1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2026 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
This vesper service features music from the soon-to-be-released Sending Songs album by the music collective Porter’s Gate. Created in collaboration with Fuller Seminary’s Worship for Workers project, this album offers songs that commission God’s people with mission and purpose into their places of work and play.
Musical collaboration in worship can be rewarding: it can build relationships, enrich the musical life of a congregation, and add more colors, timbres, and textures.
Often the task of preaching falls on the senior pastor or a few gifted speakers. However, congregations need diverse diets and voices to be nourished and equipped by the preaching of God’s word.
Nate Glasper and the 7:9 Project, a multicultural group of Calvin University students, lead a time of morning song and prayer firmly grounded in scripture. Inspired by the vision of Revelation 7:9, this gathering reflects the beauty of “every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
This vesper service offers a journey through the psalms in a jazz style. Music is adapted from the album Connexion: A Jazz Psalter, produced by Wally Brath. Brath (piano), Nikki Lerner (voice), Greg Tardy, (saxophone, clarinet), and a Calvin University chamber orchestra lead the congregation through God’s story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, exploring the full emotional depth of the psalms. The jazz-inspired soundtrack offers rich musical expression that complements the divine poetry.
El salmo primero nos ofrece una visión clara del camino de la vida: lo que hemos de evitar y lo que debemos cultivar. El camino que siguen los perversos y despistados, y el que siguen las personas que han hecho de la instrucción y guía de la Palabra su norma de vida. Jesús como camino nos ha dejado un claro y desafiante modelo de vida. Él es el camino, verdad y vida (Juan 14:6).
Vital Worship, Vital Preaching grants fund diverse projects for worshiping communities and teacher-scholars.
A topic guide to resources related to the book of Philippians.
Joining a racial justice pilgrimage in the American South helped a Canadian pastor see parallels to the experiences of Indigenous and settler peoples in his congregation. These insights are helping his church become more appreciative of God’s incarnation in Indigenous people.
The Black church has deep experience of suffering and being denied God-given and legal rights. As turbulent times affect more people, Jemar Tisby’s book The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance describes how Black Christians have kept the faith.
Maria Eugenia Cornou and Mikie Roberts serve on a planning team for an October worship event in Egypt to mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the ecumenical creed that emerged in the year 325 and remains firmly embedded in the worship practices of the church today.
Jane Williams, professor of theology at St. Mellitus College in London, England, sees the Nicene Creed, crafted 1700 years ago, as an extraordinary creative and exciting description of who God is and therefore what we trust in as Christians in God's world.
