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A sacred music grant project helped Catholic parishioners from many ethnicities—Anglo, Eritrean, Filipino, Latino, Nigerian, Vietnamese, and more—experience the awe and mystery of faith and God.
Intra-dynamic preaching is a new mode of preaching that promises to immerse people in God’s living word. It uses the form and language of specific art types to design sermons that resonate in people’s heads, hearts, imaginations, and bodies. Sunggu A. Yang edited a practical handbook to help preachers encounter God in scripture and aesthetically recreate that experience for listeners.
You’re probably familiar with expository and narrative sermons. Homiletics professor and author Sunggu A. Yang offers another preaching method: intra-dynamic preaching. He explains how “infusing the sacred art of preaching with the vibrant energy of the arts” can lead worshipers to unexpected moments in which God encounters and changes them.
In popular culture, the ancient Council of Nicaea is sometimes seen as a conspiracy to consolidate power. Some Baptist, evangelical, and nondenominational churches are resistant to creeds, and Christians who recite the Nicene Creed weekly or at least regularly in Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant traditions don’t appreciate the depth of the theology in what they are saying. Still, many theologians and historians hope that celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed in 2025 can unify global Christians.
Joining a racial justice pilgrimage in the American South helped a Canadian pastor see parallels to the experiences of Indigenous and settler peoples in his congregation. These insights are helping his church become more appreciative of God’s incarnation in Indigenous people.
The Black church has deep experience of suffering and being denied God-given and legal rights. As turbulent times affect more people, Jemar Tisby’s book The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance describes how Black Christians have kept the faith.
You don’t have to be Black or attend a predominantly Black church to celebrate Juneteenth with appreciation and respect. Many resources are available for your congregation to cosponsor or plan a God-honoring Juneteenth event or worship service.
Pastor and educator Rasool Berry hosted and coproduced the award-winning documentary Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom. He explains why US Christians of every race and culture can and should celebrate God’s work through people to announce and enforce freedom from slavery.
While completing a grant on playfulness in worship, Sarah Travis began to see connections between play and trauma. 91ing God through embodied, imaginative, and story-based practices helps people and congregations stuck in trauma begin to move toward healing and new life.
An emerging initiative to translate contemporary Korean worship songs into English is yielding fruitful questions and collaborations. The project is building ecumenical and generational community while introducing English speakers to Korean Christians’ ardent commitment to God, both personally and communally.
Korean Christians worldwide enjoy contemporary worship songs by Korean composers, but these are seldom sung in the main Sunday liturgies of Korean Protestant churches. An emerging initiative to translate Korean heart songs to English can unite different worshiping generations and cultures. This initiative can also help Korean and English-speaking churches identify, appreciate, and question their cultural views on worship.
Resources to help churches and other faith communities do ministry with people affected by adverse childhood experiences or other trauma.
