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Many worshipers do not see themselves as creative or gifted in the arts. Yet low-risk opportunities to encounter visual art in worship and participate in making liturgical art can strengthen worshipers’ identities as children of the Creator.
Just as lectio divina invites people to meditate on scripture, visio divina helps people pray with art. Visio divina, which translates as “divine seeing,” uses silence and images to help worshipers reflect and respond to God in ways other than listening to a sermon or singing praise songs.
Music and the arts have fueled major movements for justice. Evangelical Christians have the potential to shift climate action. That's why Christian leaders and musicians are creating worship songs and candlelight climate vigils to address climate crisis and work toward environmental sustainability.
Many young Christians despair of finding communities that view environmental sustainability and justice as biblical mandates. Here is advice for helping churches catch a vision for biblical earthkeeping.
Extreme weather, declining church influence, and environmental protests affect Christians around the world. Debra Rienstra explains why the biological concept of refugia offers a metaphor for seeing the Spirit at work despite deep disturbances in God's creation and among God's people.
How do worship and prayer practices form and sustain us during times of great suffering and grief? Watch this online conversation with Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest and author of the new book Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep [IVP 2021]. In this video, Warren reflects on themes of suffering and lament, vulnerability and joy, and how the Compline prayer service in the Anglican tradition provides a spiritual anchor in dark times. Warren is interviewed by Noel Snyder, program manager at CICW.
Although news coverage of public figures’ funerals often focuses most on speakers and eulogists, music is crucial. James Abbington thought pastorally while planning music for baseball star Henry Aaron’s homegoing.
When COVID-19 forced churches and schools to go virtual, GIA Publications helped church music ministers and music educators adjust. Some digital adaptations are here to stay because they help connect music ministers, worshipers, and music educators.
In this episode, pastor-theologians Angelique and Marnus Havenga share with Maria Cornou about what they are learning about pastoring and serving the community as a whole in the Dutch Reformed Church, located in city-center of Stellenbosch, one of the most unequal towns in the country of South Africa.
In his new book, Ars Celebrandi, Paul Turner writes that “a well-prepared and celebrated liturgy is the church’s best response to crisis.” He offers fresh principles for how a priest’s presiding style can help the faithful participate more actively in the Mass.
Completing a grant project on faith communities and affordable housing convinced Lee Hardy that justice and worship are internally linked. That’s why he says worship services should include housing justice, and Christians and congregations should advocate to change unjust systems.
Philosopher and author Lee Hardy noticed derelict buildings near his church for decades before realizing that faith-based communities have valuable resources to address the affordable housing crisis.
