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On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Does your church visually convey a message that contradicts your theology of communion or mass? Mark A. Torgerson explains how church architecture and sanctuary design can inhibit or enhance a more full and communal Eucharist celebration. A feature story on how Church architecture affects Lord's Supper practices.
Though John Calvin favored weekly communion, many churches in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition are just starting to renew Lord's Supper practices. A feature story exploring Lord's Supper practices in the Reformed and Presbyterian Traditions.
A seminar led by N.T. Wright on the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and Baptism, discussing the larger questions of space, time and matter within which our understanding of sacraments must be located.
What can people inside and outside your church learn about the gospel from the way you preach and practice the Lord's Supper? A feature story exploring the Gospel and Christian Celebration of the Lord's Supper.
Instead of providing an entire worship service, we have provided materials that can be used in liturgies that include the reception and/or baptism of adopted children.
Mark Torgerson shares how to make more of baptism.
Two articles from Reformed Worship have especially good ideas for helping worshipers to affirm their identity as a baptized people. Arlo Duba suggests ways to incorporate baptism in regular worship and special services. Carrie Steenwyk explains how to include baptism as part of the Easter Vigil, following a tradition dating back to the early church.
In her wonderful book, A Place for Baptism, Regina Kuehn reminds readers that the baptismal font’s shape reveals baptismal truth, and the font points to baptism’s key element, water. She invites churches to think more about baptism’s sacramental weight and "the radical nature of our baptismal promises," than about whether the font is pretty.
No matter what age your church baptizes people, ask yourself this: How consciously are you living your baptism as a way of life, not just an event? A feature story exploring what messages churches send with their Baptism practices and church architecture.
Dean Heetderks looks at creating the Lord's Supper Banner
Sometimes worship leaders need to step back and take stock of current practices. What are we doing well? What areas need more attention?
Some of the worship practices of early Christians --100-400 A.D.-- were strikingly different but perhaps more biblical than ours today.
