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On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Chaplains have been using the Evening Star worship manual in memory care facilities for almost twenty years. The second edition incorporates new research on dementia to create a worship model that is even better at engaging people who live with dementia.
People who’ve served and attended churches faithfully often feel isolated when their cognition declines—and so do their caregivers. Your congregation can take simple steps to become more dementia friendly.
Theological conversations about faith, work, and worship take on new meaning when they start with the needs, questions, and experiences of workers.
Worship for Workers offers songs, prayers, liturgies, and visual art to help congregants begin to experience God’s presence in new ways in their daily living.
You might not think often about the land your church sits on or the community beyond your church property. But finding ways to learn local history and include it in worship may help church members become more faithful disciples, more meaningfully draw near to God, and reach people who are disconnected from the church.
Luke Powery encourages preachers and worshipers to embrace the space and place the church provides to ask questions as a faithful way of Christian discipleship and engaging with God.
An annotated list of excellent children's books about worship
Whether churches call it a message, teaching, homily, or sermon, there’s often a big gap between what preachers think they are saying and what listeners hear. Preaching can become more effective when ministers, priests, deacons, and laypeople learn how to talk together. This two-way preaching conversation requires a cultural shift.
Have you ever gone home from worship disappointed that the preacher or Sunday homily didn’t seem very effective? Recent research reveals that listeners can help preachers help their peers grow closer to God.
When a congregation in Long Beach, California, designed a psalms retreat as part of a worship renewal grant, they had no idea how it would grow and blossom. Engaging with psalms of confession, praise and thanksgiving, lament, and hope and trust has helped hundreds of Christians develop a new language of prayer.
Church retreats, church governance meetings, and church small groups require honesty, vulnerability, and transparency to collectively draw closer to God. Psychologist Keith M. Douds explains how and when to step in with grace and preserve safety so that everyone has a chance to share and be listened to.
Dwelling in the Word is a tool for helping people of all ages—even children—to read and reflect on the Bible together. Doing so helps them to see the Bible as an ongoing story in which God invites us to participate in God’s mission for the world.
