Planning Worship

Writing Content for Congregations

The written communication of your congregation has great potential to bless members, newcomers, and the community. Your congregation has unique stories of the love and care of God. It is worth your while to evaluate and tweak current church content and write new materials. Doing so will help people grow together in becoming more like Christ.

May 2, 2012
The Etiquette of Weddings and Worship

If we carry this wedding analogy over into our worship planning, we can employ the same criteria in order to determine if our worship will bring God honour and pleasure.

April 17, 2012
Chapel Planning and Leading: What We Are Learning from Christian Schools

This article identifies some insights about worship that influence our work with Christian schools and shares what we are learning from students and teachers through their experiences of chapel planning and leading. All the comments come directly from feedback we have collected. This collective wisdom is presented in the form of proverbs—wise sayings, or words of advice—in the hope that this will encourage learning over time and across contexts, and spark conversation and further thinking on these topics.

March 13, 2012

Increasing Participation in High School Chapel Services

How well do your Christian high school chapels, liturgies, or all-school worship times help students grow in faith? Are your staff and faculty planning chapels for or with students?

March 7, 2012
Hannah Huisman on Teens Planning and Leading Church Worship

Hannah Huisman is a senior at Unity Christian High School in Hudsonville, Michigan. As a member of the school’s spiritual life committee, she helps plan and lead chapels. In the edited conversation below, she explains how teens at her church, Immanuel Christian Reformed Church, have begun planning and leading one worship service per month.

March 7, 2012
Visual Arts: Architecture and Liturgical Art

This showcase will explore resources to help you think in new ways about your worship environment, the architecture and the permanent or temporary visual installations that can not only enhance our praise and prayer but be praise and prayer.

February 29, 2012

Coop's Column - Creation's Choir Sings Hymns of Praise

It takes an act of slowing life down enough to cultivate wonder, which is one of the reasons God bids his children to practice Sabbath—to take a day off in order to savor life for the sheer and undeserved gift that it is, and then in turn to worship God and to give God thanks for it. This column includes an audio recording by Dale Cooper.

February 15, 2012

Communion Service: Psalm 103

Abounding in Steadfast Love, Psalm 103, was part of the Calvin Symposium on Worship 2012. This service was a celebration of word and sacrament with Thomas G. Long, Martha Moore-Keish, and Stanley Mast.

January 28, 2012
Worship Service: Psalm 113

This service of Psalm 113, Exalted Over All the Nations, was part of the Calvin Symposium on Worship 2012. Utilizing leaders from around the world, the service echoed the words "Praise the Lord, all you nations: all peoples, praise the Lord."

January 28, 2012