, said the Montpelier church will use the grant to study worship as a congregation, and then in small-group settings.
“The beauty of this project is that the entire congregation will be involved, working to discover what God wants to teach us together,” Ms. Kohlhofer said. “We really desire for worship to be personal, practical, relevant, and applicable.”
More information on the CICW Worship Renewal Grants program is available online at www.calvin.edu/worship.
Related
Worship Renewal Grants Program
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Friday, May 25, 2007
Report from Legacy Christian School: Vertical Habits
Report from Betty Grit:
Vertical Habits at Legacy Christian School:
‘Lord, Please Help’ and ‘How Can I Help?’
As children entered the gym for worship, it was evident that it is their habit to enter this space quietly and reverently on Friday morning. Worship music, played by teacher Joan Stob reminded us that today this space was sacred space and our hearts were prepared for worship.
We were invited to repeat after the teacher, “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice in it. Let us worship the Lord together.” After a prayer, we were told that the fourth graders would be using two dramas created by Friends of the Groom for the Vertical Habits program of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
The story of blind Bartimeus was told in three ways – that he demanded attention from Jesus, that he only asked for Jesus’ signature, and finally, as reported in Scripture, that he brought his need to Jesus saying, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
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Basil on the Holy Spirit
Basil, Archbishop of Caesaria, from “On the Holy Spirit”:
[The Christian], then, who in the reading of the Law takes away the letter and turns to the Lord,—and the Lord is now called the Spirit,—becomes moreover like Moses, who had his face glorified by the manifestation of God. For just as objects which lie near brilliant colours are themselves tinted by the brightness which is shed around, so is he who fixes his gaze firmly on the Spirit by the Spirit’s glory somehow transfigured into greater splendour, having his heart lighted up, as it were, by some light streaming from the truth of the Spirit. And, this is “being changed from “the glory” of the Spirit “into” His own “glory,” not in [small] degree, nor dimly and indistinctly, but as we might expect any one to be who is enlightened by the Spirit. Do you not, O [Christian], fear the Apostle when he says “Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”? ...
And His operations, what are they? For majesty ineffable, and for numbers innumerable. ...
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Thursday, May 24, 2007
Hymn for Pentecost: Creator Spirit, by Whose Aid
Creator Spirit, by whose aid
the world’s foundations first were laid,
come visit every humble mind;
come, pour thy joys on human kind;
from sin and sorrow set us free,
and make us temples worthy thee.
O Source of uncreated light,
the Father’s promised Paraclete,
thrice holy Fount, thrice holy Fire,
our hearts with heavenly love inspire;
come, and thy sacred unction bring
to sanctify us while we sing.
Coverage of Sardis Baptist grant at CBFNC
Sardis Baptist Church of Charlotte Receives Calvin Institute Grant
Sardis Baptist Church of Charlotte, North Carolina has received a grant for the creative use and adaptation of liturgical resources in Free Church worship. The Worship Renewal grant was awarded by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The Renewal project will culminate in a worship conference hosted by Sardis Baptist Church and facilitated by Dr. Michael Hawn, professor of church music at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in the spring of 2008. Baptist, Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ congregational leaders from the greater Charlotte area will explore the creative use of liturgy in Free Church worship. “The grant will provide our congregation with a resource library from where we can mix some of the oldest traditions of the Christian Church with worship in the 21st century,” explained Sardis’ pastor, Dr. Tim Moore.
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David Koyzis on the Victoria Psalter
David Koyzis on the Victoria Psalter:
What better way to spend Victoria Day than to page through a copy of Owen Jones’ The Psalms of David, “with permission dedicated to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria,” also known as the Victoria Psalter. Jones (1809-1874) was an architect and ornamental designer who served as a superintendent of works at the Great Exhibition of 1851. His 1856 Grammar of Ornament had an influence on subsequent architects and designers in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1862 he published the Victoria Psalter, a chromolithographed illuminated psalter with colours limited to red, blue and gold. The text of the Psalms is that of Miles Coverdale’s translation, as found in the Book of Common Prayer. The 150 Psalms are divided into 30 groups so as to be said or sung over a 30-day period. Each day is further divided into two for morning and evening prayer. The Psalm at the beginning of each group is preceded by chant tones, as can be seen by clicking on the image above.
Related Resources
David Koyzis on the Genevan Psalter
Resources for the Psalms and Worship
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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Meditation on Philippians 1:1: Servants
Reading 1: Philippians 1:1-11
Philippians 1:1 focal phrase: “servants of Christ Jesus” focal word: servants
Larry Sibley on Robert Webber
After reading our post on Robert Webber, Larry Sibley sent us his tribute and allowed us to share it here:
Some of us who worked at Eternity Magazine and who knew Bob were reminiscing and here’s what I wrote to them:
1. Bob was a promoter of participation in worship; a clear break with spectator worship. His Worship is a Verb book, for instance. Anyone in his workshops got that message, not only by what he said, but by being dragged into participation in the culminating worship service.
2. His formulation of the four-fold shape of worship, a reaffirmation of the ancient/historic shape of the liturgy, is a great gift to the shapeless worship of revivalism/free-church folks (and most Presbyterian churches, I fear). He was relentless about this. It provides a portable frame for any type of worship, the essential skeleton that can be fleshed out/clothed (contextualized) anywhere. The demonstration of this came in the workshops, where the culminating service/demonstration of his teaching had the classic shape, but didn’t need the Book of Common Prayer or any of the high liturgies. It was done with many of the liturgical tools any evangelical church would have available.
3. Along with the classic shape was the necessity of weekly Lord’s Supper; again, the practice of the early church that the Reformation churches lost and were recovering in the 20th century. Word and Table, always together.
4. He never stopped learning, researching and digging. Every time I saw him or picked up his latest publication, he was into a new topic in the field of worship. One time, it was a translation he had just completed of a medieval text (The Prymer/The Little Book of Hours). The last time, in 2003 when he was the resource person for a day at a Calvin College seminar where I was a participant, it was his research on the younger evangelicals (and a book on that). He had been saying, ahead of the curve, that mega-church worship (boomer worship) would pass with that generation and was already dead/history. So, on to the next generation and their thoughts on worship.
Participation, the classic four-fold shape (always with the meal), and knowing the generations. Not bad.
Earlier
Remembering Robert Webber
Related Articles by Larry Sibley
The Legacy of the Geneva Liturgy
Baptizing the Nations
Baird’s ‘Eutaxia; or, The Presbyterian Liturgies: Historical Sketches’
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Worship Planning Idea: Knowing The Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament
The title of Leon Wood’s 1976 book The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament (Zondervan) caught my eye recently. So did Christopher Wright’s excellent new book Knowing the Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament (IVP Academic, 2006). “[There] is a widespread lack of awareness among many Christian people of the identity, presence, and impact of the Spirit of God in the Bible before Pentecost,” Wright says. “The Spirit of God, relegated by some people to [a] grand entrance on the day of Pentecost, actually appears in the second verse of the Bible” (Gen. 1:2).
I’ve been reading and reflecting on some of the themes of these two books in preparation for Pentecost, so as not to make the common mistake of thinking that the Spirit is a biblical newcomer in the second chapter of Acts. In fact, the five chapters of Wright’s book—exploring key Old Testament passages in which the Spirit acts—could make a meaningful series of five (or more) worship services and sermons for the season of Pentecost. Here’s an overview of Wright’s chapters, and some of the texts he discusses:
1) Creating Spirit
Gen. 1 (discussed in Wright p. 13-16)
Ps. 33 (p. 16-19)
Ps. 104 (p. 20-26)
Rom. 8 (p. 31-34)
2) Empowering Spirit
Ex. 35 (Wright p. 37-39)
Judges 6, 14 (p. 39-42)
1 Sam. 10 (p. 42-3)
Isa. 63 (p. 44-5)
3) Prophetic Spirit
Micah 3 (Wright p. 64-65)
2 Pet. 1 (p. 63)
Neh. 9 (p. 75-76)
Zech. 7 (p. 82-83)
4) Anointing Spirit
1 Sam. 10, 16 (Wright p. 90-93)
Isa. 11 (p. 93-96)
Isa. 42 (p. 107-109)
Isa. 61 (p. 111-115)
Luke 4 (p. 112-114)
5) Coming Spirit
Isa. 32 (Wright p. 122-126)
Eze. 36-37 (p. 126-136)
Joel 2 (p. 136-55)
Also see
God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old & New Testaments: book by James Hamilton, Jr. (B&H, 2006)
The Spirit in the Old Testament: article at Franciscan Cyberspot
Related Resources
Worship Services for Pentecost
Worshiping the Trinity
Basil the Great’s ‘On the Holy Spirit’
For more worship planning ideas, see WorshipHelps, Reformed Worship, CEP ‘This Week’, and other sites
Previous Worship Planning Idea
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Alban Institute website redesign
The Alban Institute—publisher of our Vital Worship, Healthy Congregations series, and fellow member of a consultation of religion websites—has unveiled its new website:
More information about this redesign from Alban Earlier Wabash Center website redesign
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Blogging Toward Sunday
Blogging Toward Sunday: Reflections on the coming Sunday’s lectionary texts; a new regular feature at Theolog
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Listening to Sermons in the 17th Century
The Art of Listening in the Seventeenth Century
Ceri Sullivan
Modern Philology, volume 104 (2006), pages 34–71
There is an uneasy awareness among some earlier Tudor rhetoricians that countering boredom in a congregation is one of the less glamorous and more necessary uses of rhetoric. Leonard Cox, for instance, sighs that “for lacke of invencion and order with due elocucion [in the preacher]: great tediousnes is engendred . . . the speker is many tymes ere he have ended his tale: either left almost aloon to his no litle confusion: or els (which is a lyke rebuke to hym) the audience falleth for werynes of his ineloquent language fast on slepe”; Thomas Wilson tuts that “it behoveth a man, that must talke muche, evermore to have regard to his audience, & not onely to speake so muche as is nedefull, but also to speake no longer than thei be willyng to heare . . . the preachers of God, mynd so muche edefiying of soules, that thei often forget, we have any bodies.”1 However, such modesty does not appear in many Tudor-Stuart pedagogical and style manuals. In their excitement over ever more sophisticated technical skills of speech, Fraunce, Clement, Fenner, Kempe, Ascham, Blount, Rainolde, Mulcaster, Hoskyns, Sherry, and Puttenham largely ignore any glassy eyes before them.
Particularly noteworthy, therefore, is the emergence at the start of the seventeenth century of a new genre about oratory: advice addressed to adults on how to listen to sermons. Around thirty manuals on this topic were published between 1599 and 1661.
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Anglican News Service on rebuilding Nunavut cathedral
From Anglican Communion News Service:
Arctic to begin rebuilding ‘igloo church’
... Bishop Atagotaaluk also noted the “unique” characteristics of the diocese, which makes the rebuilding of the cathedral a challenging endeavour. “We are in a very isolated place compared to the southern churches, which have a connection with roads and getting supplies from one place to another is a lot cheaper. We have vast areas covered only by air,” he said.
In the absence of a cathedral, services are being held at a nearby parish hall, which used to be a gathering place for outreach and other ministries. “The parish is now limited in terms of activities because it’s now being used for worship,” he said.
The diocese of the Arctic is the largest of 30 dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada, covering an area of about four million square kilometers, or about one third the area of the country. It includes not just the Arctic region of Canada, but also the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Nunavik region of northern Quebec.
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Friday, May 18, 2007
Uganda Trip ‘07 Update 2
Photo by Chris Heckert
Second report from Uganda by Greg Scheer:
• Report 2 (3:57, 4.5 MB)