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Music with a mission

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What is the relationship between music and mission? I believe they are closely related. God has given humanity the wondrous ability to create beautiful and powerful music. Throughout the Bible we are instructed to “sing a new song” and to play instruments to God’s glory. During Sunday worship, throughout the church at large, members of the choir and congregation raise their collective voices in song to offer praise, glory and honor to God. Stirring organ music or other instrumental music, along with Word and Sacrament, inspire us to leave our sanctuaries of worship and to go into the world to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to tend the sick and to visit the prisoner. As we sing powerful hymns, we often find a new resolve to help the “least of these.” With music, in the context of a worship service, the Holy Spirit often inspires us to play our respective roles in God’s mission to provide both spiritual and physical sustenance for all of God’s children. The relationship … [Read more...]

Tagged With: music

What’s on your bookshelf? 

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 “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” — Anne Lamott (in “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”) My grandmother was trained as a librarian. She loved to read. Her genre of choice was mostly literature, but as a Presbyterian to the core, she dabbled in a bit of theology. As a young woman, she left her family in Charleston, South Carolina, to strike out as a high school librarian in the small town of Greer, South Carolina. She used to tell me how she remembered one particular student spending all of his free time in the school library, immersed in history books. That same young man would never complete his degree. Instead, … [Read more...]

Our year with “her”

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Of all the words spoken and read, broadcast and printed, muttered to ourselves or shouted aloud, the one Americans most sought to understand in 2017 was “feminism,” according to the good wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster. “Feminism” was the word most often looked up on their online dictionary and no wonder: from “Wonder Woman” in theaters to “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu, from pink hat-wearing marchers to the #MeToo hashtaggers speaking up against sexual harassment and assault, it was a year when women’s voices were heard. I didn’t see all of that coming in the days leading up to Advent a year ago. But what I could see and feel was clear enough. Following the 2016 presidential election, one jubilant friend proclaimed that, for him, it was a “new morning in America.” Not so much in the context of my personal and pastoral life. I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s by a single, working mother who was an educator and school administrator, an elder and the first female clerk of session at … [Read more...]

Tagged With: worship

The practice of prayer with children

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Parents, Sunday school teachers and ministry leaders often prepare children to pray by encouraging eyes to be closed, hands to be folded and heads to be bowed. This is certainly one way to pray, and it’s not wrong to teach children to pray in this manner. But it’s certainly not the only way. By experimenting with different types of prayer practices we open the door to a rich world of possibility where talking to God and hearing from God can happen in many different ways, using a variety of different styles. Parents can explore these practices at home with their children, or they can be modeled in a church school class or worship service. The 17 practices listed here are loosely arranged by age. That is, the first prayer practices are designed, loosely, with the youngest of children in mind and get progressively older as the practices continue. However, the suitability of each prayer for any particular child depends on so many factors including temperament and personal preference. … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Christian Ed • prayer • worship • youth ministry

The most important part of thankfulness: A Reformed view of prayer

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Prayer and the Reformed tradition The Reformed tradition is not a monolithic statement of doctrine. It is a variety of voices from different times and circumstances. It is more like a conversation among a great many people than a single voice — although sometimes it will seem as if it is a choir, each member of which is singing a different song. The unity within the tradition tends to be thematic. The Book of Order posits a central theme: “Central to this tradition is the affirmation of the majesty, holiness, and providence of God who in Christ and by the power of the Spirit creates, sustains, rules, and redeems the world in the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love” (F-2.05). There is nothing terribly distinctive in this affirmation — almost all Christian denominations can and do say something similar. The fundamental point is that we begin with God. And that is true of prayer. There is not a Reformed understanding of prayer. There are many, but they converge in several … [Read more...]

Tagged With: prayer • worship

Sacraments in the revised Directory for Worship

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“Therefore, let it be regarded as a settled principle,” wrote John Calvin, “that the sacraments have the same office as the Word of God: to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace” (“Institutes of the Christian Religion,” 4.14.17). The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Directory for Worship upholds Calvin’s strong conviction about the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: that — together with the proclamation of the Word — by the power of the Holy Spirit they reveal the presence of Christ and the promise of the gospel to the people of God. The 2017 revision to the PC(USA) Directory for Worship — approved overwhelmingly at the 222nd General Assembly in 2016, affirmed by 153 out of 170 presbyteries and now published in the 2017–2019 edition of the Book of Order — reflects a decade-long process of scholarly study, pastoral consultation, denominational feedback and prayerful discernment, much of it centered on the place of the sacraments in … [Read more...]

Tagged With: sacraments • worship

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