Ascension Resource Guide
This list of Ascension Day resources, including songs, reflections, visual arts, and readings, will help you plan worship for Ascension Day, traditionally celebrated 40 days after Easter. Ascension Day worship services celebrate Jesus Christ ascending into heaven after giving his disciples the Great Commission.
Pentecost Resource Guide
This list of Pentecost resources, including hymns, songs, visual arts, books, and sermon ideas, will help you plan worship for Pentecost Sunday, traditionally celebrated 50 days after Easter. Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples, marked by a strong wind, tongues of fire, and manifested in the disciples’ speaking in foreign languages.
Holy Week Resource Guide
This list of Holy Week resources—art, music, devotions, liturgies, books, and sermons—will help you plan worship for Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and ending with Triduum, the three days that mark Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection, from the evening of Maundy Thursday through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter morning.
How Hymnody Can Help Diversify Contemporary Worship
Contemporary-worship congregations are rediscovering hymns as treasuries of theological depth that express the full range of emotions and Scripture. Singing hymns together helps people connect across generations and cultures.
Lent Resource Guide
This list of Lenten art, music, devotions, liturgies, books, and sermons will help you plan worship for Lent and includes resources for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.
Singing for Life: Stories of the Transformative Power of Music in Prison
The Handlon Tabernacle Choir began in 2016 and has grown to more than forty students from the Calvin Prison Initiative at Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan. Originally started to provide music for the program’s special events, the choir has become an opportunity for students to develop their musical skills and explore what it means to find new life in community. This presentation will include stories and reflections from members of the choir and the choir director about the impact of music in prison.
Sharing Hymn Stories Invites Worshipers into Experience
Knowing more about the hymns they are singing helps worshipers feel more connected to God and each other in the universal body of Christ that spans all times and places.
Mark Doerries on the Formative Arc of Children Leading the Church in Song
In this episode, artistic director Mark Doerries tells the emerging story of the Notre Dame Children’s Choir, now ten years old, and the formative process and unifying vision the choir has built as they learn what it means to sing the sacred story of the church across time and space.
Rebecca Snippe on Zeteosearch.org
Preachers, worship leaders, teachers, and others who study the Bible often go online to find resources for their research. Sorting through search results is often frustrating. But Zeteosearch.org—a revamped curated search engine—offers thought-provoking results.
A Coherent Ritual Life
What do our daily habits of home and work have to do with weddings, baptisms, or the Lord’s Supper? Dru Johnson and Cory Willson trace the biblical lines of ritual thinking, from the field, office, and factory to worship in the sanctuary and waters of baptism. Recording from the session held in July 2022.
New Worship Songs for Climate Change and Creation Care
Our 2017 annotated list of worship songs about care for creation remains so popular that we have compiled a new list of worship songs to lament climate change and encourage creation care. Many of these songs and hymns have been released since 2018. Others are new to various English-speaking audiences because they come from international hymnals and organizations.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto on Hoping in God Despite Injustice
Individuals and congregations sometimes despair while working for justice. Sometimes they forget that although God invites us to join in justice work, God remains in charge of changing the world. That’s why it’s crucial for justice seekers to stay rooted in Christian community and worship.