LOVED THE COLOR
Your December issue of RW [42] came yesterday, and I have found myself devouring it! It is a first-class journal with many aids to the pastor and the worship committees of local churches.
I felt a sense of joy from your use of color in reproducing Johannes Veenstra's art for use in the sanctuary. For twenty-five years I have worked with needlepoint, creating a number of pieces that are liturgical in nature. Most of these have been clergy stoles, but there have been others, too. Right now, the UCC church we are attending is taking baby steps to establish a guild of needlepoint workers. This grows out of my presenting to the church last year two stoles that commemorate the congregation's 350th anniversary. (Yes, 350th! The church was founded by pilgrims who came here from Plymouth to establish the town of Orleans). The reproductions in your magazine will be kept for future ideas as we practice the art of needlework to enhance our worship.
Donner B. Atwood
Eastham, Massachussetts
WANTS MORE COLOR
Reformed Worship is so outstandingly helpful to the churches that I hesitate to say anything even remotely critical. But allow me to make a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy suggestion that may make RW more useful. Will you please publish pictures of banners in color rather than in black and white? It would have been so helpful to have the Advent banner by George Langbroek (RW 41) in color so local banner makers could have a better idea of the finished product. Following my suggestion will add to the cost of producing RW, but, hey, aren't you rolling in it?
Harry Weidenaar
Oak Lawn, Illinois
Editor's note: Since we had seen Langbroek's beautiful color photos, we hoped some of his artistry would come through even in black and white. But at this point we can only afford color about once a year; this year our color issue was RW 42. Help us double our subscriptions and we'll quadruple your color!
TRACKING A LITANY TO ITS SOURCE
I was pleasantly surprised to see on the "Thanksgiving Prayers" page in the June 1996 issue of Reformed Worship "God Gave Us a World," a litany that I had written a number of years ago. Your readers might be interested in the journey that that prayer took before it reached your pages. I wrote the litany initially for a Convocation ceremony at Trinity Christian College in the fall of 1984. Since then it has been used in another Convocation ceremony, in Fine Arts Festival chapels for Christian high school students invited annually to Trinity for celebration of the arts in the context of God's creation, and in worship services at Hope Christian Reformed Church in Oak Forest, Illinois. In 1992, I was asked to create a keynote worship service for the Christian Educators Association convention in Chicago and included the prayer as part of the service. I imagine that someone from Kelloggsville was at that service, used the prayer in one or more of their services, and passed it along to you. Good! This will give others a chance to use it in worship, a necessary service that Reformed Worship provides and, we hope, will continue to provide for many more years.
Dan Diephouse
Trinity Christian College
Palos Heights, Illinois
Editor's note: We try to track our sources, but this tetter is a good example of how difficult that can be! Thanks for your generous spirit, Dan.
MORE THAN TEN YEARS
Can it really be [more than] ten years! How you have enriched our lives with resources, personal reflections, and theological grounding! I can't use everything I find in your magazine, and no one could agree with everything in any magazine, but it is still the only one I read from cover to cover eagerly.
Tom Stark
Lansing, Michigan
MORE OR LESS LECTIONARY
I find Reformed Worship very helpful; I even ordered several back issues after receiving my first few issues. The one thing I would like to suggest: This publication would be even more helpful (I believe for everyone) if you followed the Revised Common Lectionary in the preparation of the worship resources in each issue. I would also like to suggest an issue on stewardship sometime in the near future.
Samuel Laswell
Germantown, New York
Thank you for the sample issue of Refoimed Worship. It looks like a very good publication. Unfortunately, its usefulness to me as a United Church minister is severely limited by the fact that it does not appear to follow the same lectionary as does my denomination. For example, the first Sunday in Advent (RW 41, p. 4) has an Old Testament reading from Genesis; whereas the Revised Common Lectionary scheduled Isaiah 64 for that Sunday. So I'm sorry to have to write "cancel" on my invoice.
Gary Grottenberg
Medicine Hat, Alberta
COMMUNION BREAD RECIPES
I am currently working on a project of compiling communion bread recipes. Perhaps fellow subscribers might share their recipes with me and other RW readers. If you know of some in print, would you be so kind as to provide me with their citations? Thanks so much.
John Dornheim<
Box 207
Woodbury, PA 16695
CORRECTION AND ADDITION
In RW 43 we missed giving credit where credit was due to two additional contributors. In the service planning series for Lent and Holy Week, ("I AM—The Sayings of Jesus," p. 3), Bryce Mensink contributed the service on "I Am the True Vine," and cowrote with Gerald Zandstra the service planning ideas on "I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Mensink and Zandstra are both pastors at Seymour Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Also, the liturgical dance motions for the song "Alleluia, He Is Coming" (p. 27) were contributed by Yolanda Brouwer, worship coordinator at Zion Christian Reformed Church, Oshawa, Ontario. She first saw these movements used at an Anglican worship conference and is not sure who to attribute them to. But she notes, "They have been a real blessing wherever and whenever our dance group shares them."
Excerpt
Send us your letters via e-mail (brinke@crcna.org) or fax (616-224-0834) or by traditional mail (Reformed Worship, 2850 Kalamazoo Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49560).