1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
This session drew upon biblical passages and confessional and liturgical texts from the Reformed tradition to demonstrate how Christian baptism is a communal, not an individual, sacrament.
This conversation between spiritual friends explored the art of writing, hospitality, and the pastoral life. Presented at the 2006 Calvin Symposium on Worship.
The small choices preachers make provide hearers not only with a better understanding of the text, but also with a keen understanding of the preacher.
Preaching extemporaneously, without a manuscript, can enliven delivery and improve communication. This session will explain and demonstrate how to carefully make the transition from text to outline, and then from outline to embodied delivery.
Becoming a worship-centered congregation is a profound cultural shift for some congregations and often takes as much as ten years. Using leadership theory and theories of transformational learning, this workshop explored the dynamics of congregational change, resistance to change, and the role of congregational leaders in always pointing toward the worship of God as the church's highest calling.
Christ is the same "yesterday, today, and tomorrow."
In this workshop for new and emerging, as well as established and evolving congregations, we explored how new Christians and young children learn to relate to God, and what this teaches us about our practices of weekly congregational worship. The workshop featured insights from a number of congregations involved in a new Vertical Habits program hosted by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
Today's hectic pace of life leaves little time for prayer. Daily morning and evening prayer is an ancient treasure of the church that offers a worshipful way to live and pray, no matter how busy our lives feel. Learn more about this classical mode of prayer and how you can incorporate its wisdom into your daily life.
Some of the worship practices of early Christians --100-400 A.D.-- were strikingly different but perhaps more biblical than ours today.
The rhetorician James Winans once wrote, "A speech is not merely an essay standing on its hind legs." Yet many speakers—including preachers—write their messages in a style better suited for reading rather than hearing. To be an effective oral communicator, one must learn to write for the ear, not the eye.
Paul's letter to the Ephesians demonstrates that worship is an excellent way of expressing the deepest theological teachings and also of integrating them to everyday life. Actually, Ephesians shows that life is an act of worship. This session opened up this compelling book not only for preachers and teachers, but for all who long for a deeper biblical perspective on worship.
The way we talk in worship affects the way we talk in the rest of our lives, and vice versa. Worship and daily life are integrally connected—a connection which is fundamental for developing healthy approaches to both worship and preaching.
