Together We Worship - again

A few days ago I wrote about The curriculum about worship that Laura and I wrote and recently published. Today it got mentioned in Dan Beerens' Nurturing Faith blog.

Thanks for writing about it, Dan!

A Worship Curriculum for 4th – 6th Grade

About three years ago the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship suggested that Laura and I might consider writing a curriculum that Christian elementary schools could use to teach worship. We took up that challenge and, over the course of that summer and the following school year, created the curriculum, Together We Worship. This week, we got our copies of the final product, now published by Christian Schools International.

I have fond memories of writing this curriculum. That summer Laura and I discovered the joys of walking out to the pier on the south side of the Holland channel, near the lighthouse. It was on those walks that we hammered out the ideas behind this curriculum. One of the great challenges was that we could assume very little with respect to what the children had experienced about worship. Worship services around North America can be quite different and we didn't know if these children were in churches that practiced a very traditional type of worship, a very contemporary form of worship or something in between. In addition, we didn't know what kind of training the teachers would have in thinking about worship so our notes had to be fairly extensive on the content of the lesson. On the other hand, because this was to be used by professional educators we could assume more teaching skills than we can when we write for Sunday School teachers. Another complication is that for other curricula we had written we had been given a format to follow – we had no such format for this unit because it would be a stand-alone curriculum and we really were starting with a blank slate. Those discussions happened often along the Holland channel and on the shores of Lake Michigan. We could jump in the car and get there in about 7 minutes from our house and that was a great opportunity to explore a part of Holland that we really hadn't explored before.

After our initial work was done the Institute invited 15 Christian schools from around North America to participate in a day-long workshop around our work. That consultation day happened almost exactly two years ago. Here is what I wrote at the time. We asked each school to send two teachers (often one classroom teacher and a music teacher) to spend the day with us and then to use the curriculum in their school and to send us feedback on what worked and what didn't. That day was great. Many of the teachers sent us good feedback and we revised the curriculum and then waited to see if we could get it published. Thanks to the work of a number of people the curriculum is now available in print and on CD. Special thanks to John Witvliet, the staff at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and the teachers who helped us revise this work. It is great to finally see it in print!

Symposium thoughts

After three long days of Worship Symposium I'm back home and ready to dive into the new semester. But first things first – for the next month you can hear Debbie Chavez interview me on KMGI radio from Bellingham, Washington. If you go here and scroll down to January 23 you can hear me in segments 2-5.

That was Wednesday night, the night before Symposium, so it was great for me to be able to do that (it was actually still afternoon on the west coast) and then move on to thinking more about symposium. I presented my session twice to a nice sized group (about 150-170 total over the two days I think) and also go to play bass with the Alternative Worship group as they lead a group in worship on Friday evening. It was a good experience for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my daughter Bethany and my good friend Ron were both leaders for this service and so I got to see a bit more of the behind the scenes stuff that went on. I also got to know Doug Gay, from Scotland, a bit and hung out with Luke Hyder from Milwaukee and local musician/friend Greg Scheer . We lead with three of Doug's songs written specifically for this occasion. It was cool.

The worship services were stellar, as usual, with the service lead by Calvin's LoFT team perhaps being my favorite. Trig Johnson preached and did a wonderful job and my daughter Meredith played viola along with the team (which she does often) but also got to accompany Michael Card. She got to know Card and Calvin Seerveld a bit by assisting them in their workshop on lament. It was really good.

I also got to hear Scott Hozee, Jane Vann, Dallas Willard and Richard Ostling (who was interviewed very nicely by my friend Nathan Bierma.) Where else can one have breakfast with Calvin Seerveld, lunch with hymn writers Rae Whitney and Ed Doemland, and share a walk with Lester Ruth? Or run into Jorge Lockward and Jimmie Abbington and have a brief chat on your way to get coffee.

They also handed out my new books (see them here and here) to the people who came. You can see the picture of the books all stacked up and ready to be handed out. One exciting moment came as Laura and I sat down to lunch with three delightful people who we had not met before. I looked over to see a woman sitting alone at a table reading my book. Pretty cool.

I'm already excited about next year.

Getting Ready for Worship Symposium 2008

This week is the 2008 Calvin Symposium on Worship. I've attended a number of these symposia, something like 10 of them, and I look forward to it every year. Some of the most well respected people in the field of worship leadership from a broad range of denominations and from around the world will be at Calvin College this weekend.

I'll be presenting twice about "Creating a Child Friendly Culture in your Church" and my daughter Bethany will also be presenting about emergent worship or something like that. It will be good to see her again - she's flying in from Georgia to speak. Laura and my daughter Meredith will also be there - Meredith will be playing in the worship band twice and helping Calvin Seerveld and Michael Card out by singing in their session. So it looks like my family will be well represented there as will two new books with my stuff in it: my new book, Helping Our Children Grow in Faith as well as Howard VanderWell's The Church of All Ages, in which I have a chapter on "Intergenerational Faith Development" and Laura and I have an additional chapter on "Intergenerational Connectors in Worship." Bethany has a short piece in it too!

Since Laura and I have attended so many of these we will see people we know and get a chance to visit with old friends. We're really looking forward to it. Then, almost immediately after that, the new semester starts! The night before symposium begins (Jan 23) I'll be interviewed on KGMI radio in Bellingham, Washington at 3:15 PST. Those of you in the pacific northwest (like Kent!) might want to listen in. it will be my first radio interview about my book but probably not the last, I'm already trying to find a date that works with a station in Philadelphia.

Worship Renewal Grants Colloquium

This week I was given the opportunity to connect with a number of people who received Worship Renewal Grants from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. This was an intense couple of days as somewhere around 250 people from all across North America gathered at Calvin College to either kick-off or give a "final" report on the grants that they received from CICW. As an associate of the Institute I was asked to hang out and talk with the people who were there and find out about their grants project and just generally be hospitable. A lot of my work involved hosting tables at meals which means I get to eat and talk with interesting people. It's tough work but somebody has to do it. It was a great time and it was good to reconnect with folks I had met before and to meet many others for the first time. These people represent an incredibly wide range of Christian denominations and ministries from Baptist to Methodist to Catholic to Reformed to many many things in between. More info on the grants can be found here.

Why Do You Sing?

“Why do you sing?” Allison Adam asked us that last night and a seminar that she led at the Calvin Seminary Chapel. Answers varied from “to build community” and “to celebrate something” to “it helps us remember” and “to express how we feel.” Allison pointed out that all of those reasons (and a few I forgot) are also reasons we sing in worship and she led us through a few songs in each category, songs that were mostly new to most of us in the seminar. The group sang well (often singing a capella but sometimes ably accompanied by Rachel Klompmaker on piano and a quartet of percussionists) and we learned the new songs quickly due in no small part to Allison’s skill as a song leader and teacher.

Along the way we picked up tips for teaching songs to our congregations and learned some songs that could be very well used in worship. Many of the songs came from the Iona Community, where Allison worked for a number of years. I especially liked the John Bell songs and singing them always reminds me of when I hung out with him and Ron Rienstra for a few days when I played electric guitar for the Hymn Society in Minnesota. (Not many people can say that they did that - this is a group that doesn't use the electric guitar often.) Allison's delightful manner, her wonderful gift for songleading and her Scottish accent made for an evening that went by quickly. Laura and I also got to see a couple of friends that we don’t see very often which made the evening even better. Thanks to the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship for sponsoring this event. I wish some of my Fourteenth Street Church friends had come. While there was a fine crowd there was plenty of room for more people and our church would have benefited from more of us learning from Allison

Symposium ‘07

Another Calvin Symposium on Worship has come and gone and I had a great time. I didn't speak or play guitar until after it was all done this year so it was more relaxing that other Symposia of late. The presenters are very good, of course and the worship services are spectacular but perhaps the most fun is reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. Laura and I met and had lunch with Steve Burger from the Evangelical Covenant Church. Steve gave two talks on ministry to children and covers a lot of the same territory that I do in my talks. It was fun getting to know him and hear him speak.

I also got to know Keith and Kristyn Getty and played guitar for their concert Sunday night. Keith is an intense guy and our rehearsals were long and arduous but the concert went well and we had a good time.

I’m now in the very brief time between Sympo and the APCE conference in Philadelphia that I’ll leave for on Wednesday morning. Barely time to catch my breath!

Playing guitar with Keith and Kristyn Getty

This weekend is the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and it once again promises to be a wonderful couple of days. I was most excited about Keith Getty, who is a modern hymn writer form Ireland. Getty composed "In Christ Alone" and a number of other great songs. I first heard of Getty when his album New Irish Hymns was released in the US under the name In Christ Alone. It was billed as a Margaret Becker, Maire Brennen and Joanne Hogg album, which is true, but they were only the singers. It was pretty clear that this was a Keith Getty album and it was wonderful.

Since then Getty has released three more albums of New Irish Hymns, (Vols 2 - 4) replacing Maire Brennan with Kristyn Lennox who later changed her name with Kristyn Getty when she and Keith married. The albums are only available as an import. I recently got all four of them and they're really good - what a fabulous collection of thoughtful and beautiful worship songs. He and Kristyn have most recently released an album called In Christ Alone. Some of the songs from this album appeared on New Irish Hymns but some are new. It's a great collection of songs for worship.

The most exciting part of this is that I got a call two weeks ago from Greg Scheer asking if I wanted to be in the band for the concert the Gettys are putting on on Sunday evening. Well, let me think about it for half a second - YES! So, on Sunday, Jan 28 I'll be in a small band playing guitar with Keith and Kristyn Getty. I'm pretty excited about it!

Helping Our Children Find Faith

For the past few summers, and a bit in between, I have been writing a book about ministry to children in church settings. This book is designed for the many lay people who work with and plan programs for children. It is purposely written in a conversational tone and it is not a thick book so that the people who do this work with children might actually pick it up and read it. This week I signed a contract with Baker Books to publish this book. The working title is Helping Our Children Find Faith and I’m guessing that it will be released near the end of 2007.

I am grateful to John Witvliet and the Calvin institute of Christian Worship for their support and assistance over the past few years as this book has gone through multiple drafts. I have had some great feedback from a number of people (especially my wife, Laura) and it has made the book a lot better. I am looking forward to some hard work over the next few months as this book gets ready for publication but it’s exciting and I’m thrilled that my manuscript will finally see print.

Teaching Hymnology

I spent yesterday afternoon with Bert Pohlman's Teaching Hymnology Seminar and had a great time. I helped the group think about revising James Sydnor’s Hymns: A Congregational Study. I led them through some activities designed to have them think about some of the basic questions curriculum writers need to address when they start a curriclum. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship blog has a posting about it. I had a wonderful time meeting these fifteen scholars and helping them think about curriculum from an educator's perspective.

Childrens Spirituality Conference 2006

Note - this is cross-posted at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship blog.

Laura and I attended the second trienniel Children’s Spirituality Conference at Concordia University in River Forest, IL for four days this week and had a great time. We heard six keynote speakers. My favorites were John Westerhof, Terry Fretheim and a joint presentation by Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May.

The group was challenged by Westerhof to think about how ministry to children should change as society is going through a period of change as we end the modern era. He pointed out that modernity caused us to see a sharp divide between logos and mythos and that modernity eliminated the mythos character of the divine texts.

Terry Fretheim gave a fascinating look at children in the Old Testament. While he said many fascinating things one thing that I took note of was how he urged us to look more carefully at the story of Ishmael and God’s special care for children who were endangered.

Scottie May and Catherine Stonehouse closed out the conference with a call for participants to introduce children to the biblical narrative, reinforcing the power of story and ended with a call for more research. It was probably my favorite session of the conference.

I enjoyed the small group session thread on theological perspectives on children and the church in which participants from a broad range of theological perspectives spoke from their denominational viewpoint (Lutheran, Anabaptist, Weslyan, Reformed and others) about the place of children. I especially appreciated Holly Allen and Catherine Stonehouse’s contributions.

In addition to large and small group sessions, we enjoyed networking, good food, good conversation, performances by three children’s groups (including the amazing Vivaldi Strings from Wheaton College) and a short break for a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. All in all we had a great time and enjoyed the opportunity to learn and be around others who are concerned about ministy to children.

Curriculum Consultation Day

Yesterday Laura and I had a wonderful day with about 30 Christian school teachers from across North America. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship brought them to Grand Rapids to learn about the curriculum about worship for 5th grade that the two of us wrote this past summer and fall. These teachers have all agreed to pilot the curriculum and give us feedback by the end of the school year so that we can revise and continue work on this project.

The consultation actually started on Thursday evening with a reception and a brief worship time. We got rolling right away on Friday morning when John Witvliet led us in an hour intro to thinking about worship – what he calls "Worship 101", plus a bit of his "Worship 301". Then, after going to Calvin’s chapel service all of us returned to the Prince Center and Laura and I introduced the curriculum, Together We Worship, by talking about what we were thinking as we wrote this, why we made the choices we made and by quickly walking through one of the lessons.

After lunch, we talked a bit about resources and Ed Seely made a pitch for the Minstry Resource Center in the Hekman library. Then Laura did a short presentation on one way of doing drama and I did an hour on Spiritual Development. After which we wrapped up the day with a few questions, some nuts and bolts about how this pilot project would work and ended with a song.

The teachers were great. They came with a wonderful spirit of cooperation and a willingness to look at what we had prepared, work with the materials that we gave them and to give us the feedback that we need. The support from the Institute staff was wonderful also. Kristen VerHulst and Betty Grit were with us all day and made sure things ran smoothly and that we all had what we needed to have a good day. We were even allowed to invite some Calvin Education students to sit in and learn from this fine collection of teachers. We had a great time.

Symposium '06

After three whirlwind days at the Calvin Symposium on Worship I’m really tired. Laura and I got home at about 11:30 last night and we had a great time. Lots of highlights, almost too many to mention. I think most of all, I enjoyed interacting with the people who we got to touch base with again. We especially enjoyed seeing Ron and Deb Rienstra again – they were here from sunny California and we don’t get to see them nearly often enough. In fact, the post-symposium dinner and conversation time with them was the icing on the cake for us. We also enjoyed connecting with the Friends of the Groom; talented funny people who help us see new ways to bring drama into worship. The worship services themselves were wonderful but I most enjoyed playing with the band in Thursday morning worship with my favorite piano worship leader guy, Kent. We also got to present a session on leading worship together with Paul Ryan, Greg Scheer and Daniel Coleman. The reception marking the 20th anniversary of Reformed Worship was a nice way to end the official events. All in all, a wonderful weekend.

Posts from other blogs about Symposium:

• Kent on The Ethics of Preaching
• Kent on What We've Learned Along the Way
• Mary on the whole thing
• Ron on speaking at Symposium
• the Official Symposium blog