New Book from Calvin on Worship Planning

February 4, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

There was a time when planning a worship service was easy.

Retired pastor Howard Vanderwell remembers those days. His most challenging
task usually was picking the songs to plug into the service.

Things aren't so simple anymore. At many churches planning a service can be a
complicated and sometimes frustrating task.

But Vanderwell isn't recommending anyone go back to the old days.

In fact, he and Norma deWaal Malefyt (his former church organist, who later
would become his church's full-time director of music) have written a
just-released book on worship planning called, appropriately enough, "Designing
Worship Together: Models and Strategies for Worship Planning."
 
Both Vanderwell and deWaal Malefyt are now resource specialists for the Calvin
Institute of Christian Worship which published the book as part of the Vital
Worship, Healthy Congregations Series with The Alban Institute.

Their goal for the book is "to help churches design services that help
worshipers engage with the God who has been involved with people since
Creation."

Designing Worship Together offers multiple models that work well.

For instance at some churches worship planning teams may gather input from
many people, but leave final decisions up to a pastor and musician. Some
churches use several planning teams, organized around a time period (a month or
liturgical season) or a task (writing litanies and prayers; involving youth;
focusing on sacraments). Vanderwell and deWaal Malefyt also describe successful
committee or staff partnerships for designing and leading worship.

Designing Worship Together also includes dozens of samples, templates, grids,
and checklists, things such as worship committee guidelines and agendas,
letters to worship committee volunteers, a worship resource bank survey, weekly
service planning guides, evaluation forms and more.

There are also guidelines for how a church can write a worship statement and
there are examples of several congregational worship statements - from Church
of the Servant CRC in Grand Rapids to First Presbyterian in Wheaton, Illinois
to Christ Lutheran (Missouri Synod) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

For more, including links to the above churches, pics of the authors, their
contact info, background on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, etc, see
http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/design_worship.htm

-end-
Received on Thu Feb 3 15:54:16 2005