Symposuim on Worship -- For Educators Too!

Every year when I attend Calvin’s Symposium on Worship, I’m never sure what I will learn. This yearly conference is held at Calvin College at the end of January. I started to go because my husband was presenting and I could stay with him in the Prince Conference Center on Calvin’s campus, but every year I learn more and enjoy the conference more. Even though the conference is about worship, there are sessions about children and resources that can be used in adult education.

The workshops are varied. This year I heard Sister Joyce Ann Zimmerman talk about baptism practices during the 1st to the 4th Century. Howard VanderWell discussed profession of faith. Craig Satterlee spoke about the stories of the church (and at that session I received a free book!). Barb Newman presented a session about autism, and Kristen Verhulst introduced and recommended many children’s book about worship. I also enjoyed the Jazz Vespers service led by Ed Dolman and Rae Whitney. I felt like I was resting in the Lord’s palm. It was a great way to complete a busy day.

One of the other benefits of attending Symposium is the free resources. This year five resources were given to participants:

• Contemporary Songs for Worship (Faith Alive Christian Resources, CICW, 2008).
• Worship Words: Discipling Language for Faithful Ministry, by Debra Rienstra and Ron Rienstra (Baker, 2008)
• Touching the Altar: The Old Testament for Christian Worship, edited by Carol M. Bechtel (Eerdmans, 2007)
• Images of Faith CD, compiled by Sandra Bowden (CIVA, 2008). This CD is full of images that can be used in power point presentations.
• The Father & His Two Sons: The Art of Forgiveness, images from the Larry & Mary Gerbens Collection (Eyekons, 2008)
  

We used the Contemporary Songs book immediately because it featured songs the children could learn in Sunday school and could also be used in the congregational worship service.

No discussion of Symposium is complete without talking about the worship services. There are six worship services over the three days. The services are inspirational and well organized. The group of people who gather at symposium can sing! It is a joy to be part of the singing. I go there looking for ways to include children, teens, and more lay adults in worship, and I always find new things to try in my church. These may be from the readings, music, or art ideas presented. Perhaps the best part of worship at Symposium is that I don’t have any extra responsibilities like I do at my own church. I can direct all of my attention on worshiping God!

Worship Symposium is not a conference about curriculum or programs. It is a conference that focuses on worship and how all the programs and people in a congregation can be involved and nurtured by worship. When I go, I listen to the theology, stories, and music of the church, and that enriches me and nourishes my ministry.

Check out the resources on the Calvin Institute of Worship website.

How would you describe the relationship between worship and education? How do the two intersect in your congregation?

Resource Review

The God-Hungry Imagination: the Art of Storytelling for Postmodern Youth Ministry by Sarah Arthur (Upper Room Books, 2007)

In The God-Hungry Imagination, Sarah Arthur combines her experience as a youth leader along with her love of literature and makes a compelling case for the importance of story not only in the lives of the church’s young people, but in all of us. In this fascinating and enjoyable book, Arthur reminds us that the Bible is a great story (rather than just a set of smaller stories) and that making sure that we understand the story and are willing to share it is one of the most important things we can do for our kids. The book includes both conceptual ideas for why story is important in ministry and also some concrete suggestions for how to carry out the idea.

--Robert Keeley, Professor of Education, Calvin College

Have you noticed this emphasis on story and God’s one big story turning up a lot lately in books and resources?

Marking Faith Milestones

Each Sunday, just before the sermon, my pastor calls forward the children to pray for them before they are dismissed to go downstairs for children’s worship. Last week, something special happened, the congregation celebrated a milestone in Taylor’s life.

As the kids gathered up front, I went forward with them, and the pastor handed me a microphone. I told the congregation that Taylor was now at the age that she would be staying upstairs to listen to the pastor’s sermons. I gave her a very cool notebook, with a pen attached, and a note inside, and told her that this was a milestone in her life—she was now ready to listen and learn along with the older children, teens, and adults, as the pastor shares a message from the Bible!

I also let her know that we were glad that she heard God’s stories downstairs, and that we were eager to see her enjoy the sermons upstairs. “It reminds me,” I said, “of the story of Jesus staying behind in the city because he was eager to sit at the feet of the teachers in the temple as they shared God’s Word.” After saying a few more words about that we prayed as a congregation for Taylor—that she would continue to be eager to hear God’s Word and grow in faith.

The whole celebration took only about two minutes, but they were an important two minutes! Not only for Taylor, but for the younger children who were standing next to Taylor, knowing that soon they would be sitting with Taylor, listening to the pastor’s sermons upstairs. And for all of Coit church, the celebration challenged us to think about whether we are eager to hear God’s Word each week. Are we excited that kids in early elementary school are sitting with us in the pew, being shaped by God? That God is at work among us?

Marking faith milestones is a meaningful practice in the life of a congregation—it draws us near to God with grateful hearts and nearer to one another as well. It helps us see that we share in this journey of faith, and that our God is always calling us in new directions along that journey!

—Jolanda Howe, Coit Community CRC in Grand Rapids, Michigan

What faith milestones do you mark in your congregation? Which have been most meaningful to you?

A Renewed Sense of Mission

The Belhar embodies what I love most about our Reformed sense of mission—that through Christ, God is reclaiming and restoring all of creation, and that we are part of that process! We are active agents in the world—working for God’s glory and spreading God’s good news so that the world, and the people in it, might be transformed!

That good news includes these Biblical and theological themes, identified by Synod 1996:

Creation
1. The world as God created it is rich and God-glorifying in its diversity.

2. The created world with all its diversity has its unity in the one God, who created it through Jesus Christ.

3. The unity and diversity of the human race and of created reality reflect the unity and diversity of the triune God (namely, his oneness and threeness).

Fall
4. A fundamental effect of sin is the breakdown of the community.

New Creation
5. The uniting of all things in Jesus Christ is at the heart of God’s eternal plan for the ages.

6. Reconciliation with God and reconciliation with one another are inseparable in God’s saving work.

7. Already in the old covenant the scope of God’s mission is racially and ethnically inclusive.

8. In Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church, God gives new power to the church, power to break down walls of separation and create a community that transcends divisions of race, ethnicity, and culture.

9. The church is God’s strategic vehicle for embodying, proclaiming, and promoting the unity and diversity of the new creation.

10. God calls Christians to find their deepest identity in union with and in the service of Jesus Christ.

11. Obedience in matters of racial reconciliation calls us, individually and corporately, to continually repent, to strive for justice, and to battle the powers of evil.

12. Christians live and work in the hope that one day the reconciliation of all things will be fully realized.


—From the Acts of Synod 1996, pp. 512-13, posted on the CRC Belhar site, www.crcna.org/belhar, on the History page.

A New Appreciation for Confessions
A confession happens when the church speaks—when there is something so important that it requires a voice. The original letter accompanying the Belhar included these words: “This confession is not aimed at specific people or groups of people or a church or churches. We proclaim it against a false doctrine, against an ideological distortion which threatens the gospel itself in our church and our country.” (From statement number three of the original 1986 accompanying letter.)

The Belgic Confession, the Cannons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism were written a LONG time ago (between 1561 and 1619). That doesn’t make them any less valuable, but it makes the events leading up to their writing a little less familiar in our minds. The Belhar comes to us with a freshness and urgency that challenges us to revisit the confessions with new eyes, to ask questions like,

• Who writes confessions, or decides when one should be written?
• What did these statements of faith mean to the original writers and audience, and what do they mean to us now?
• What do we value in confessions; what do we look to them for?
• How has God used the confessions to shape his people over time?
• What issues is the church struggling with today that the confessions speak to? What issues weren’t anticipated by the authors?

The Belhar brings the past into the present, reminding us that confessions are not simply documents that sit on a shelf and show up in church school—they are evidence of God’s work in the church and in the world. They challenge us to think deeply about our faith so that we might live in a way that reflects God’s goodness and grace.

Visit www.crcna.org/belhar for articles and resources, and consider the RCA Belhar study, Unity, Reconciliation, and Justice, available through Faith Alive.

-- Jolanda Howe, Coit Community CRC in Grand Rapids, MI

What is the buzz in your congregation? What might the Belhar mean for your church?

Hugs and Kisses

In June Gretchen Wolff Pritchard presented at the Children’s Spirituality Conference. Her thoughts about story were very interesting. For children she suggests that we shouldn’t get bogged down with details such as learning all the ten plagues. Tell them the ten plagues happened and then move on. The details, she says, get in the way of children seeing the big picture. She also mentioned how in our visual culture children need a visual vocabulary of the faith.

So I read her book Offering the Gospel to Children. This book was written in 1992 but here is a short except about the church and children taking communion. I think it is an interesting view.

“In our family lives, we express love, forgiveness and acceptance by hugging and kissing. Hugs and kisses are the sacrament of family love. Every member of our culture knows and understands that touching a baby’s cheek with our lips and making a strange little smacking noise signifies our love and care for the baby, and our delight in him. But the baby, at birth, does not know this. He learns, quickly enough, by experience. And we start to teach him to do it too: “Kiss Mommy.” “Give Daddy a big hug.” Kissing and hugging quickly become, for the baby as well, sacramental actions – signs of love and pleasure.

Imagine if, until your child was six, you never kissed her, but only let her watch older people kissing each other. Then when she had learned to red and write (and, incidentally, had already passed the age where her imagination was most eager to grasp non-verbal experience and make it a part of her deepest self), suppose you sat her down with a special curriculum entitled “Kisses and Hugs: Signs of Love.” She would color picture of people hugging and kissing and read exemplary stories about families and answer questions about why we choose this way to express our love. Finally, on a special day, when you were sure she understood enough about hugging and kissing to e truly “read,” you would hug and kiss her for the very first time. She would wear a new party dress, and Grandma would come to lunch and bring a present, and she would feel so proud and so special.

Or would she?“

From Offering the Gospel to Children by Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, Cowley Publications, 1992. p. 160-161

Celebrating Milestones

As a Director of Children’s Ministry, I am always looking for ways for the children to know how a Christian acts. We use 7th and 8th graders as helpers in Children’s Worship, for example, to encourage them to model how a middle school child behaves for the younger children. But we often don’t encourage the adults to talk about their faith. If we don’t do this, children and teens won’t be able to see how these Christians model how God has worked in their lives. We need to share the stories of faith and the stories of God’s faithfulness to his people.

On Thursday evening I was very excited to receive a copy of the new book, Celebrating the Milestones of Faith, written by my husband Bob and me. Milestones has been on my mind for the past three or four years. A milestones program is a wonderful way to remind us that God is faithful. We need to take time to recognize and celebrate what God is doing in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

Yesterday we celebrated my daughters eighteenth birthday. It was a time of cake and gifts. What we forgot to do was to talk about how God had been faithful in her life and in all our lives over the last eighteen year. And we wrote the book! It’s easy to miss these opportunities without some sort of structure to remind us to do it. I guess that’s why God told the Israelites to build a monument near the Jordan River so that when you walked by kids would ask what happened and we would tell the stories.

We need to more intentional about sharing how God is working in our lives and remind ourselves of his faithfulness at church and at home. Faith Milestones can help us do that. Our new book can give you ideas about how to do it in your church.