1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Learn how church dynamics shift as congregations change size. A feature story exploring small churches, like All Nations Christian Reformed Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that are making the most of their size.
Though you might associate "heal" with "cure," healing in worship is broader. Whether through prayer, hospitality, communion, or laying on hands, it helps people become more whole.
There continues to be a growing interest in church visual art galleries, exhibitions, and educational opportunities related to art within our churches.
In this presentation, several contributors to the recent book The Church of All Ages: Generations Worshiping Together explored the issues involved, highlighted some of the findings, and stimulated further reflection.
In an update from their Symposium session in 2007, five Calvin College social scientists describe what they've learned through in-depth analysis of congregational and worship life.
This session will begin with a brief introduction to anthropological categories for talking about worship--liturgical time, space, environment, action, persons, music, language, etc. Participants will then engage in small group conversations about worship, using a process devised especially for facilitating conversations in congregations.
This workshop was given for those who want a deeper understanding of racial dynamics in today?s churches. Stories and examples from real congregations showed how race within churches is becoming complicated?and creatively reconstructed?through the post-1965 waves of immigration. Most important, we show how various good-intentioned priorities and programs work --and often don?t work-- in racially diverse churches.
This session reviewed several prayer texts from the third to the fifth century, and then probed the very practical ways they might challenge us to pray more deeply in worship today.
This session explored an ecology of practices designed to deepen youths' participation in the Lord's Supper/Eucharist and to form them to interpret and act in the world eucharistically. Participants learned creative pedagogies for teaching youth about the Eucharist; how youth may be engaged in ministry at the Table; the importance of creating a broad ecology of liturgical and extra-liturgical Eucharistic practices through which youth may be formed; and the means to invite youths? personal and theological reflections on Eucharistic life.
In this presentation, religion journalist Richard Ostling analyzed trends in American faith and culture that worship leaders, pastors and ordinary worshipers need to be aware of.
This workshop discussed what Dallas Willard calls the "elephant in the church" - the general failure of training adult Christians to be dedicated followers of Jesus Christ.
Those who work at the intersection of the visual arts and congregational life know from experience how rich, complex, rewarding, and often messy this area can be.
