Christianity Commons^™

By Our Love, Josh Bootsma

Student Work

"Love, then, is lavishing yourself upon someone who is unworthy and unattractive. It’s loving to the end—that is, to death."

Posting about Christ's example of love from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/by-our-love/

The Promise And Peril Of Preaching For Revival: Lessons From The Life Of George Whitefield, Peter Choi

Symposium on Worship Archive

Seasons of renewal are God’s gift to the church. They are also occasions for controversy and division. Together we will reflect on one of history’s greatest revival preachers to understand not only how revivals come but what follows in their aftermath. “God’s anointed barnstormer,” according to J. I. Packer, and “the greatest English preacher who has ever lived,” in the estimation of Martin Lloyd-Jones, George Whitefield also made crucial mistakes and had his fair share of regrets. To pay attention to the long duration of this famous preacher’s life is to learn both the promise and peril of revivals in …

Explaining Christian Worship To The Skeptical Or Questioning Seeker: Group Exercise, Kevin Adams

Symposium on Worship Archive

What are best practices for introducing people to the practices of Christian worship? How can we give an account of what we do in worship in warm, winsome, and convicting ways that move beyond surface level explanations to address the deepest spiritual hungers of our age?

The Contemplative Worship Leader, Paul Ryan

Symposium on Worship Archive

Parker Palmer writes, “At root, contemplation and action are the same.” For worship leaders, a deep well of spiritual practice is vital amid the activity and demands of worship leadership. But as the anxious and hurried, our spirituality is often found wanting. New and ancient patterns in Christ’s Spirit, however, are available to worship leaders, and in this workshop we will together explore how to find life and vitality in our diverse contexts and through our varied our personalities.

Program - 2017 Worship Symposium, 2017 Worship Symposium

Symposium on Worship Archive

No abstract provided.

Movement And Worship: An Experiential Engagement Of Embodiment In Ministry, Cassandra Vander Well

Symposium on Worship Archive

From the earliest origins of the Judeo Christian tradition, dance and movement have been integral to the Christian life and faith practice, moving us individually and communally closer to the heart of God. This seminar will examine the history of liturgical/sacred dance in the church and how a biblical perspective on dance can inform current approaches to weaving movement into the fabric of Christian worship and ministry. Come ready to explore and engage these concepts through movement and dialogue.

Limelight And Christian Leadership, Rebecca K. Deyoung

Symposium on Worship Archive

Work in Christian ministry and worship leadership often brings a struggle with image, reputation, and audience-pleasing. In this workshop, we’ll learn about the vice of vainglory—both the patterns of its temptation to show off a false self and time-tested spiritual disciplines of resistance to this vice. In a world captivated with selfies and social media, we’ll explore virtuous practices that can help Christians handle the limelight well and show appreciation for each other in ways that glorify God.

Worship: The Embodied Moment For Self And Church Community, Kathleen S. Turner

Symposium on Worship Archive

The guiding question for this workshop is: How can movement gesture enhance the worship of God in ways that are whole, imaginative and fulfilling for both the individual and the collective church body? This workshop will explore the ways in which song, word, prayer, liturgical materials and movement gesture meet within the worship experience. It will pay particular attention to the use of the body as an expressive instrument that embodies and displays reflective thought and honest emotion during the worship moment. This workshop welcomes participants to wear comfortable clothing and shoes in order to explore various worship movements that …

Bringing Hymns To Life On Guitar, Wendell Kimbrough

Symposium on Worship Archive

We’ve heard many of the great old hymns played beautifully with organs, pianos, and choirs, but their journey into the world of guitar-led worship can be awkward. Old tunes are often abandoned or significantly altered in the name of modernization, but such revision is not always necessary. This workshop will focus on demonstrating and discussing how to translate traditional hymns into a guitar-led band format while keeping the hymn’s soul intact.

Innovation In Worship: Working With A Team To Make Healthy Changes, Jordan Clegg, Dawn B. Gibson, Kathy Smith, Jonathan Tamayo, Jeff Wong

Symposium on Worship Archive

Listen to a diverse group of panelists from various churches across North America describe how they envisioned and led their congregations through changes in worship. We will consider the value of empowering members’ gifts in worship, and wisdom for healthy change processes. This seminar will be valuable for any church considering changes in worship.

Hosanna!: Ecumenical Songs For Justice And Peace, Ester P. Widiasih

Symposium on Worship Archive

This collection of music is gathered from five continents and many different cultural contexts. Each song carries with it a story that provides insights into the unique challenges and piety of worshiping communities around the world. Learning these songs and the stories, gestures, rhythms and instruments that accompany them is a wonderful way to pray for the church around the world and to stretch your community experience toward new empathy for the piety of others.

Short Songs: Deepening Our Participation In Worship, Alison Adam

Symposium on Worship Archive

Short songs do something different: they deepen, with music, the responses a congregation makes in an act of worship. Often tied to liturgical moments in a service, short songs enable us to gather, to pray, to prepare to hear God’s Word, to affirm, to go forth, to move, to rejoice. They tap into the emotion of worship songs, and they draw on the ancient tradition of chant, but they are neither contemporary nor traditional. We’ll sing about 10 of these songs, gathered by the Iona Community from their own writers and from the world church. They are easily led, enable …

The Great Prayer Of Thanksgiving At Baptism And The Lord's Supper, John D. Witvliet

Symposium on Worship Archive

In the past 40 years, many Protestant communions have recovered a robust, historically-oriented prayer of thanksgiving at celebrations of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Nearly every official denominational liturgical publication has featured strong examples of this practice. Yet thousands of local congregations do not practice this for a variety of reasons, including concern over the length of the service, and—quite likely—not really understanding the spiritually formative power of this practice for the daily life and faith of Christian believers. This session will feature a robust testimony about the value of this ancient practice, deeply rooted in the Psalms, and present …

A Sweet Sound: Absorbing God's Word In The Language Of The Heart, Ann Kapteyn

Symposium on Worship Archive

Many people around the world are multilingual but do not have access to the scriptures in their mother tongue. What changes when a person hears God’s Word in their own language as opposed to their second or third language? How does the translation of key theological terms into a person’s mother tongue change their understanding? Beyond language, some cultures are oriented to oral methods of communication rather than reading and writing. What methods, resources, and new technology are available to people who prefer to listen to God’s Word rather than read it? This talk will be a wide-ranging discussion how …

Worship 201: Giving Witness To The Urgent, Eric L. Mathis, Paul Ryan

Symposium on Worship Archive

A critical task of 21st century worship leadership is to name pressing issues, and give confident witness to the reality of God’s presence in sometimes difficult circumstances. In this seminar, we will identify pressing issues in local and global worshiping communities. Then we will engage past and present worshiping communities as case studies to identify their approach to urgent issues. Finally we will imagine how these communities might teach us about giving confident witness to those issues that are urgent in our time and place.

Singing The Psalms In A Modern Worship Setting, Wendell Kimbrough

Symposium on Worship Archive

The Psalms were written to be sung. But if your church favors guitar-led modern worship, how do you sing the Psalms? Songwriter Wendell Kimbrough’s pastor answered this question by asking him to write short Psalms refrains that are singable and memorable for his congregation. For the past two years, their church has engaged the Psalm through music each week, following the Revised Common Lectionary. In this workshop, Wendell will share some of the best-loved of these refrains and talk about his church’s journey learning to sing and love the Psalms.

What Makes Christian Worship Trinitarian?, Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Symposium on Worship Archive

The doctrine of the Trinity is old, deep, and mysterious. How should Christian trinitarianism manifest itself in worship—that is, beyond simple repetition of the trinitarian formula? How might deep trinitarian worship bless God and ourselves? How might it even affect the way we look at each other after worship is over?

Shaping A Congregation’S Worship Dna, Kevin Adams

Symposium on Worship Archive

This workshop offers wisdom for designing and shaping the first year of worship in new and restart church settings, with practical and theological insights about how worship connects to the tradition, neighborhood, and persons of the church planting context, leader and team.

Faith Formation From Birth To Age 20: A Psychology Professor's Insights For Strengthening Congregational Ministry, Marjorie L. Gunnoe

Symposium on Worship Archive

What are the most important things to know when working with kids ages 0–2, 3–6, 7–11, early adolescents, and late adolescents? This fast-paced session is a (really, really) condensed version of a course required for Calvin students minoring in Youth Ministry—without the homework. Helpful for parents, pastors, teachers, mentors and anyone who cares about the faith formation of the next generation.

Inviting The Text To Direct The Service, Joan Devries

Symposium on Worship Archive

Biblical text is central to Christian worship gatherings. Generally, the most significant piece of scripture is the focus of the sermon or the message, and worship planners are happy when they can match that theme in other parts of the worship gathering. What if, however, we invited the text with its various parts and movements to shape the whole of our service more concretely rather than have it be packaged as the teaching contained in a sermon? What if we adopted the movements within a psalm as the separate movements of our worship gathering and we enacted the psalm together? …