1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
A set of resources for acknowledging military members in worship.
If your church is larger than 150 people, statistics say that you have members who fall on the Autism Spectrum, including Asperger Syndrome.
This session featured stories, prayers, and insights from the first year of the Stockbridge Boiler Room, a simple Christian community that practices a daily rhythm of prayer, study, and celebration while caring actively for the poor and the lost.
American historian James Bratt will explore the alternative destinations in style, ritual, and spirituality which the antebellum pilgrims sought and found on the road out of revivalism. Liturgical scholar Lester Ruth will respond and discuss analogies on the worship scene in the 21st century, especially noting the recurring popular impulse for alternate forms of worship.
While funerals have often been seen as family affairs or private activities, the fact is that death impacts entire communities: both the faith community and the community at large.
This session covered how to sing effectively as a worship team, and how to make the truths you are singing come alive.
This session explored how the most-used contemporary songs speak of the Triune God and what God has done to save us.
This workshop explored the biblical teaching on the central role that the Holy Spirit plays in worship. Dependence and freedom, order and spontaneity, reverent silence and joyful noise will be some of the paradoxes to explore in the framework of Scripture. Our purpose is to inform some of our present-day worship practices and enrich, challenge, and transform them for the glory of the Lord we worship.
Rather than attempting unity in our services through a commonality of style or form, how much richer and spiritually nourishing to use a biblical or theological theme as a unifying principle. This approach allows for the use of a rich variety of forms and styles, and gives time to focus on and respond to an aspect of God and his truth in a way that is edifying and serves a catechetical function over the long run.
There continues to be a growing interest in church visual art galleries, exhibitions, and educational opportunities related to art within our churches.
This session will begin with a brief introduction to anthropological categories for talking about worship--liturgical time, space, environment, action, persons, music, language, etc. Participants will then engage in small group conversations about worship, using a process devised especially for facilitating conversations in congregations.
Whether pre-written, extemporaneous, or a combination, the prayer offered in worship on Sunday morning is probably the longest single prayer most people hear all week. As pastors and worship leaders, our public prayers reveal much about our habits of mind even as those prayers have a shaping influence on how the congregation prays all week. This workshop looked at the place of prayer in public worship and will offer practical suggestions for offering prayers that are theologically imaginative and pastorally sensitive.
