1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2025 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Isaiah 58 is a call to worship through both personal piety and social responsibility for the vulnerable in our community. The first section of this worship service includes the songs, “He’ll Never Change,” “Ancient of Days,” “Whom Shall I Fear” (Psalm 27), and “Be Thou My Vision.”
The first half of Isaiah 59 forms the call to confession of the second section, where we confess our sins through the words of the song “Purge Me.” We hear God’s words of assurance in the second half of Isaiah 59 and respond in song using the words of “Passover Song.”
We hear God’s word to us through the words of Isaiah 60 in the third section of the service. We respond to the sermon, “A Light to the Nations,” with the song “All Creatures of Our God and King.” We also respond to God’s word in prayer, praying for God’s people gathered here at this conference, for the communities that we represent, and for the world. We are sent out through song, “Evidence” and by a spoken blessing.
This service will be led by members of East End Fellowship, a multi-ethnic, economically diverse Christian church in the east end of Richmond, Virginia, seeking God’s joy and justice for their neighborhoods out of love for Christ. Urban Doxology was brought together by a songwriting internship hosted by Arrabon and East End Fellowship. Together, they want to stand in the gap between how things are currently, the way that they could be, and will be when God’s Kingdom is fully realized through Jesus. They have been writing a soundtrack of reconciliation in the diverse and gentrifying neighborhood of Church Hill in Richmond. An urban doxology is the practice of preaching, liturgy, music, and arts that intentionally crosses barriers across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines to prepare the people of God for the City of God that is to come.
Sister Kathleen Harmon of the community of the Ohio province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Dayton, invites us to be transformed by the psalms and experience them as the whole story God is revealing to us. As we keep praying and singing them, the psalms interpret us, and that’s when the transformation comes.
Vinroy D. Brown Jr.—conductor, musicologist, educator, and minister of creative worship and music at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City—explores the vibrant intersection of Black sacred music and the psalms. He talks about Black composers and how they have reimagined the psalms through choral music, spirituals, and the gospel tradition for the benefit of everyone.
John Goldingay, an Anglican priest and the senior professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, posits the psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. They expound the nature of God as the compassionate, faithful, and committed one, but also as the one who makes demands upon us. The psalms help us talk to God, even about difficult things—and when we do, we are talking to someone who is in a position to do something about it.
Sister Kathleen Harmon of the community of the Ohio province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Dayton, invites us to be transformed by the psalms and experience them as the whole story God is revealing to us. As we keep praying and singing them, the psalms interpret us, and that’s when the transformation comes.
Vinroy D. Brown Jr.—conductor, musicologist, educator, and minister of creative worship and music at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City—explores the vibrant intersection of Black sacred music and the psalms. He talks about Black composers and how they have reimagined the psalms through choral music, spirituals, and the gospel tradition for the benefit of everyone.
John Goldingay, an Anglican priest and the senior professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, posits the psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. They expound the nature of God as the compassionate, faithful, and committed one, but also as the one who makes demands upon us. The psalms help us talk to God, even about difficult things—and when we do, we are talking to someone who is in a position to do something about it.
The last few minutes of corporate worship are critical because they frame the entire purpose of worship and its connection to our lives in the world.
