In the opening song of the musical The Cotton Patch Gospel, the chorus sings: "Somebody said, 'It's the second coming,' someone said, 'It's the first.' Somebody said, It's the best that could happen,' someone said, 'It's the worst.'"
Give or take a year, 1884 was the year Clarence Wexler founded the town that bears his name. He drifted west from Paterson, New Jersey, prospecting not for gold but for coal. Coal mines were as good as gold when they were close enough to the Boston/New York/Trenton furnaces to connect by rail, and far enough west to ensure cheap labor. So it was that Clarence Wexler settled in mid-Appalachia to begin his dig.
When people reflect on the organ's role in worship, they think first of all of the music for preludes, offertories, and postludes. And, of course, everyone knows that organs accompany the hymns.
The sermon is a most amazing and curious entity says author Van Harn, one that preachers and laypeople alike tend to have strong ideas about. But many of our perceptions of the sermon are unbib-lical and off target.
There's my apple, Mom!" We were halfway through singing the first hymn when my son's eyes caught sight of his creation. I could hear the pride in his voice. "It's for Adam and Eve," he announced. As I quieted him, I smiled to myself, remembering his wide grin as he carried his apple forward as part of the offering on the first Sunday of Advent.
Prelude and Personal Meditation
Welcome and Announcements
Our Hymn of Trust: "Like a River Glorious"
[PsH 560,TH 699]
Organ Prelude and Personal Meditation
Welcome and Announcements
Our First Thoughts at the New Year: "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven"
[PsH 475, PH 478, RL 144, TH 76-77]
Our Testimony of Praise
I will exalt you, my God and King! I will praise your name for ever and ever!
I don't care what anybody says, I'm not writing another sermon for church this Sunday. The sad truth is, nobody in my congregation heard a word of the last one.
I've been holding forth from a pulpit for so many years I've lost track of time— I could be 80 or 90 or 150 years old, for all I know. What I do know is that after a worship service like I had Sunday last, I feel most all of Methuselah's 900 years.
I refer to the December, 1992 issue and its article by Robert Busch and Howard Hageman entitled, "Why We Call This Friday Good." When I read the meditations on the seven last words I was disappointed. My disappointment with the meditations was confirmed when I experienced the suggested worship service on Good Friday evening.
Bob De Jonge, a member of Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was intrigued by "On the Way to Bethlehem," a resource in last year's Advent issue (RW25) that adapted the Children and Worship approach to create a Christmas program. With Children and Worship leaders, he adapted that resource into a processional that opened worship each week of Advent.
