Resource Search Results

Cory Willson on Inhabiting the Liturgy

Maybe you feel like a bad Christian when you catch yourself thinking about work or weekday concerns during corporate worship. But doing so can help you worship more deeply and faithfully.

Conversation | March 21, 2016

Creating Scripts from the Bible

The Bible is a rich source of dramatic material for worship. From medieval tropes to contemporary sketches, this workshop surveyed the ways people have adapted scripture for performance and then formed groups to create original scripture plays.

Audio | January 01, 2009

Dale Sieverding on Cultural Differences in Recruiting Youth

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles launched a summer camp to train young Catholics to lead in local liturgical ministries. They discovered that finding gifted youth requires different approaches in different cultures.

Conversation | February 09, 2016

Derek Elmi-Buursma on Communion and Context

Whether you call it Communion, Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, or something else, you may wonder how to connect this sacrament with real life. Learn how one small urban congregation creates eucharistic liturgies for living in a broken world.

Conversation | June 04, 2019

Designing Worship from the Bottom Up: Practical Ethnographic Tools for Worship Leaders

The “Faith and Work” movement has become popular in many churches in North America in recent years. Many have sought to bridge the gap between Sunday worship and Monday work by showing how Christian liturgy and theology affect how we approach our weekday work. But our weekday work also affects how we inhabit Sunday worship in profound ways, and those who lead and craft liturgies do well to be attentive to this reality.

Video | March 07, 2017

Ellen Gadberry on Congregations as Communal Visual Choirs

Many worshipers do not see themselves as creative or gifted in the arts. Yet low-risk opportunities to encounter visual art in worship and participate in making liturgical art can strengthen worshipers’ identities as children of the Creator.

Conversation | November 03, 2021

Faith Communities and Safe Dwelling Places

Philosopher and author Lee Hardy noticed derelict buildings near his church for decades before realizing that faith-based communities have valuable resources to address the affordable housing crisis.

Feature Story | March 01, 2021

Faith Formation and Worship: A Worship Historian's View from the "End of the World"

Worship is a formative practice: through active engagement in liturgy, Christians are formed in a particular understanding of God, of others, and of themselves, and of what it means to live a Christian life in this world.

Video | June 30, 2017

Four Ways to Mentor Worship Leaders

Four church leaders describe how they train and mentor worship leaders in their contexts. They try to identify gifts and to make room for everyone no matter their immigration status, age, or gender.

Feature Story | August 16, 2019

Four-Fold Pattern of Worship

An explanation on four-fold worship and its place in history.

Article | September 17, 2014

How Ritual Training Overflows into Expressive Worship

Lay training in both formative and expressive liturgy helps Catholic adults and youth live out their identity in the universal priesthood of all faithful believers. Protestants can learn from this.

Feature Story | February 09, 2016

How to Help “Contemporary” Churches Embrace “Ancient” Approaches to Worship

Can congregations with a “praise band” worship culture be led to joyfully embrace the practices of historic liturgy? Yes, if they are allowed to taste it slowly and if they see the evangelical and missional wisdom embedded in the ancient ways.

Audio | February 22, 2013

How Visual Arts Move Us from Brokenness to Beauty

Visual artists can help us start talking about major life issues that we don’t often acknowledge in worship.

Feature Story | December 12, 2014

Images and Themes in John Calvin's Theology of Liturgy

John Calvin wrote much about the value, purpose, and nature of Christian liturgy.

Article | November 19, 2014

Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works

How does the narrative arc of historic Christian worship uniquely tap into our nature as narrative animals?

Audio | February 28, 2014

Intergenerational Worship Model Based on Scripture and Story

Residents of senior living communities often feel cut off from church life. Meanwhile, congregations often feel segregated by age. This participatory intergenerational worship model brings people together around Scripture and life stories.

Feature Story | January 06, 2020

Jane Rogers Vann on Trusting the Liturgy

Many worship leaders wear themselves out trying to make worship new, fresh, relevant and, above all, different than it was last year or even last week. Maybe they don’t need to change so much and so often.

Conversation | April 12, 2016

John McClure on How Liturgical Practices Can Shape Conversations in a Pluralistic World

Christian liturgical practices—confession, intercession, and preaching—contain wisdom that can bring compassion and consensus to public conversations around contentious moral issues.

Conversation | December 04, 2018

Jon Terry and Liuan Huska on Liturgies of Restoration

Au Sable Institute developed its Liturgies of Restoration workbook to help university students in summer field science courses connect Christian worship and creation care. Now small groups and churches are using the workbook to cultivate habits of worship, community, earthkeeping, purposeful stewardship, and hope.

Conversation | January 05, 2022

Kevin Adams on Framing Words for Missional Worship

Worship can change lives when people understand what they are doing and why. Carefully chosen words help frame classic worship elements so gathered congregants are sent out to embody God’s grace, mercy, and peace.

Conversation | July 25, 2018