Congregations Reflect Worship Trends

June 30, 2008 – An array of innovative Christian ministries in the United States and Canada were featured recently on poster-board displays on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Along one wall was information about Cornerstone Prison Church, a Christian Reformed congregation that meets inside the South Dakota State Penitentiary. Nearby was a poster describing a story-telling program that has brought together the older and younger generations at First Hamilton CRC in Hamilton, Ontario.

But the CRC was only one of several denominations whose programs and ministries were showcased as part of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship's annual Worship Renewal Grants Colloquium.

Also on display was a poster-board describing a liturgically simple and yet rich Sunday evening prayer service at the Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego, Calif., as well as one detailing how a Missionary Baptist church is bringing food and spiritual comfort to the homeless in a Chicago neighborhood.

Depicting more than a dozen of the projects funded in 2007 through the Worship Renewal Grants Program, the afternoon poster session was held as a way to give advice and recommendations to 2008 grant recipients who are starting to launch into their projects.

"We look to award grants for programs that engage a local congregation," said Rev. John Witvliet, director of the institute, which earlier this year announced that it had received $7 million from the Lilly Endowment to fund additional projects over the next few years.

"The greatest motivating force that drives churches to apply for a grant is a need for spiritual renewal," said Witvliet. "We hope this is about helping the church do the things that it should be doing all along, but maybe hasn't been doing very well."

In the last 10 years, the institute has used its funding to give more than 450 grants to congregations and other groups. It has also welcomed more than 15,000 people from more than 40 countries to conferences and training events.

In addition, the institute has produced more than 30 books and developed an extensive website – www.calvin.edu/worship - with help from more than 70 current and former Calvin College faculty and staff, over 300 other conference presenters and writers, and over two dozen other ecumenical organizations, publishers, colleges, denominations, and seminaries.

A core element of the program is the worship renewal grants.

"We could never have done what we have done without the help of the grant," said Ann Whattoff, coordinator of a Sunday-evening Compline (the final prayer of the day) service at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego, Calif.

Whattoff's project, in fact, reflected a trend that several of the posters described -- an emphasis on projects linking older with younger members in a congregation.

Meanwhile, the First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, Calif., had a poster describing its inter-generational project that began by spending a good deal of time talking and listening to the thoughts and needs of older members of the church.

Much of the conversation revolved around people's feelings about the music played and sung during services in an attempt to sort through what mixture of older hymns with newer praise tunes would work for all members of the church, said Nina Lau-Branson, the project director at the church.

"We undertook a process of appreciative inquiry," she said. After the discussions, they developed and held an inter-generational service of praise and prayer.

Beth Terpstra, the project director for the First CRC in Hamilton, said they did a similar thing by engaging older and younger members in "holy conversation" and in joint art and story-telling projects.

At Rehoboth CRC in Rehoboth, N.M., the church used a grant to explore how to better use Navajo traditions and customs in worship, and to do this for members of all ages. But from here the church wants to look into ways that it can include in its liturgies the customs and traditions from other ethnic groups represented in the church.

"Rehoboth has Hispanics, Anglos, Filipinos, and Ethiopians. We want to see how can we use art and music and story-telling for all of our people to better worship God," said Vern Bia, a member of the Rehoboth CRC.

For more information on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, contact John Witvliet at 616-526-6806. For the full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2007-08/worship-grant.htm

-Chris Meehan, CRC Communications

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