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This article describes the role of the worship planner and provides suggestions for worship planning in a wide range of churches and worshiping communities.
Usually teachers give the homily during daily worship at Mustard Seed School in Hoboken, New Jersey. When the school asked every eighth grader to give a homily, the results surprised and blessed the whole community.
The learning went both ways when two school communities decided to “dwell in the Psalms” for a year. Their Psalms-based creations revealed that the Spirit can work through kids and adults of any age to nourish faith.
Kendra Buckwalter Smith is the worship coordinator at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. PTS has chapel four days a week, and Smith meets with every person or team that plans a chapel service.
Two seminaries seek the sweet spot among worship classes and chapel services. They aim to produce ministers ready to lead worshipers in full, conscious, active participation.
The lessons learned at two seminaries that renewed their chapel worship services can make a big difference in your congregation.
Sally Ann Morris is the chapel musician at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She’s involved with each of Wake Div’s twice-weekly, 45-minute chapel services.
Jeremy Zeyl is an award-winning singer-songwriter and the director of worship at Talbot Street Christian Reformed Church in London, Ontario.
Whether you want to go simple or elaborate with these photo ideas, you can follow three steps to get people talking about worship and faithful living.
Two ideas borrowed from visual sociology researchers—photo elicitation and photovoice—are helping Christians and congregations picture their lived experiences with God.
Roman Williams is a former pastor and church planter who now teaches sociology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He specializes in using visual methods to research the sociology of religion.
To be human is to be aware that life—one’s own life—is a sheer and undeserved gift from God. It is to revel and delight in its giftedness and to return thanks to the Giver. When the Giver hears an echo of gratitude, the circle becomes complete. Thus gratitude is an essential feature of living up to what God intended for his humans creatures when he made them.
