1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2025 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Reformed worship is built on the conviction that congregational worship is essentially a conversation with God. In some elements of the worship service, such as the greeting, scripture reading, sermon, and benediction, God speaks to us. In other parts of the worship service, the worshipers speak to God through songs, commitments, and prayers.
Vital worship, like a healthy marriage, requires honesty and openness in order to thrive. God longs for our honesty before him. We are deeply in need of his renewing pardon.
Ministry goes forward when faith-filled people work together collaboratively! Collaborators are co-laborers. They contribute from the field of their own gifts and passions. But they do not labor in isolation. Their labors are so interwoven that the final product is a composite. A group effort is genuinely the product of the entire group, not merely a modified solo plan"
Rarely—almost never—do married persons make it their aim to get into an extra-marital relationship—to have an “affair.”
Modernity has a kind of airy weightlessness, a lack of seriousness and significance. So, when it comes to the matter of “setting their minds on things eternal”—that is, of paying any heed to the world beyond sight and sound—most contemporary people are pretty breezy and airy.
To be human is to be in need—in need of God and of one another. And to remain fully human—indeed, to flourish in it—requires that we stay in touch with, remain keenly aware of, that need.
In his Word God declares that it is he, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, who welcomes his creatures into his presence and invites them to worship him.
In the Western hemisphere, especially in Europe and considerable sections of North America, vigorous contempt toward and sleepy disregard of the Christian church are widespread and increasing at an ever-accelerating rate.
My years as chaplain among college students have convinced me that many young people suffer from what I call the "immortality virus": "Death-accidents, illness, and weakness, too-can, and sometimes do, happen to others. But it won't -read: cannot- happen to me." Or so they foolishly imagine.
It's easy just to go through the motions of love without one's heart really being in it.
Learning what it means to be human involves learning to locate one’s place in the grander scheme of things—to figure out where one “fits.”
"Being alive is very difficult. Human beings are very complicated. I know. I've spent my whole life being one, and I still can't totally figure it out." So commented one elderly gentleman as he looked back over the seemingly haphazard trajectory of his life's course of events.
