Easter Song Suggestions

Bob Kauflin offers some good suggestions for worship songs on Easter Sunday (April 4)… Happy Day – Tim Hughes Uptempo celebration of Christ’s victory over the grave. The greatest day in history Death is beaten, you have rescued me Sing it out, Jesus is alive His Name is Jesus – Judah Groveman All Hail the [...]

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“I have absolutely nothing to say about this.”

@SarcasticLuther (Nadia Bolz-Weber) tweeted: every week I look at the texts for Sunday and think “sh*t. i have absolutely nothing to say about this. i’ve had a good run but it’s over” I love it. Refreshingly truthful. While it might seem like having nothing to say about a Scripture text is a bad thing, it [...]

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Reformation Day Resources

Reformation Day is October 25. Here is an order of worship from Reformed Worship that contains a lot of Reformation-era texts: This order of service was prepared for Reformation Sunday 2003 at First Presbyterian Church, Royal Oak, Michigan. It includes several liturgical elements from the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, including contributions from Luther [...]

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When do you have announcements?

Mistake # 2: Putting a long section of announcements at the beginning of the worship service.  It’s like tuning into the beginning of a sitcom only to find all of the commercials loaded up front before anything else happens. Instead, begin worship with a rousing piece of music that says “Something great is going to [...]

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Worship – All Things Alternative

This weekend I taught a workshop for the Fall Leadership Summit of the TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod of the ELCA. The session was titled “Worship – All Things Alternative.” Here is a brief overview of what I talked about: Definition of worship Attempt to define differences between worship styles Problems with trying to define worship [...]

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Three Levels of Participation in Worship

Don Saliers (in Music in Christian Worship) presented the idea of three levels of participation in worship. The first level of participation is the actual doing of the liturgy (singing, praying, reading, etc.). The second level of participation is the same actions of the first level, but doing them as the church. This level implies [...]

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Three Sample Orders of Worship

From Jordan at Northwood Church

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Silence

Silence has long occupied an important role in both individual and corporate worship. Its presence implies the fulfillment of a biblical admonition: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Hab 2:20). In some current worship practices, however, silence has become all but lost. Many churches whose worship [...]

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Sermon

The “scripting” of preaching can, like a bad play, be pre- dictable and dull. Even worse, it can be manipulative. A play is said to be “preachy” when it uses the medium of drama to coerce a certain (and unvarying) response. Good preaching is direct, understandable, and dynamic, but it also has a certain quality [...]

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Ways to Hear the Word of God in Worship – Music

For worshipers sensitive to the aesthetic dimensions of well- crafted music performed convincingly, experiencing such a moment in the context of worship can serve as a vivid reminder of God the Creator, who, in fashioning humankind in the divine image, graced persons with their own creative gifts. As Robert Mitchell noted in Ministry and Music, [...]

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