Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Glorifying God In Worship, Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Symposium on Worship Archive

The Scriptures are full of glory. Israel is told by prophets to "give glory to the Lord." Angels at Jesus’ birth sing "Glory to God in the highest heaven." In John’s Gospel the Father and the Son glorify each other. And in the Psalms and I Chronicles people are told to "ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name." But how would this go in worship today? What, exactly, does it mean to glorify God in worship? Isn’t God already maximally splendid? What more can mere mortals add?

In-Between Words, Paul Ryan, Worship Apprentices

Symposium on Worship Archive

Scripture readings, sermons, and songs take up most of the time in a worship service. But it’s often what happens in between them that is most telling. Those little words and phrases that welcome guests, introduce songs, and prepare us for prayer make all the difference for encouraging full participation in worship. These phrases are crucial for extending hospitality and for forming congregations for deep engagement with God and each other.

Psalms For All Seasons As A Resource For Choirs, Martin Tel

Symposium on Worship Archive

The choir is an excellent conduit for bringing psalmody back into the heart of worshiping communities. Members of the Princeton Seminary Choir will demonstrate how musical settings from the psalter Psalms for All Seasons can be augmented by the choir or presented as choral anthems. Particular attention will be given to resourcing the smaller church ensemble or intergenerational choirs.

Links In The Liturgy: Creating "Flow" In A Worship Service, Howard Vanderwell

Symposium on Worship Archive

Are your worship services more like a novel which pursues a common theme, or a magazine that has a whole collection of elements which may (or may not) have much to do with each other? Vital worship can often be strengthened by an overall theme which holds it all together faithfully, and worship leaders will want to understand how creating links can help the service to be a complete conversation with God, flowing smoothly from one step to another. While this takes different forms in different worship traditions, we’ll explore the importance of these links, how best to create them, …

How (Not) To Preach In The Secular Age, Timothy Blackmon

Symposium on Worship Archive

Many of my friends have a very different take on life. They hope to find personal significance without God. The gospel story I preach seems neither plausible or all that relevant. Philosopher Charles Taylor explains "we are now living in a spiritual supernova, a kind of galloping pluralism on the spiritual plane." This workshop is a brief field guide on how (not) to preach and teach the gospel in a secular age.

2015 Program Book

Symposium on Worship Archive

No abstract provided.

Sticky Liturgies: Worship, Youth Ministry, And The Faith Of America's Teenagers, Eric Mathis

Symposium on Worship Archive

Research has shown that young people are abandoning the faith and leaving the church by the time they graduate from college. Might worship be part of the problem? This interactive workshop will briefly examine major studies in adolescent spirituality, explore multiple worship paradigms within individual congregations, and encourage reflection on the relationship between liturgical practice and adolescent spirituality

Leading Worship In A Post-Christian, Low-Biblical Literacy Age: Practical Lessons From Church History About The Catechetical Dimensions Of Worship, Gerald L. Sittser

Symposium on Worship Archive

When we gather for worship, we long to have many people present who do not yet know the Bible well. We also long to have life-long worshipers, including our children and youth, come to know the Bible well. How can worship be led in ways that embrace these goals, in ways that foster greater love for and knowledge of God’s word? How can church history challenge us to imagine very practical ways of shaping warm, instructive, life-giving worship practices?

Prayer Around The Cross: Unpacking The Liturgies, Susan Briehl, Tom Witte

Symposium on Worship Archive

Discover the shape and essential elements of this meditative form of prayer akin to the practices Taizé, Iona, and Holden Village, a center for renewal in Washington State. Explore both musical and liturgical resources and imagine how to incorporate or create such liturgies in your setting. Participants in this workshop are encouraged to attend the Vesper/Prayer Service at 4:15 on Thursday or Friday, led by Susan Briehl and Tom Witt, before attending this workshop.

The Multicultural Dance: Its Implications For Christian Worship, Fernando A. Cascante-Gómez

Symposium on Worship Archive

Using the imagery of "dancing" and based on the encounter of Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman as presented in the gospel of Mathew, participants in this workshop will be able to distinguish three steps to follow for relating with people from other cultural/ethnic backgrounds. Together we will discern some conceptual and practical implications of those steps when it comes to planning and implementing worship in a multicultural context.

The Most Important Word In Preaching, Mike Graves Phd

Symposium on Worship Archive

Since the inception of the New Homiletic in the 1970s, preachers have been experimenting with inductive and narrative forms of preaching, thanks to the likes of Fred Craddock and Eugene Lowry. The idea is for sermons to engage people, create an experience of the biblical text. In recent years, however, some critics have noted a lack of biblical exposition among narrative preachers, and this at a time of biblical and theological illiteracy among congregations. In this interactive workshop we will explore the tension and talk about what may be the most important word in preaching, narrative, or otherwise.

Worshiping A Christ Who Is Hard To Know, Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Symposium on Worship Archive

In the gospels, Jesus seems to answer questions people did not ask. He abruptly switches topics. He unexpectedly falls silent. He exalts babies. He had to heal one man in two stages because he didn’t get it quite right at first. He needs to pray all the time. Frankly put, like his Father, Jesus Christ can be known but he is also hard to know. With this stubborn fact in mind, how shall we worship him?

Abraham Kuyper's Surprisingly Relevant Theology Of Liturgy, John D. Witvliet

Symposium on Worship Archive

Before Abraham Kuyper became a university leader and prime minister, he was a church historian and pastor. He wrote copiously and passionately about many topics, including both the devotional and liturgical dimension of worship. His writing offers much to challenge and deepen our own experience of worship, exploring how we can imagine heaven as we worship, how we can elicit sincere worship, and how we can perceive God’s action in and through worship. Come ready to think theologically and to leave with a set of sparkling quotations to provoke discussions in your ministry contexts back home.

Prayer Around The Cross For The Healing Of The Nations: A Candlelight Liturgy Of Scripture, Silence, And Simple Song, Calvin Institute Of Christian Worship, Susan Briehl, Tom Witte

Symposium on Worship Archive

Join us for this contemplative evening prayer service, set in the darkness, as we gather around a large map of the world, with the cross—our Tree of Life—at its center, to pray for nations, places, and peoples in need of healing, hope, and peace. Note: Workshop C6, Prayer around the Cross: Unpacking the Liturgies is being offered to help participants think about how to offer these kind of liturgies in their own setting.

"We've Come This Far By Faith:" Our Story, Our Song, Calvin Institute Of Christian Worship, Emmett G. Price Iii, James Abbington

Symposium on Worship Archive

This Vesper/Prayer Service will feature the inspiring prayers, songs, and readings from the African American worship tradition past and present.

Telling Stories In Worship: Principles And Practices, Eric Mathis

Symposium on Worship Archive

This workshop will focus on telling stories in worship as well as the principles that shape and sustain this important worship leadership practice. While students will provide examples and discuss their own experiences with story-telling, workshop participants will be given the opportunity to practice their story telling skills as well as gather valuable resources for future planning and learning in their communities of faith.

Seven Streams Of 21st Century Congregational Song: Skills For Leading The People's Song In A Musically Multilingual World, Michael Hawn, James Abbington, William N. Heard, Jorge Lockward, Emmett G. Price Iii, Martin Tel

Symposium on Worship Archive

The last forty years has not only featured a profusion of new congregational songs, but also a profusion in new types and styles of congregational song. Musicians are increasingly called to be adept at leading quite different types of songs—as well as working collaboratively to empower others to do so. This seminar will present a clear, vivid description of seven streams of congregational song, and provide practical tools and examples for the unique kinds of leadership skills needed for music in each stream to enliven singing in your community.

Singing The Creeds, Miranda Dodson

Symposium on Worship Archive

Together we will discuss the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed and examine a few musical versions of each. Creeds, by nature were not written to be sung and therefore lack essential musical elements, which make the singing creeds word-for-word not only impractical, but nearly impossible! However, the aim of this workshop is to explore combining the powerful proclamations of creeds with the soul-stirring unity of song to enrich congregational and personal worship.

Why We Should Watch Football, Greg Youngblood

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Playing sports alone does not develop character, and sports in a corrupt context will develop bad character, but sports played according to God’s plan develops character that honors and glorifies God and develops people who have a deeper understanding of how God works in their lives and how they can serve God even after their playing days are over."

Posting about the morality of supporting football as well as ethics in football from a Christian perspective from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for …

Super Bowl Xlix, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It is a 153 page document made public by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that begins with these awkward sentences: The day of the Super Bowl game (the “Game” or the “Super Bowl”) is America’s unofficial holiday, a day when the attention of an entire nation is focused on the Game in one region between the championship teams of the American and the National Football Conferences. The most highly anticipated annual sports event in North American sports is also a time for festive celebration and civic pride.”

Mrs. Jannie Cora Moore Jackson

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Gurney's "Brave Community: The Digger Movement In The English Revolution" And Smith's "Martha Simmon[D]S 1624-1665: Her Life And Quaker Writings And 'The Fall' Of James Nayler" -Book Reviews, Maureen Bell

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Virtuous Friends: Morality And Quaker Identity, Jackie Leach Scully

Quaker Studies

Recent work in moral philosophy and psychology has made deep connections between questions of morality and identity, suggesting that orientation to a moral framework, through community practices and discourses, contributes to the individual sense of self. I argue that contemporary Liberal Quakers in Britain thus use their moral judgments among other things to reinforce their social identity as Quakers, emphasising a shared approach to ethical framework and sources of authority over the substantive content of the judgments. The favoured ethical framework of Liberal British Quakers appears to be a form of virtue ethics, and I explore the possibility that links …

Modern Testimonies: The Approach Of Quakers To Substance Use And Gambling, Helena Chambers

Quaker Studies

This article outlines a study into Quaker attitudes and behaviours in relation to the testimony of abstinence and moderation and that regarding gambling and speculation. The background to the Quaker testimonies is summarised, and relevant research in the substances/ gambling fields about denominational influences on personal behaviours is briefly outlined. The questions raised by recent Quaker scholarship represented are considered, and the study results are outlined in relation to the theory of Quaker double-culture (Dandelion 1996; Dandelion and Collins 2008) and the suggestions of Scully regarding virtue ethics among Quakers (2002, 2008). It is suggested that whereas the liberal belief …

Fellowship, Service, And The 'Spirit Of Adventure': The Religious Society Of Friends And The Outdoors Movement In Britain, C. 1900-1950, Mark Freeman

Quaker Studies

This article considers the involvement of members of the Religious Society of Friends in various manifestations of the outdoors movement in early twentieth-century Britain. It examines the Edwardian 'Quaker tramps' and their role in the 'Quaker renaissance', and goes on to consider the influence of Friends in organisations such as the Holiday Fellowship and the Youth Hostels Association, as well as interwar Quaker mountaineers. It argues that, while the outdoor activities of the Quaker renaissance were essentially internal to the Religious Society of Friends, a wider conception of social service took Quakers beyond the boundaries of the Society in the …

Staging Quakerism In American Theatre And Film, James Emmett Ryan

Quaker Studies

Arguing that Quakers have been used as influential stock characters in American performance culture, this essay profiles several examples of Quakers as represented in American theater and film: John Murdock's play The Triumphs of Love (1795), Harry F. Millarde's lost silent film The Quack Quakers (1916), and the Academy Award winning film High Noon (1952). Paradoxically, in each of these productions, which range from farce to serious drama, Friends are shown as either claiming or as striving for unattainable moral and religious human ideals, but also as an exemplary community of individuals against which other Americans might and should be …

Accusations Of Blasphemy In English Anti-Quaker Polemic, C. 1660-1701, David Manning

Quaker Studies

This paper investigates the conviction amongst zealous English Protestants, living between 1660 and 1701, that Quakerism constituted a form of blasphemy. Through an analysis of the accusation of blasphemy in anti-Quaker polemic it develops a cultural history of blasphemy as representation, illuminating a spiritual critique of Quakerism as enthusiastic antitrinitarianism and a sense of blasphemy commensurate with Thomistic theology. In so doing, this paper provides an insight into the contemporary theological anxiety that Quakerism was fundamentally wicked and anti-Christian.

Ten Years Of Birmingham: An Extended Editorial, Pink Dandelion

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Besse's "Sufferings Of Early Quakers: Southwest England, 1654 To 1690" - Book Review, Betty Hagglund

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Heelas, Woodhead, Seel, Szerszynski, & Tusting's "The Spiritual Revolution" - Book Review, Gay Pilgrim

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.