Discipleship takes place through dozens of different faith practices. Might the increased isolation due to COVID be calling us to build capacity for significant conversations and quiet times through which we encourage one another and ourselves as we die and rise in Christ together?
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But the light is here. It has come into this world we just need eyes to see. So look up and out.
As pastors and worship leaders we may need to remind ourselves and those we lead in worship that our joy is rooted not in our immediate context but the much larger story of redemption.
Communion is not limited to the past or present. In fact, it points forward with the resilient hope that Christ is making all things new.
How do we engage our calling to honor those in civil authority during a time of political strife?
Joy, prayer, and thanksgiving move us to the place where we see God and recognize our need to totally depend on him.
As pastors and worship leaders, we do our best to live into the gospel that we proclaim from week to week. It’s a gospel big enough to contain both our laments, our cries, our hopes, and our joys. It’s a gospel that recognizes and acknowledges the brokenness of our world and still finds a way to offer the hope of Easter morning.
God’s got you. You are not alone. God’s got you and God isn’t afraid of your fears and wonderings, your anger and questions, your weariness.
A pastoral reflection on the use of “I” and “we” in corporate worship.
Wise and honest Christians sing the Blues. Regularly. We sing them habitually, so we know the words by heart and soul.
This is what we, the church, may need at this time—to sit, silently, in the presence of God.
- Music is the vehicle for the liturgy. It is the canvas upon which words may have both sensual meaning and intellectual meaning. In this two-part blog, Dr. Adán Fernández shares ten practical ideas for music ministry during COVID-19.
Music is the vehicle for the liturgy. It is the canvas upon which words may have both sensual meaning and intellectual meaning. In this two-part blog, Dr. Adán Fernández shares ten practical ideas for music ministry during COVID-19.
Let worship words speak within a stone’s throw of worship itself. Let worship throw open windows for us to sense the bigger-than-words realities to which our words refer.
- The global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed centuries-old, unresolved racial disparities and injustices that are groaning for the reconciling grace of the gospel. Amidst this reality, what is the shape of honest worship in your context?
Many people are counting the weeks until we can reopen the building and welcome people back, but even/especially then the liturgical creativity is only starting.
Worship practices during the COVID-19 pandemic have opened up opportunities for worship leaders to reflect the principles and the most important elements of corporate worship.
These Sonnets are written to follow the order of worship and can be used by individuals for personal reflection, or in worship with households, small groups, or full congregations interspersed throughout worship or as a poetic offering.
While these days we readily associate the word Corona with the COVID-19 virus, in English literature it has another meaning entirely. Bethany explains:
Church choir directors are pastoral musicians. Choose songs that are theologically sound, musically rich, and vocally healthy for singers.
Jesus doesn’t forget those who are forgetting or have forgotten, nor those who are themselves forgotten, and neither should we. Joy-Elizabeth Lawrence shares five tips for leading worship in memory care residences.
Glo-o-o-o-o-ria, in excelsis deo, we sang, responding to Luke’s narrative of the angel army proclaiming the birth of Jesus.
During this Advent season, are you the one knocking or the one invited to express God’s love and mercy and open the door?
My daughter and I took a road trip one summer and because I wanted some scheduling freedom we didn’t book campsites ahead of time. Given just how many campgrounds there are I naively thought we would have no problem securing a site each night. How wrong my assumptions were and as place after place said they were full I felt my anxiety rising.
God is challenging us to look past the tyranny of the urgent and plant some shade trees, creating what will eventually be a stronger and more cohesive outpost of the Kingdom.
The anti-idolatry response [to worship’s “de-Christianizing of God’s people] is to make sure that our worship leaders and planners from pastors to musicians, artists, tech, liturgists and elders, and yes also those gathered, understand that it is God who calls us to worship, it is the Holy Spirit who enables our worship, and it is Christ who perfects it.
The Worship Sourcebook is valuable as a teaching tool to expand our concept of worship’s purpose. Underlying all our worship is a rhythm of call and response and the understanding that worship is the work of all the people, not just those leading us.
We love weekly communion. And we love how the Epiclesis reminds us of our dependence on the Holy Spirit.
During Lent a few years ago, our congregation began celebrating the Lord’s Supper weekly. At last, more than twenty years into our church plant-turned mission-oriented congregation, we became truly Reformed and truly ecumenical, honoring the best wisdom and practice of the global church.