Worship Weblog
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Ascension Day: Beyond the Blank Blue Sky
Today is Ascension Day. From CICW director John Witvliet’s Ascension Day sermon on Revelation 5, entitled “Beyond the Blank Blue Sky”:
Throughout the history of the church, the Ascension has been a source of great comfort to people in crisis. ... When you are bored to tears in your nursing home, when you can’t stand the pain any more in your hospital room, when you watch the evening news and simply can’t stand all that violence and pain anymore, when you face the terror of tragedy or crisis, or even when you admit that some of your own spiritual anxieties are keeping you up at night in the middle of ordinary days, what you need to call to mind is not a blank blue sky theology. It’s [Revelation 5’s] vision of heaven as a place for connecting, for restoring relationships, for overflowing praise. This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer celebrated Ascension Day from the middle of a Nazi prsion. And this hopeful vision is right here in the Bible for you and for me to claim as our own.
The sermon follows a reading of Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 49:
Question 49: Of what advantage to us is Christ’s ascension into heaven?
Answer: First, that he is our advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven; (a) secondly, that we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, as the head, will also take up to himself, us, his members; (b) thirdly, that he sends us his Spirit as an earnest, (c) by whose power we “seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, and not things on earth.” (d)
Also See: Andrew Kuyvenhoven on the Ascension, from The Banner
Ed Dobson Announces Retirement
Our prayers are with the Rev. Ed Dobson and the Calvary Church family. Dobson has led worship at the 6,000-plus member church down the street from CICW for nearly 15 years. The Grand Rapids Press reported Monday that Dobson announced he will retire in November, due to the ALS from which he has suffered for nearly five years.
Here is a portion of the article:
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Martin Marty’s Reading List on Church and State
Martin Marty this week in his Sightings newsletter:
With all the stir about “church” and “state” these days, a friend asked for a brush-up reading list for summer. I was glad to work that up, and thought it might be of interest to Sightings readers—a bonus issue, if you will. Here are some readings:
John Witte, Jr., Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (Westview Press, 2nd edition).
I work with Witte on various projects, and identify most with his approach. This is paperback, basic, and good on history, theology, politics, Constitution, courts, and the contemporary scene. Start here!
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Monday, May 02, 2005
Reverence and Intimacy: An Essential Paradox
“Worship today means loudly filling every space of silence,” writes Philip Yancey in the current issue of Christianity Today. “I wonder what we are missing when we seek to reduce the distance between creature and Creator, a distance expressed so eloquently by Job, Isaiah, and the psalmists.”
The title of Yancey’s column is “A Bow and a Kiss.” He argues that a healthy tension between reverence and intimacy is essential for healthy worship.
Local Prayer Logs
The website www.calvin.edu/faith includes a prayer log of concerns of the Calvin College community. Meanwhile, the website of the Christian Reformed Church links to a prayer log for David Engelhard, the denomination’s general secretary, who underwent surgery for a malignant brain tumor in February. Our prayers for our brother David continue in earnest. (A report on last summer’s General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ghana, which Engelhard attended, is posted here.)
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Happy 100th to Christ Church of Bangkok
Saturday’s Bangkok Post included a feature on the history of Christ Church, which is celebrating its centenary:
Dwarfed beneath neighbouring buildings and cloaked in leafy shadows from manicured trees, Christ Church remains a sanctuary for people seeking peace and spiritual comfort within Bangkok. ... Christ Church’s centenary emphasizes the importance of “Kairos”, or the essence of time initiated by spiritual changes and one’s relationship with God. Therefore whilst the centenary is initially about the history of a building, it is more a celebration of God’s divine presence. ...
In a new millennium, Christ Church has evolved to become an international venue for a diverse crowd of Christians. Though their ancestors may have founded the church as a refuge from their Asian surroundings, Christ Church has had a Thai congregation—with services in Thai—since 1991.
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Theological Illiteracy
What’s one of the most well-known verses in the Bible? “God helps those who help themselves.” And where in the Bible is that found? Well ... nowhere. Kansas City Star columnist Bill Tammeus says theological illiteracy is plaguing the church and weakening interfaith dialogue. “Failure to study scripture and tradition is a failure to form our conscience, the most critical of church imperatives,” he writes. Tammeus also keeps a Faith Matters weblog.
Worship That is Un-‘just’
Christianity’s answer to The Onion may be The Holy Observer, a satirical religious news site (with a dedication verse from—wink, wink—the book of Hezekiah). One recent gem from this site was a supposed divine ban on the word “just” in worship:
For decades, God has lavished his followers with linguistic grace regarding what could be considered an epidemic in the prayer world – the use of the word “just.” Usually found in a pattern similar to “God, please just [insert petition] and just [insert another petition],” the word “just” has made answering prayers a confusing and tedious process for the Almighty. In response, God declared earlier this month that Christians everywhere may no longer use the word “just” during intercessory prayer, effective immediately.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Benedict XVI on Worship
Media coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s election has focused mostly on his social views and has been nearly oblivious to the pope’s prodigious liturgical scholarship, which includes over two dozen books (written as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) on the Church and liturgy. At staff meeting this week, Dr. Witvliet showed us a portion of Ratzinger’s Worship in Accord with the Logos, which includes these passages:
It has been forgotten that the liturgy should be opus Dei [the work of God] in which God himself first acts and we become redeemed people precisely through his action. The group celebrates itself, and exactly for this reason it is celebrating nothing at all since it is no cause for celebration. This is why the general activity turns to boredom. Nothing happens if he is absent whom the world awaits. ...
One recognizes right liturgy by the fact that it liberates us from ordinary, everyday activity and returns to us once more the depths and the heights, silence and song. One recognizes right liturgy in that it has a cosmic, not just a group, character. It sings with the angels. It is silent with the expectant depths of the universe. And that is how it redeems the earth.
Earlier: John Witvliet on Protestants and Pope John Paul II
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Religion and Civic Responsibility
The latest initiative of Calvin College’s Paul Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics will explore the link between religion and civic responsibility. A news release about the Henry Institute’s latest grant has this summary and quote from director Corwin Smidt:
Smidt also wants to probe more deeply the nature of religion in relationship to civic responsibility and involvement. Prior research in this area has found religious factors to be important variables, without clearly identifying what specific facet of religion most directly contributes to civic engagement.
“Is it religious beliefs, religious commitment, religious networks or some combination of such factors?” he wonders. “Are certain religious traditions or certain types of people within a religious tradition more likely to manifest high levels of civic engagement and responsibility? No effort has yet been made to ascertain what is proposed here.”
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Excommunicate With Care
I hope this isn’t a sign with any personal significance, but I opened the Psalter Hymnal Handbook yesterday right to its commentary on the PH’s form for excommunication. A sentence printed in bold caught my eye:
The forms, as found in the first seven printings of Psalter Hymnal, should not be used.
This is because Synod 1991 revised the forms for excommunication, ruling that the cause for exclusion should not be publicly specified. The revised forms are provided in Acts of Synod 1991
The Handbook adds that the current church order “leaves open the question of whether worship is the appropriate place for such a sad and wrenching action” (as opposed to a congregational meeting).
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Monday, April 25, 2005
‘All the Wonder of Redemption’
Calvin junior Jenn Langefeld posts a stirring account at her Reflecting weblog of the Calvin College Gospel Choir‘s spring concert:
At the concert, it was like the weather broke—this was the wind and the rain, the welcoming home, the gold rings, the fatted calf. And I just ached to be dancing. I scarcely realized it as I walked over to the Fine Arts Center, but as they opened with praise and worship and as they continued worshipping, everything in me seemed to open up. All the pain of the last week (and months before), all the wonder of redemption, all the joy of knowing He loves me. Still.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
High School Worship Training ‘05
This past week, Calvin College’s Worship Apprentices and CICW hosted the second annual conference on High School Worship Training. Over 100 high school student worship leaders from around the country came to Calvin for the event.
At pizza dinner Monday night, I sat with the worship team from Lynden Christian HS in Lynden, Washington.
Museum of Reformation Opens in Geneva
From Ecumenical News International:
Geneva is known around the world as the birthplace of the Calvinist Reformation, and now the Swiss city that is sometimes called the “Protestant Rome” has an International Museum of the Reformation for pilgrims, tourists and even residents of the city.
“The museum is a place for history but above all history that is alive,” says the museum’s director, the Rev. Isabelle Graesslé.
It was inaugurated on April 15 and uses original books, manuscripts, paintings, and engravings to trace the history of the Protestant movement, initiated in the city by French theologian John Calvin in the 16th century and which has since become one of the main families of Christianity.
More…
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The Most Segregated Hour
Grand Rapids Press reporter (and Calvin College alumnus) Matt Vande Bunte wrote the cover story of the 4/16 Religion section on the racial segregation of worshiping communities:
As head of a search committee formed to hire a new pastor, Brian White knew
things would get difficult at First Assembly of God.He remembers telling one candidate about the Wyoming mega-church’s desire to
become more racially diverse.The Rev. Scott Hagan stared back and asked if the church knew what it was
getting into.
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