The following is the text from a session Connie presented at the Symposium on Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, January 2006. Session Description: How engaged are the worshipers in your congregation? Do they tend to function as observers or active participants? Learn how to design worship services that invite dynamic participation. Introduction...Read More
Learn how to re-think the meaning of blended worship. No more quotas of hymns and choruses! Instead, learn practical ways to add fullness and depth to your worship by integrating a wide variety of worship expressions, both old and new.Read More
Let this piece serve as an earnest appeal to songwriters: please don’t lose the Trinity as you write songs! Why would I say such a thing? Because my study of the most used contemporary worship songs in the last fifteen years shows that there is a danger our songs reflect love for a god who...Read More
When you study the significance of Christ’s ascension, you have to wrestle with the absence and the presence of Christ. In his human nature Christ is absent, ascended to heaven, seated at the right hand of God the Father. He is in heaven today. But ‘in his divinity, majesty, grace, and Spirit, Christ is not...Read More
It is significant, I think, to note that both the liturgical and contemporary movements, out of opposite histories, recognized the need to prioritize worship as the first thing—or at least, one of the firsts among several equals—that the church must be about. Worship is a first, because it is a source from which the mission...Read More
This article originally appeared in the September 2005 issue of Worship Leader Magazine. Many of you know that I have been struggling with the issue of me-oriented worship. Those of you who have walked this path with me—some agreeing, others disagreeing—are probably saying “Oh no, not another article on the same subject!” Well, yes, but...Read More
And Jesus said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24; NIV) Surely this divine desire has...Read More
God has made all creatures for his glory. Without knowing it, the lilies of the field in their beauty glorify God with a glory greater than that of Solomon, the sparrow on the housetop glorifies God, and the universe in its vastness and remoteness is the theater of God’s glory. But God made men and...Read More
Dr. Webber was scheduled to speak at a conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Radical Orthodoxy, where Homiletics was to meet up with him for this interview. But he called a few days before the conference to say that he had had back surgery and wouldn’t be there. So we met with him in his...Read More
CM: We are aware that you probably didn’t start out to be an “expert” in the art of worship. What sequence led you to be so involved and active in the worship arena? RW: My Doctorate is in Historical Theology. As I studied the origins of Christian thought, I realized that all truth was first...Read More
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2003 edition of Worship Leader magazine. I have been greatly challenged by many of my readers who have taken me to task for my statement that “a romantic relationship with Jesus is a lie.” The most common concern articulated by these writers has to do with the Song...Read More
How would you classify your worship service? It is “contemporary” or “traditional”? Are those terms too limited? Would the terms found in some recent youth ministry training materials be more helpful? In that case, would you classify your worship as “linear” or “organic”? Are you still at a loss for the right classification? Would these...Read More
