Joyce Borger

About This IssueThough you will still find some of the columns you’ve come to expect, this issue is a bit different. Articles are broadly divided under the three themes of thresholds, stones, and doxologies. In each section you will find some personal reflections on the themes, particularly as they relate to Reformed Worship. You will also find articles on how the themes intersect with corporate worship along with practical resources for worship. As I write this editorial marking the last print issue of Reformed Worship’s quarterly subscription format, I am filled with a profound sense of gratitude for all that has been accomplished through Reformed Worship thus far. Over the past three and a half decades, we have published valuable resources and thoughtful articles that have had a lasting impact on many worshiping communities. But even as we reflect on what we have done, there is growing anticipation for the journey ahead, for building on the past and embracing future possibilities, amplifying and expanding the ministry and essence of Reformed Worship. But before we cross the threshold to the new, it is worth taking a moment to reflect, remember, and give thanks.  ThresholdsThe word “threshold” evokes a literal doorway into or out of a home. Though crossing a threshold is typically a mundane, everyday act, sometimes it carries significant meaning—entering the home for the first time as its new owners or as a newly married couple, bringing a child home, or returning after a long absence or to a much emptier home after a funeral. Crossing the threshold in those moments feels like a momentous step. We pause. We take a deep breath. We open the door. We step through.As Reformed Worship crosses a threshold, this issue serves as a stone to honor the past and as a doxological offering to our triune God.Thresholds are more than spaces in doorways. A threshold is the space between what is and what is to come, the space between the known and the unknown. We often traverse thresholds without thought, but sometimes it is worth pausing and taking a breath before crossing over this liminal space that acts both as a separation between what was and what is to come and a connection between the two points in time. A healthy pause will allow for reflection on the past and curiosity about the future; it can be a time of discovery and growth. In some ways this issue serves as a threshold, marking the space between what we know and what is to come, between the familiar quarterly subscription based print journal and new ways of providing resources. As we prepare to cross this threshold, we do so wanting both to leave well and to enter well, to mark both the separation and the continuity this threshold brings. Scripture provides us with many examples of threshold moments. Though I don’t suggest that Reformed Worship’s transition compares in importance, I do think we can learn from biblical moments of transition. One such moment is found in the book of Joshua, when the people of God had just entered the promised land and were embarking on a whole new life. In the last chapter, we find a covenant renewal ceremony that includes the recounting of the story of God’s faithfulness while leaning into a future full of promise.  Stones“Remember when . . . ?” we begin. “Tell the story about . . . ,” we beg. We love stories—especially true stories. We humans seem to have a built-in need to remember. Today there are whole industries to support our remembering through photography, scrapbooks, journals, videos, or other archival means. In the Old Testament, people used stones.Stones show up several times in the book of Joshua as a call to remember all that God had done and said. “Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid!” resounds like a drumbeat throughout the book as the people of God experience victory after victory. Intermingled with stories of the Israelites’ forgetfulness, arrogance, and sinfulness are both God’s punishment and God’s mercy. At times these stories are completely relatable; at other times they are entirely perplexing. But the message to remember God’s covenant faithfulness is as relevant today as ever.Early on in the book, God’s people are faced with the challenge of crossing the Jordan River at flood stage. God performs a miracle, and the people are able to cross the river on dry ground. But before the water recedes, Joshua obeys God’s command to instruct representatives from each tribe to gather a stone from the riverbed. Later, Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.” —Joshua 4:20–24The stones served as a witness to what God had done, and in that witness they helped people remember, which in turn led to reverence, honor, and praise of God. At the end of the book (Joshua 24), the people of Israel are gathered again and, through Joshua, God recounts their history: all the ways in which God had been faithful to them, the miracles God had performed, and how God had saved them. In response, the people promise no fewer than three times that they will serve the Lord. Joshua reminds them of what it means to serve the Lord as required by the “Book of the Law of God.” This time Joshua uses just one stone to serve as a witness to both the history of God’s faithfulness and the promise of the people to serve and obey God. Witness stones remind us of what God has done, of who God is, and of how we are to be in relationship with God—a God who is worthy of praise. We need reminders today just as the Israelites did in the past.DoxologiesWhen Jesus was entering Jerusalem the week of his death, he was surrounded by a crowd declaring who he was and praising him—though they didn’t comprehend the fullness of their words. They cried, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38). These were powerful and even dangerous words—words that spoke against political and religious powers, words claiming that earthly rulers are not the ones in charge. Witness stones remind us of what God has done, of who God is, and of how we are to be in relationship with God—a God who is worthy of praise. The Pharisees didn’t like what they were hearing and wanted Jesus to silence his followers. But Jesus responded, “I tell you, . . . if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). Witness stones: Stones that will testify to who God is and to what God has done for us. Stones that will sing out God’s praises if our voices fall silent. The land of Israel is a land full of stones.But later in the New Testament, the apostle Peter transforms the idea of witness stones. He calls Jesus “the living Stone” (1 Peter 2:4)—the ultimate witness to the faithfulness of God, the living testimony to the promised resurrection, and the foundation of our faith. No longer is the witness an inanimate stone. It is a living, breathing testament. And Peter doesn’t stop there. He calls all believers “living stones . . . being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). In the rest of the chapter, Peter puts more flesh onto what it means to be a living stone, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). It entails testifying to what God has done, praising and glorifying God for God’s acts of mercy, living lives of witness to those who do not yet believe, and inviting others to join the doxological refrain. We do all of this in community. We need each other to remember.In Greek, the word for “glorify” or “praise” is δοξάζω (doxázo), from which we get the English word doxology. Our worship is punctuated with doxologies, often directed at all three persons of the Trinity. Some worship traditions include doxologies in response to words of pardon, after giving gifts, following creedal declarations, and at the conclusion of worship. In my tradition, the doxology is typically the final statement of praise to God before we leave worship—a final reminder of who God is to be carried across the threshold into the coming week and reverberate in our daily lives. For this final print issue of Reformed Worship, I can think of no better theme than that of thresholds, stones, and doxologies, and I hope: that even as we think about Reformed Worship’s milestone, we also explore what milestones could be marked in our own communities and what our version of “stones” may look like in the context of worship;that we take time to celebrate what God has done through Reformed Worship thus far, point out things we have learned along the way, and name the values we carry into the future, encouraging our worshiping communities to regularly do the same;that we offer words of glorious praise—a doxology to God for who God is—and provide meaningful ways to include more doxological moments in our own worship; andthat we do all of this leaning joyfully into the future with curiosity, hope, and faith, encouraging this same posture in our own congregations. As Reformed Worship crosses a threshold, this issue serves as a stone to honor the past and as a doxological offering to our triune God. Carrying the values and mission that have shaped us thus far, we eagerly step forward, trusting that this threshold is not an end, but a doorway to a bright future. To God alone be all glory and praise.A DOXOLOGY OF FAITH Timeless God, we honor you. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!Teaching God, we learn from you.Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!Saving God, we look to you. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!Keeping God, we rest in you. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! —Diane Dykgraaf, © 2025 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike. Used by permission.WHAT’S NEXT?Reformed Worship is not going away. We are simply shifting to a web-based delivery system. As of July 1, 2025, everything on the website will be available to everyone—wherever and whenever you want to access them.We are committed to providing an easily searchable, comprehensive, and growing online resource library filled with practical resources and articles submitted by worship leaders and planners such as yourself and by experts from around the globe. The change in medium will allow us to focus on developing more multimedia content and to explore a variety of other ways to better support this growing community. While our delivery method might be changing, Reformed Worship’s values will remain the same. We will continue to be a trusted place to find resources that are scripturally based, theologically grounded, historically connected, and adaptable and creative.(Did I mention that all this will be free?)

I pray that the echoes of Sunday’s praises will continue into Eastertide and be the background against which we look at this world. And I pray that our worship will make room for both our laments and our praises, acknowledging that they can exist simultaneously in our hearts and our songs. As individuals and worshiping communities spend time this week considering the created world as part of Earth day, it seems particularly appropriate to offer these alternative stanzas to “This Is My Father’s World.”

I had never heard a woman preach, yet I had made the bold decision to go to seminary to become a pastor. Not everyone agreed with my decision. One person questioned the need for more education. “All you need is Jesus!” they exclaimed. “Who is Jesus?” I responded in jest. Yet I found that seemingly simple question was at the core of much of my seminary education.This question was also at the center of many theological discussions and controversies throughout the history of our church, even to the present day. Yes, we know that salvation is in Christ alone, but who is this Christ that we worship? Christ is Lord, but what does that mean in our everyday life? What does being a Christ follower look like? These struggles and questions were as alive in the early church as they are today. The need for clarity arose from wanting to know God and to honor God. In the early 300s, the church was struggling with the question of how best to talk about the Father God, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and their relationality. What are the right words to use? How do we balance the seemingly conflicting truths that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, yet there is only one God? There is a Father and a Son, which suggests a generational timeline, but one didn’t come before the other. How does this all work? Arius, a pastor from Alexandria, Egypt, thought it didn’t work. Out of the right desire to protect the holiness of God the Father, Arius argued that God could not have become an unholy human; therefore, Christ is not God incarnate. Arius demoted Jesus Christ to a created being, though still a divine being. John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” If Jesus was begotten from God the Father, doesn’t that suggest that there was a time he didn’t exist—that he came into being after God the Father? Meanwhile, across town, a pastor in training, Athanasius, was teaching that God the Father and Christ the Son were equally divine. Hearing this, Arius cried heresy, and quite a row erupted, with church members quickly choosing sides. This disagreement soon spread beyond Alexandria. “We Believe” or “I Believe”?The beginning of the Nicene Creed was originally written in Greek in the first-person plural: “We believe.” When translated into Latin, it became credo: “I believe.There isn’t a right or wrong choice when using the creed today. If the creed is used liturgically as a statement of unity, “We believe” is appropriate. If it is functioning as a personal statement of faith, “I believe” may be the better choice.Constantine, the Roman emperor and a fairly new convert to Christianity, was worried about the political fallout of the growing division. He summoned more than a thousand Christian leaders to Nicaea for a meeting that lasted from May through July of 325. Around three hundred of the attendees were bishops active in the debates about the nature of Christ. At this three-month meeting, participants made a variety of decisions, including when to celebrate Easter and when people were permitted to kneel in prayer. Of most significance, though, was the formulation of a new statement regarding the divinity of Christ; this became known as the Nicene Creed. In 381, at the First Council of Constantinople, the creed was expanded to include additional clarification around the Holy Spirit, finishing the work begun at the Council of Nicaea. The significance of this council’s work and of the resulting Nicene Creed cannot be overstated, even if few of our congregations make regular use of the creed in worship. FILIOQUE CLAUSEWhile it may have seemed that the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople put an end to Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ, the reality was that this heresy continued to plague churches in the West, particularly in Spain. To combat the heresy, Western churches wanted to make Christ’s divinity very clear. They did so by adding “and the Son” to the section on the Holy Spirit, insisting that the Holy Spirit proceeds from “the Father and the Son.” In Latin, “and the Son” is expressed as the single word filioque. The addition of the filioque clause  is one of the reasons given for the split between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Roman Catholic churches of the West in 1054. The Eastern church thought the clause implies the Holy Spirit is a lesser member of the Trinity; the Western church believed it didn’t change the creed’s meaning. Today, most theologians from the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions no longer see the filioque clause as a reason for division, understanding that they are professing the same truth in different ways. The Nicene Creed . . .. . . is ecumenical: The basic truths affirmed in this creed are held in common by Christians around the globe. Whether we say the creed often or not, Christian churches of all denominations—small and large, rural and urban, Eastern and Western, from the Northern and Southern hemispheres, with all kinds of worship styles—fundamentally agree with what is claimed in this creed. Given all we disagree with each other on, this is no small feat and should be what unites us as the siblings in Christ that we are. When we say “We believe,” we can truly say “we” to mean “all Christians.”. . . embraces trinitarian mystery: Ambiguity might make scientists anxious, but the Nicene Creed has no problem with mystery and contradictions. It’s able to do what Arius wouldn’t: affirm the divinity of Christ. Christ is “of the same substance” as the Father, and coeternal with him. The creed outlines Christ’s work of salvation through his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—all four equally important. The Nicene Creed also affirms the profound mystery of the three-in-oneness of the Trinity—three persons, yet one essence. These theological truths are foundational to our Christian faith—a faith built on mystery and truth, a faith worth declaring boldly. I don’t regret my time at seminary exploring answers to the question “Who is Jesus?” My faith continues to deepen as I pursue that question and grow in my desire to know Jesus. Still, difficult times come, and as I journey through life, I find that the creeds serve as anchors in seasons of doubt or challenge. And it’s both powerful and heartbreaking to know that these same words are being proclaimed each week by Christians in Gaza and Jerusalem, in Russia and Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, China, Haiti, and along the southern border of the United States. Together in the face of opposition, in times of unimaginable grief and suffering, immense joy, unshakeable faith, and even seasons of doubt, together we declare, “We believe!” 

Do not ask me about my daughter’s adoption story.I say that only as a warning, because once I get going . . . whoo-eee. It’s a good one. God showed up to perform modern-day miracles that rival that of Elisha and the widow’s oil—blessings just kept coming in unbelievable ways that have unbelievers shaking their heads to this day. I love that story. I will drop everything at any time to tell anyone. I don’t need any time to prepare. It’s part of me and bursts from me. What story do you love to tell?In this issue of Reformed Worship, we finish our exploration of the connection between worship and mission. In the last issue we focused on Christ as the Servant-King and on our mission of following Christ’s example of service. In this issue we focus on our mission of telling the salvation story, which includes our own stories. The worship series “God Is In the Story” offers an opportunity for congregants to tell their stories of how they have seen God at work in their lives. Dr. David Music encourages us to prepare how we tell the story when we are asked to read Scripture in worship (“Reading Scripture in Public Worship” ). Lindsay Wieland Capel also reminds us to consider different ways to tell the story when we share it with people who communicate and learn in a variety of ways (“Worship for All: What Worship Planners Can Learn from Universal Design for Learning”). And because this is the Ascension and Pentecost issue, there also are resources to help you tell that part of the gospel message.God showed up to perform modern-day miracles that rival that of Elisha and the widow’s oil—blessings just kept coming in unbelievable ways that have unbelievers shaking their heads to this day.This year also marks the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. We have included a few resources to help you commemorate that milestone by using the creed in worship and exploring its meaning. The creed itself is a wonderful summary of the gospel message and an effective tool for discipleship. How would our approach to the creed change if we approached it as a story we get to tell rather than as merely a historic document?What story do you love to tell? I think that’s an important question to ask ourselves and those in our worshiping communities. Where is God in that story? Do you have the same enthusiasm for your personal story as you do for the gospel message itself? I know the story and can tell it, but I imagine that I am like many of you—and like many of those who gather with you in worship. There are times I feel great enthusiasm and times I feel disengaged. There are times in my life when the gospel message has burst forth from my heart and lips and times when I’ve cried, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” There are times when I’m the one testifying, and there are times where my faith has been renewed by the testimony of others. The act of telling our own stories of God’s faithfulness in worship and in other settings is not just missional, but formational and pastoral. Let us not neglect this task.

This week’s sermon text, John 20:1-18, has a profound yet simple testimony: “I have seen the Lord!” Where do we see the Lord today? When the Lord reveals himself to us, through scripture, creation, words of people, books, music, etc, we should also declare, “I have seen the Lord!” Other readings from the lectionary for today remind us that we are called to give account to the hope that we have. Easter equips us with both the words and actions to give such an account. 

This week began with the joyful sounds of “Hosanna!” but now the crowds cry “crucify.” Jesus was the ultimate servant, giving his life for the sake of the world. While the price to follow Christ might not be as high for us today, Christ made it clear that following him will cost each of us something.  As Christ said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9: 23-24).

Can you think of a situation in which explaining what to do wasn’t effective, so you needed to show the person how to do it? Jesus reverses this pattern: He starts by showing, then spends some time explaining. In the gospel of John, much of his final time of teaching the disciples has to do with love—his love for them, his hope that they will continue to love him, and his command that they love each other. But he begins all his teaching with a vivid demonstration of love: He washes his disciples’ feet. This act is set in the middle of John’s account of Judas’s betrayal. Jesus’ love is not dependent on his disciples’ behavior. It is offered in advance of and with full knowledge of all their coming cowardice, denials, and betrayals. And this act ends with a clear application: Show this same humble, servant-like love to each other.

It is worth noting that in Luke’s account of the triumphal entry there is no mention of the Palms; instead Luke highlights the laying down of the coats, a sign of reverence and subservience. Little did Christ’s followers understand of what true service to God requires: Nothing short of our whole lives, not merely our cloak. Yet, though they did not grasp the deep significance of the pageantry unfolding in front of them, they played a significant part. The message of the angels proclaimed in Luke 2:14 —“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” —has now been taken up by Christ’s disciples, “‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’” (Luke 19:38). As Christ’s disciples in the world today, we need to continue that refrain or else the stones will cry out in our place.

What acts of service are meaningful? Is the call to serve, to live missionally, just for those who work for the church or a mission organization ? Is it for those with a particular gift?

Like the Pharisees we often are too worried about what others think about us. We worry what would happen if we hung out with the wrong people, or if someone saw us acting outside of approved norms. We spend so much time talking about our differences that we fail to see the many more ways that we are the same. The father in the story of the prodigal son  loved the prodigal son and he loved the lost son who stayed at home. Christ loved all the sinners around the table. Christ loved the Pharisees though they chose not to see it.