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On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Here are several possible first steps to learn more about ethnodoxology.
How can worshipers understand the congregational offering as a response to God’s grace and a way to join God’s reconciling work in the world?
A conversation on the use of connection cards, cards that allow people to respond to the sermon with service.
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.
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."
This service of Psalm 13, How Long?, was part of the Calvin Symposium on Worship 2012.
This service of Psalm 1, Jesus Knows the Way of the Righteous, was part of the Calvin Symposium on Worship 2012. The liturgy and music was led by students from Calvin College with Mary Hulst preaching.
