Public Worship and the Christian Life

Author and pastor-scholar David Taylor shares how he came to appreciate the psalms and how he encourages people to bring their full, unedited selves to God in prayer and experience a richer and more honest life of faith.  Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Pastor-scholar Andrew Wilkes shares how his worshiping community, Double Love Experience Church, prayed and sang the psalms during the troubling times of 2020. The psalms gave them language and support for praise and lament, and Wilkes asserts that lament is the evidence of faith because we are bringing our troubles to God. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Old Testament scholar Nancy deClaissé-Walford has spent her career studying the ordering of the Psalter. Most of the psalms, she says, are not tied to a particular situation, allowing us to sing and pray them honestly in our own contexts. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

John Goldingay, an Anglican priest and the senior professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, posits the psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. They expound the nature of God as the compassionate, faithful, and committed one, but also as the one who makes demands upon us. The psalms help us talk to God, even about difficult things—and when we do, we are talking...

Sister Kathleen Harmon of the community of the Ohio province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Dayton, invites us to be transformed by the psalms and experience them as the whole story God is revealing to us. As we keep praying and singing them, the psalms interpret us, and that’s when the transformation comes. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Vinroy D. Brown Jr.—conductor, musicologist, educator, and minister of creative worship and music at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City—explores the vibrant intersection of Black sacred music and the psalms. He talks about Black composers and how they have reimagined the psalms through choral music, spirituals, and the gospel tradition for the benefit of everyone. Contact Us |...

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.  Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

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. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Jared Ortiz, professor at Hope College, Holland, Michigan, describes the Nicene Creed as a dramatic and powerful statement where every word is like a declaration of war, saying yes to the truth and no to many falsehoods.  Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, Robby Kiley of Saint Pius X Parish in Granger, Indiana, shares how a grant project focused on welcome at the Mass for people across the spectrum of abilities extended beyond worship into a wider embrace of people in community and participation.   Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, Nathan Longfield, pastor of Emmaus Reformed Church, a newer worshiping community, talks about their year-long project that explored embodiment and trauma-informed practices to more deeply engage in worship as a congregation and community.   Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Paul Metzger shares about the formative nature of the church calendar, which emphasizes that Christ in the fullness of time is what shapes us and how we inhabit time. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Sarah Travis explores how Christian worship, through its rhythm of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, both unsettles us and equips us to do the work of conciliation and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Kevin Adams explores the beautiful gifts of framing words for worship—the “conversation of worship”—that are lifegiving and engaging. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Sarah Johnson and Andrew Wymer, two Free Church scholars in worship and liturgical studies, break new ground in “Worship and Power”, a book edited with other scholars in this tradition, and celebrate what these insights offer for ecumenical conversation and learning around liturgical authority. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Luke Powery encourages preachers and worshipers to embrace the space and place the church provides to ask questions as a faithful way of Christian discipleship and engaging with God. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Lisa Allen offers an approach to worship planning that centers on the transformative power of holistic biblical worship. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

For more than 25 years, Ron Man has been teaching on the biblical foundations of worship. He gathers up that learning in his book “Let Us Draw Near”, a testimony to the power of scripture to guide pastors and worshipers in our calling to be worshipers of God. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, artistic director Mark Doerries tells the emerging story of the Notre Dame Children’s Choir, now ten years old, and the formative process and unifying vision the choir has built as they learn what it means to sing the sacred story of the church across time and space.   Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, Pastor Lamar Hardwick reminds us that as many worshiping communities seek to become more diverse, celebrating and appreciating the beauty of all types of minds and bodies is an important theme in the life of the church. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, worship planner and musician Katie Ritsema-Roelofs shares about the importance of thoughtful and intentional ways the whole congregation can join in the formational work of intergenerational, corporate worship.  Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

In this episode, Christian educator Dr. La Verne Tolbert shares her hopes and desires for renewed connections between parents and the church in the formative work of raising children in the faith and including children in the worship life of the church. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Practical theologian Sarah Frances Farmer offers four promising pathways for African American youth to strengthen capacity for hope infused with courage in the life of the church and community. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu

Practical theologian Ben Conner encourages and challenges congregations and pastors to reorient ministry with youth to fully include and amplifiy the witness of adolescents with developmental disabilities. Contact Us | worship.calvin.edu