Symposium Offers Insight and Challenges

Photo by Calvin Institute of Worship

Feb. 1, 2010—The Calvin Symposium on Worship opened one morning last week with a service that included children performing liturgical dance as well as songs and prayer in different languages.

In addition, there was a thought-provoking sermon on how Christianity fits into the seemingly mundane workings of people's everyday lives.

The preacher who gave the message was Rev. Laura Truax, one of dozens of people who spoke, led workshops, or put on presentations during this year's symposium on worship.

Running Jan. 28-30, the event was sponsored by Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary. About 1,500 people attended this year, including 160 overseas international guests from 39 countries. Over 40 colleges, universities, and seminaries across the globe represented students and/or faculty. Over 30 Christian High Schools from across US and Canada sent teams of students and teachers. Attendance was higher than in the last two years.

People who came were interested in how to make worship more meaningful in their churches and elsewhere, and, in many cases, wanted to listen to preachers and speakers who addressed many of the major issues of the day—and how speaking those words can work best in a worship setting.

Highlights of the event included a jazz vespers service, a presentation on the upcoming joint hymnal of the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America, a panel discussion on youth ministry trends, a display of worship projects funded by the institute, and a tour featuring the architecture of several churches in the Grand Rapids area.

Other highlights: a plenary panel and afternoon seminar on "Worship, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation—Global, Local, and Personal" with both international and North American presenters, moderated by John D. Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

Another highlight was a lunchtime session with Archbishop Elias Chacour, who participated on the plenary panel moderated by Witvliet. An author and well-known promoter of peace, Chacour spoke to a packed room about the problems facing Palestinians who are under Israeli rule.

In addition, there was the sermon by Rev. Truax, the morning worship speaker who said for a majority of the people attending the annual event at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., their story was probably not one of oppression and unprecedented pain. While the Bible makes it clear that God focuses attention and grace on the oppressed and downtrodden, that doesn't mean that those living normal lives are ignored or have no role to play, said Truax.

"For most of us, ours is not the story of the Haitian people who have had to bury 150,000 of their loved ones" following the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, she said. The worship session was held in Van Noord Arena inside the Spoelhof Center at Calvin.

Nor, she said, are most of "us living under the horror of a dictator. Our kids are cared for by the best doctors the world has to offer, and many of us are able to get our children into good schools. It is not accurate for us to identify ourselves with dictators or with the oppressed."

 Truax is senior pastor of LaSalle Street Church in Chicago, Il, and teaching pastor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Each day of the symposium began with and ended with a worship service.

People should neither worry over what they aren't or what they could be. Pay attention to today. "God is using the little moments of our lives to make up his story," she said. "Believe in the Good News . . . God treats our choices more carefully than we often do," she said.

Pay attention and live all the moments of life and be compassionate in all things, big and small. "You're never too old or never too young to be part of the big story of God," said Truax.

In his presentation, Archbishop Chacour described his family being forced out of their home and off the land they had been tending for many years by Israeli soldiers in the late 1940s. Essentially, he said, "God's chosen people chose to deprive us of our dignity."

Hard as it was to lose his home, Chacour realized that his best approach was to try to better understand the Israelis and their motivations and plight and to forgive them. At the same time, he said, he knew that he wanted to devote his life to being a peacemaker. He also knew that peace doesn't come easy and that he would have to work hard and get his hands dirty if that was what he wanted to do.

"I do what I do almost out of an obsession to respect my father, who taught me that violence only breeds violence. . . . Justice cannot be built without having internal righteousness and peace inside," which comes from following Jesus Christ, who "gave his life to us," he said.

Chacour became an Israeli citizen and serves today as the Archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church in Haifa, Israel. Although tensions remain high between Israelis and Palestinians, the only answer forward comes from living as Christ commanded—love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor as yourself.

"It is not true that non-Jews are haters of Jews. We love them. We are not going to give up on them," said Chacour.

The Calvin Center of Christian Worship was able to live video stream its worship services via their website: www.calvin.edu/worship, Lots of participants sent tweets on the event: http://www.calvin.edu/worship/connect/twitter/.

—Chris Meehan, CRC Communications