Worship

Worship explores what it means to honor God with heart, mind, and life—both personally and as the gathered church. Discover Bible-based articles on worship in Scripture, singing and liturgy, the role of preaching and prayer in worship, and leading services that are Christ-centered and spiritually formative. You’ll also find practical guidance for worship leaders and ministry teams on planning gatherings, cultivating congregational participation, and keeping worship rooted in the gospel rather than performance. These resources help believers worship God in spirit and truth.

August 29, 2014

Christian Standard

Gateway to Hope

By Mark S. Krause In Dante Alighieri”s Divine Comedy, he pictures the gateway leading into the Inferno (Hell) as being inscribed with these words: Through me the way to the city of woe, Through me the way to everlasting pain, Through me the way among the lost . . . Abandon all hope, you who enter here.1 When the church gathers, some come who have had their hopes crushed in the last week. A job may have been lost. Perhaps a home or a relationship has been lost. Various ones might have lost a battle for good health, a loved

April 23, 2014

Christian Standard

Westminster High

By Daniel Schantz On the sixth day of our London tour, my wife threw me a curve. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” Sharon said, “so I would like to attend services at Westminster Abbey.” My face fell. Oh, no, not that place. That”s “high church,” Anglican. I don”t want to be sitting around in a dark, musty cathedral watching priests perform mysterious rituals and listening to Latin mumbo jumbo and mournful choirs. “OK,” I said, cheerfully, “Westminster Abbey it is. It could be interesting.” We were celebrating our 50th anniversary with a trip to London””Sharon”s lifelong dream””and I was determined not to

April 13, 2014

Christian Standard

Worship Is a Verb!

By Teresa Metzger Worship is our goal for every day, but the Lord”s Day presents us with special opportunities. Life is often lived segmented into neat little boxes we construct for ourselves. We have our work box, family box, sports box, entertainment box . . . and all of these fit into a larger, “secular” box. Many activities make up our secular lives. Then we have this much smaller box labeled “sacred.” Into this box we put our church attendance, Bible reading, praying, and service. Our sacred box takes up much less time and space than our secular box, but that”s OK

April 12, 2014

Christian Standard

Fuzzy Worship

By Steve Wyatt God made us to worship him. Which means we need to get worship right. But at least four factors push worship out of proper focus. The No. 1 reason God gave you his breath is to bring him pleasure. “O Lord. . . . You created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist” (Revelation 4:11, New Living Translation, 1996; author”s emphasis). “All things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16, King James Version; author”s emphasis). How much of “everything” is included in “all things?” ALL. Including you! You were made for God.

April 11, 2014

Christian Standard

Seven Ways to Make Your Worship Creative

By Lise Caldwell 1. Incorporate Scripture in creative ways: turn a passage (such as Isaiah 53) into a dramatic monologue. Weave Psalm texts together in a thematic responsive reading. Share Scriptures on which a worship song is based. Provide reflective texts on screen or in a bulletin for times of silent prayer. 2. Get people out of their seats: allow people to respond with movement. Invite people to write something they are thankful for on a giant blackboard and display it during the month of November. Encourage families to leave the pews and pray together during Communion. Encourage them to

April 11, 2014

Christian Standard

Seven Attributes of a Healthy Worship Planning Team

By Lise Caldwell 1. Debate and disagreement are encouraged. People are willing to (respectfully) express concerns or offer alternatives to ideas that are presented. 2. No one “owns” an idea. Often one suggestion sparks another, which sparks another, and in the end, no one knows who had the idea in the first place. Emphasis is placed on collaborative brainstorming, not bragging rights. 3. Laughter and play are encouraged. Provide Slinkies, Legos, or Play-Doh during planning meetings. People who are able to laugh with others (and at themselves) will be more creative. 4. People are more important than products. Offering creative

April 10, 2014

Christian Standard

We Plan, They Respond

By Lise Caldwell Worship is a response to who God is. Can you plan to respond? Maybe not, but we find great satisfaction in crafting experiences that lead people to worship God. We huddle around 8-foot round tables strewn with laptops and iPads, soda cans and pizza crusts. The whiteboard that dominates the front of the room is ominously blank. The dates of our upcoming weekend services throb in the corners, pulsating in their urgency. I scribble on my notepad. Someone coughs. The room grows quiet. Time to plan our worship services. “Planning” worship sounds counterintuitive. We don”t “plan” to

April 6, 2014

Christian Standard

Does Everyone Worship?

By Ken E. Read “Want to see the next trend in worship?” It was a decade ago. My daughter started the video halfway through the song, with the camera sweeping across the crowd. They were certainly enthusiastic (“filled with God”), raising their arms and swaying as they pressed up near the stage and sang along with the contemporary band. Thousands of people in the crowd were singing full-voiced, their faces turned upward, arms extended skyward, and waving in united praise, their eyes gazing off into space while they sang. The camera changed to show the performers on the stage. I

April 4, 2014

Christian Standard

Still We Meet on the Lord”s Day

By Jeff Faull “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus. . . . On the Lord”s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet” (Revelation 1:9, 10, author emphasis). Today is the Lord”s Day, but it doesn”t quite seem the same. John was being punished. We are not. John was suffering. We are not. John was alone. We”re not. John was an apostle. We”re not. John was an eyewitness. We”re not But we are trying to listen to God,

April 25, 2013

Christian Standard

Stewards of Audio Volume

By Eric Radecki In the field of church music today, dealing with audio volume comes with the territory. It”s not a simple topic, and it”s worthy of a serious and honest discussion. Daniel Schantz”s article “The Half-Inch Solution” broached the subject but failed to go beyond generalizations and opinions. In this article I hope to offer practical help in dealing with the audio volume levels in your church by providing a responsible interpretation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines within a theological context.   “Loud” is in the Bible Scriptures seem to indicate that much of the music

April 4, 2013

Christian Standard

Arts Guilds Featured

By Jennifer Johnson Two years ago, Ryan Phipps created a “guild” for songwriters and another for filmmakers and photographers at Forefront Church (New York, NY). Phipps, who serves as the worship and arts director at Forefront”s Manhattan campus, says the church offered several groups for business professionals but nothing for artists beyond the music on Sunday morning. The Forefront groups are in the spirit of the medieval guilds, which developed as associations of master craftsmen with shared skills. “The idea was to gather people around a shared creative interest,” he says. “The response to the first two was overwhelming, so

August 25, 2012

Christian Standard

The Half-Inch Solution

By Daniel Schantz One of my Bible college students came flying out of chapel, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Are you OK?” I asked. She shook her head. “It”s the music””it”s so loud it gives me headaches.” I can”t tell you how many times I have heard church members say, “Sometimes I just hate going to church because the music is so loud.” It”s not the type of music they are objecting to so much as the volume. Solve the volume problem and I strongly suspect the worship wars would soon die down. Music ministers seem to think that

June 16, 2012

Christian Standard

Conflict Is a Constant, Encouragement Is a Fuel

By Mark A. Taylor The best way to avoid conflict about worship styles is to leave things the way they are, right? Not according to a survey conducted by Faith Communities Today* (FACT). FACT has surveyed religious congregations of every kind, Jewish and Muslim and others as well as Protestants, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox. When it comes to worship, these groups, diverse as they are, have some things in common. One of these is conflict. One set of questions in the FACT surveys surrounded worship change and conflict. Most of the congregations (60 percent) that introduced “a lot of change”

May 25, 2012

Christian Standard

Beautiful

By Mark A. Taylor   “How beautiful is the body of Christ,” sang the children”s choir, standing in perfect rows on risers in the Sunday-morning worship service. The Twila Paris anthem pictures Christ”s perfect hands and feet and heart and eyes””all sacrificed with pain deeper than we fully understand to take care of sin greater than we fully grasp. And then it reminds us that his beautiful body is still alive and active today, whenever “humble hearts give the fruit of pure lives so that others may live.” As the melody echoed in my mind throughout the day, I remembered

May 4, 2012

Christian Standard

TV Show Focusing on Love Films Worship at Church

By Jennifer Taylor Later this year, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) will premiere Lovetown, USA, a show about the search for love, filmed in Kingsland, GA. OWN describes the show as a “one-of-a-kind social experiment” and “the biggest dating challenge in TV history””examining the effects love can have on the DNA of one American community.” But the producers are getting more than they bargained for; Christ”s Church Camden, also in Kingsland, is using this unusual opportunity to share the impact of Christ”s love. “Kingsland has the highest percentage in the country of singles who move here and then get married,”

April 8, 2012

Christian Standard

Style Conscious

By Nathan Smith A few years back, I led worship on a regular basis at a midsized suburban church that was made up primarily of white, middle-class Americans. I often would speak with the pastor, a good friend, about the church”s “brand” and where he felt God was leading it. The worship gatherings were musically and aesthetically appealing, but I couldn”t get over the fact that we were “selling” a product completely disconnected from the worshipping body. The services were being designed for visitor Q rather than the Christian church member. (A bit of a disclaimer here, I do believe

November 9, 2011

Christian Standard

More Bible, Better Worship

By David Butzu How much of the Bible do we actually hear in church in any given year? What is the ratio of the amount of talking to the amount of Scripture we hear on Sundays? As our church considered those questions and others, we discovered a way to enrich worship and honor God by bringing more of his Word to our weekly gatherings. For a long time, the only kind of Christianity my family knew or cared about was Pentecostalism. Contrary to its caricatures, our Sunday worship was never wholly unbridled emotionalism; there was also a logical, right-brain dimension

November 8, 2011

Christian Standard

Using the Word in Worship

By Scott Dyer Just as in any recipe, worship suffers when a key ingredient is missing. I believe a foundational element in God-honoring worship is Scripture. And there are more ways to use Scripture than asking one of the ministers to read it. Here are some ideas we”ve tried. My wife, Vonda, and I are big fans of cooking competition shows. You know, the shows where they pick 15 aspiring chefs and pit them against one another to determine who is the best cook. The shows often put the contestants in difficult challenges that are almost impossible to accomplish, just

September 11, 2011

Christian Standard

Worshipping When Your World Falls Apart

By Dustin Fulton We all remember where we were on that dreadful September morning 10 years ago. Though the sun was shining and the weather was pleasant across most of America, our hearts were darkened by the images of airplanes crashing into buildings and ash-covered people fleeing what we now simply know as Ground Zero. I happened to be sitting in a seminary classroom at what is now Lincoln Christian University waiting to hear from one of my favorite professors, Dr. Robert Lowery. Before the 8 a.m. class started, a classmate informed us he had heard on the radio about an

August 19, 2011

Christian Standard

A Call for All-age Worship

By Verna Weber I can read your mind. The objections that fill the air at the title of this piece probably are not new to me. Let me guess at a few. Children won”t get anything out of the church”s main worship service. Children are distracting. They need an age-appropriate setting. We need them to be somewhere else. This is my time (usually uttered by tired parents). Ultimately, the responses boil down to one point””the greatest barrier to bringing the whole church together for worship is children. It used to be that children were to be seen and not heard.

Help Keep Christian Standard Free & Accessible with a Tax Deductible Donation

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Does Your Church Want to Support Christian Standard?

Would your church consider including support for Christian Standard in its annual missions budget? Your support would help us not only continue the 160-year legacy of this unifying ministry, but also expand the free resources, cooperative opportunities, and practical guidance we provide to strengthen churches in the U.S. and around the world.

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Secret Link