Supports Keeping Children in Worship Services
Our Christian Education department is undergoing some changes that have dramatically impacted the number of children coming to corporate worship services. We used to provide an alternate junior worship experience for children ages 4-12, all in one group! Parents then who did not want to “be bothered” with their children during adult corporate worship, could simply leave them in the CE wing for the entire morning. I believe you can sense my concern and bias against this view. Perhaps this new generation of parents has bought into the “day care” idea more than we realize; it is fragmenting our congregation into age groups. Would you give me permission to reprint Kathy Sneller’s “How to Encourage Your Children to Worship” (RW 57, p. 44)? I would like to print it in our next church newsletter and possibly make copies available for parents.
Carole Wills
Minister of Music and Worship
John Wesley Free Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana
Ed. note: Unless stated otherwise, subscribers to RW may reprint RW resources in church bulletins or newsletters, provided the source is identified. In this case, the permission line should read “Reprinted by permission from Reformed Worship 57 (Sept. 2000),” To reprint resources in other publications, permission must be requested. (See the next letter.)
Liked “Luther, Calvin, and the Pope”
Reformed Worship is known for its high-quality, provocative articles and graphics, as well as providing churches with leading-edge thinking. While hundreds of Presbyterian Churches in Canada will stick with the traditional Reformation Day sermon, hundreds of others will use the opportunity to bring the Reformation alive through drama. Jim Dekker’s reader’s theater (“Luther, Calvin, and the Pope Meet” (RW 57, Sept. 2000) provides churches with a way to look at the historic Reformation with fresh eyes. The Reformation needs to be ‘rediscovered’ each day.
Thank you for permission to include the article in the Presbyterian Church’s resource handbook, which will go out to all 1,000 congregations across Canada.
Keith Knight
Communications Director
Presbyterian Church in Canada
Didn’t Like “Luther, Calvin, and the Pope”
Let me say first of all that I am not an expert on Reformed worship by any stretch of imagination. However, I think you will agree with me that the primary purpose and objective of Reformed Worship is to worship God—not to please and entertain the audience. Also, I would hope that you agree with me that a key element of this corporate worship is the oral proclamation (preaching) of God’s Word. With these two statements in mind, I was very disappointed (actually appalled) with your recent suggestions for a Reformation Day worship service (RW 57, Sept. 2000). Here was a service that eliminated the oral proclamation of the Word for a theatrical skit!
As an elder I do my best to promote Reformed (Biblical) life and doctrine. Articles like the one mentioned do not help me in this task. In fact they are a serious impediment.
Syd Cammenga
Caledonia, Michigan
Response to Design Changes
An observation—half tongue in cheek and half serious!—as is my occasional custom. While I appreciate some of the design changes that were implemented in RW 57, I noticed that “Reformed” on the cover is now significantly smaller than “Worship” compared to the previous cover design in which both words carried the same visual weight. At the same time, this new issue included “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” which is a Christmas hymn notable for its omission of any reference to Christ (as you point out in the relevant article). Are these two developments just coincidental or accidental, or is there something afoot in which ecumenism triumphs over Reformed-ness, and a social gospel-universalism edges out Christology?
I ask with respect, because I know full well that the canon of Scripture includes the book of Esther, in which God is conspicuously not named, and that the Psalter Hymnal included “The Trees of the Field” in which God is not mentioned either (thus bringing forth my response of writing a second stanza in Songs for LiFE to correct that “error”). The best criteria of Christian worship that I know require us to sing hymns that address God or refer to God. That is why, given the great number of Christmas hymns available, there are modern hymnals which deliberately do not include “It Came upon…” (including the Psalter Hymnal and Rejoice in the Lord, to mention two hymnals in the Reformed tradition.
And thus my query: is our small-letter reformed-ness suddenly becoming large enough to incorporate a universalist hymn, or am I confronting simply a minor lapse of lower-case reformed editorial judgment?
Love to all of you, and regardless of this little aside, I’m deeply grateful for your effective work on what will now need to be called RW.
Bert Polman
Ancaster, Ontario