Worship Weblog
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Teaching and reflecting on the theology of worship at Holy Cross Lutheran in Maine
We’re grateful to hear that Grants Colloquium 2007 inspired Rev. Richard Horner of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Kennebunk, Maine, to offer a Wednesday night teaching series this past month on the meaning of worship. Tomorrow night marks the final session in this series. We look forward to hearing how it went! From his pastor’s letter introducing the series:
The highlight [of Colloquium] for me personally, were the teaching times. They were devoted not so much to “what” is being done in various churches when it comes to worship, but “why” any church worships to begin with. I found it refreshing to focus in on some of the foundational, biblical principles that underlie (or should underlie) whatever specific practices or forms our worship takes. There can be a tendency to get so caught up in what we are doing, or want to do, that we lose sight of why we are doing it, the ultimate purpose we hope will be achieved.
Having been so refreshed in this regard myself, I feel led to offer members and friends of Holy Cross a similar type of opportunity. A chance to meet together for some teaching and reflection upon the theology of worship - why we meet together regularly to sing, pray, listen to God’s Word, and receive the sacraments. I will present some of the material I brought back with me from the Calvin Institute, and will use other, similar resources as well.
Events • Grants • Leadership • Worshipers • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
ELCA News Release on Consultation on Multicultural Congregations
This news release from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America discusses a consultation on multicultural congregations, and mentions a Worship Renewal Grant given to the Delaware–Maryland Synod of the ELCA.
ELCA Consults White Pastors Serving Multicultural Congregations
CHICAGO (ELCA)—Sitting upright at the first desk facing the podium, the trio resembled students—unmarked by a collective decade of parish ministries. Mentors, each with decades of experience, leaned back from the desk near the windows, each moment learning new things from speakers and from their younger counterparts.
Twenty-five pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) accepted an invitation to come together here for a consultation. They are white pastors serving congregations in multicultural settings in Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland Heights and Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Oakland and Riverside, Calif. ...
As a result of the consultation, Arwyn Gohl said she’s taken part in a multicultural worship project through the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Mich., and the ELCA Delaware-Maryland Synod. She said she’s become more convinced that multicultural worship “is necessary for Jerusalem to be rooted in the community.”
Grants • Interdisciplinary Application • Leadership • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
Alban Weekly on ‘Constructing Your Congregation’s Story’
There are times when all congregations need to reflect upon who they are and where they have been to discern and understand where they are going. At such times, it is important for a congregation to research, create, and present its story. In 1993, Augsburg Fortress published a book by James P. Wind that offered a complete and concise guide to constructing and telling your congregation’s story. The book is now out of print, but the team at the Congregational Resource Guide (http://www.congregationalresources.org) have adapted it for the Web with great success.
The author explains some valuable skills for researchers: an intense curiosity, a healthy skepticism, a creative imagination, and a solid filing system. He encourages researchers to approach their congregations from the perspective of an outsider—by looking with fresh eyes at a congregation’s building, neighborhood, liturgical symbols, organizations, activities, official and unofficial leaders, and significant transitions. He also encourages researchers to explore how the pastor and people embody their faith in the world.
Interdisciplinary Application • Leadership • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
Remembering Linda Hollies
We were saddened to learn of the sudden death of Rev. Linda Hollies, a minister and author who participated in Symposium workshops with Jimmie Abbington on African American worship music. Rev. Hollies was the co-editor with Abbington of Waiting to Go: Advent through Pentecost and Going to Wait: Between Pentecost and Advent, and editor of Trumpet in Zion: BlackChurch Worship Resources.
From the Grand Rapids Press:
The Rev. Linda Hollies comforted women who were weary, inspired them in ministry and encouraged them to be “bodacious” in life.
She also wrote prolifically and spoke boldly when she perceived injustice.
The Rev. Hollies, 64, died suddenly Saturday night while attending a women’s conference in Phoenix, where she was to preach Sunday. Her family is waiting to hear from medical authorities there regarding her cause of death, said her daughter, the Rev. Grian Eunyke Hollies-Anthony of Grand Rapids.
“The most important thing to my mom was to be true to her calling as a woman of God in all aspects of her life,” Hollies-Anthony said. She vowed to carry on her mother’s ministry, Woman to Woman Ministries Inc., an educational resource for women of color.
continued…
Monday, August 20, 2007
NY Times on Sudanese worshipers in the U.S.
A New York Times story from our backyard here in Grand Rapids on Sudanese pastor Rev. Zachariah Jok Char. We’ve been grateful to have one of the refugees who worships with Rev. Char, Mayom Bol Achuk, as a volunteer at Symposium.
No Longer Lost, a Refugee Accepts Call to Leadership
By NEELA BANERJEEGRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - About 7,000 miles separate Grace Episcopal Church here, where the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char preaches most Sundays, from the small town of Duk Padiet in Sudan, where he was born.
The tally of the miles started about 21 years ago when Mr. Char was 5 and militias backed by the Sudanese government attacked his town during the civil war in the south. He saw the explosions from the field where he was playing, and he fled. He met other boys who had escaped similar attacks, and they started walking.
“I still remember what I was wearing then: red shorts and a T-shirt,” said Mr. Char, sitting in an empty pew one afternoon at the church. “I didn’t have shoes. Some were naked.”
The orphans, mostly boys, walked more than 1,000 miles to Ethiopia from Sudan over three months, Mr. Char said. Later, they were forced to walk to Kenya. Thousands died. The West called them the Lost Boys.
Those boys are men now, and here and in cities like Atlanta and Burlington, Vt., the 3,800 who were resettled in the United States beginning in 2001 are trying to build lives and weave communities. For many, their Christian faith, often Anglicanism, is at the heart of their efforts.
Interdisciplinary Application • News • Reading • World • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
Leadership Journal on ‘How Teenagers Transformed the Church’
From Leadership Journal’s blog:
Seeker churches, emerging churches, ancient-future churches, mega-churches, house churches, Boomer churches, Gen-X churches. There is a debate occurring in American evangelicalism about the future of Christianity and what form the church should take within our culture. But is it possible that these divergent philosophies of ministry actually originated from the same source? In the coming days Angie Ward will be sharing multiple reports about the emergence of youth culture, and youth ministry, in recent American history and how this phenomenon gave rise to both the seeker movement and later the emerging church.
Related Resources
Youth and Worship
Leadership • Reading • Worshipers • (0) Comments • Permalink
Unenlightened Enlightenment assumptions in ‘The Politics of God’
For the first few hundred words, the cover story in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, “The Politics of God,” seemed like a standard wasn’t-the-Enlightenment-great rant about how irrational religion is. So I skipped ahead to the last paragraph, which is somewhat more ambiguous (as are the author’s views of religion as reflected on in this article). But overall it seems like this book (of which the article is an excerpt) is just the latest in a long line of authors wringing their hands over Islam and the West who still see religion as a malfunction of reason. So I assume I’m not missing much by tuning most of them out.
Update: Doug Koopman writes in an e-mail, “As his basic objection to religion is that it becomes politically messianic, my main rejoinder would be that politically-relevant religion is not necessarily that way, and non-religion certainly not devoid of imperialistic or abusive tendencies.”
Update: Comprehensive critique here in the Asia Times
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Thursday, August 09, 2007
Pictures from Blacksburg
Anne Campbell of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, a participant in the grant to Luther Memorial Lutheran in Blacksburg, has been compiling a photographic record of some of the support that has poured into Blacksburg since the April shootings there. Here are a couple pictures she shared with us: (click to enlarge)
Grants • Interdisciplinary Application • News • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Report from a visit with United Methodist youth planning worship
Report from Betty Grit:
At 8:00 on a warm summer Friday evening, I was privileged to meet with almost 30 high school and middle school youth at Adrian College who had gathered to plan Sunday worship. They had arrived at Adrian College from United Methodist congregations throughout eastern Michigan as well as the Upper Peninsula on Wednesday. The five day leadership camp would engage them in learning about worship planning and leadership based on the curriculum “Lay Speakers Lead in Worship.”
As they gathered to plan worship, they were led by two young people who exhibited an understanding of worship, of group dynamics, of decision making and delegating. After decisively determining that the theme of the service would be The Armor of God, they broke into small groups. Each individual was invited to participate in the group where “you can help best” – music, free expression (drama, dance), prayer and visuals. All agreed that communion should be a part of the service and they would seek a pastor to lead. The two leaders were asked (and agreed) to bring the message.
Grants • Leadership • Worshipers • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • Permalink
Baptism: “a once and future thing”
After my son Benjamin was baptized on Sunday, this sermon by David Davis had special resonance as I listened to it yesterday:
Baptism, it is a once and future thing. The water dries, but everything else stays forever. The Forgiveness. The Holy Spirit. The seal of God’s love. The sign of the kingdom. Being cradled by grace. The washing. The naming. The sending. Your baptism, it is a once and future thing. So with drops of water from the river of grace still rolling down the back of your necks, and the Holy Spirit still falling so fresh, and eyes of your heart being overwhelmed again by God’s love, hear the very voice of God deep saying “Go and tell. Go and live, so I can use you”.
This summer I’ve been dwelling with what it means to Remember Your Baptism. I developed this daily prayer, as an elaboration on Martin Luther’s morning refrain of “Today I will live out my baptism”:
In my baptism, God put his covenant mark on me as one of his own,
called me to a lifetime of dying and rising with Christ,
adopted me into his church,
and began in me the work of renewal through the Holy Spirit.Today I will live out my baptism.
Interdisciplinary Application • Leadership • Worshipers • (0) Comments • Permalink