Harvey Albert Smit

Do young people find our worship services satisfying, uplifting, and a good vehicle for their own praise of God?

That's the question underlying this theme issue of Reformed Worship.

Funerals in Other Cultures

Funeral traditions are potent. They touch our hearts. They express our deepest understandings of life and death. They form major landmarks in the life of every one of us.

Funeral traditions are enduring. They change slowly, if at all. Each subculture, and each group within a subculture, seems to have its own ways of marking the end of life.

It's Sunday morning. All over the city Christians are leaving their homes and gathering in churches. For the next hour or more they will meet and perform a number of liturgical acts together. They will pray, sing hymns, read Scripture, listen to a sermon, and more—a stylized series of actions that we call "worshiping God."

During a recent coffee break, the conversation wandered into worship. One colleague commented that services at her church weren't much fun.

When I discover that some Catholic or Lutheran friends are fasting during Lent, I feel a stab of guilt. My conscience nudges me with the insistent question, "Why don't I, a Reformed Christian, also fast?" Further thought doesn't make the question disappear; it persists. Why don't I, as an act of repentance or humility, deny myself some ordinary good in order to better remember my Lord's suffering and death? And why doesn't my church urge me to fast as a fitting way to prepare myself for the splendid Easter festival?

Easter Sunday 1986 was a special day for seven-year-old Kesuke Sakai, a day he will never forget. On Easter Sunday Kesuke was baptized in the Toyoake Church near Tokyo, Japan. As Christians around the world celebrated the risen Christ, Kesuke became part of Christ's family. "Now I am God's child!" said Kesuke.

Presenting a new magazine—"Here I am, read me!"–seems presumptuous. We, who have produced the magazine, presume that you, who now hold it in your hand, are interested enough to read it. We presume you won’t flip it into the wastebasket as junk mail. And we hope you will subscribe and read future issues.