Articles for tag: Laura Dingman

October 29, 2016

By Laura Dingman Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Your alarm clock interrupts the rest you desperately need. It”s time to rise and shine. Well, rise anyway. You can”t shine until you get some coffee. You drag yourself through the morning routine, readying everyone else you”re responsible for as well as yourself. The day”s agenda floods your mind. Drop-offs. E-mails. Meetings. Conversations. To-do lists. A rhythm ties it all together. Even if we move through it unaware, there is a beat and a pace guiding us. It”s been this way since the beginning . . . In the beginning, God was. Through Him

January 12, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

Worship Worship & Prayer

Should Musicians Plan Our Worship Services?

By Mark A. Taylor Here”s why a church should recruit excellent musicians to lead worship: The people we”re serving as well as those we hope to reach are hearing professionally produced music everywhere they go. Many of them love music, and they listen to “their music” in their car, at the gym, when they walk, and sometimes at work. But even nonmusical people encounter music every day. Music creates the emotion and signals the mood in everything from Star Wars to sitcoms. The most memorable TV and radio ads include music. (I heard an interview the other day with a

December 8, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Worship Worship & Prayer

The Greatest Impact

By Mark A. Taylor How should we worship? Maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that throughout church history, Christians have answered that question in wildly differing ways. As both Paul Blowers and Tom Lawson point out this month, lavish artistic expressions of worship centuries ago eventually gave way to abandonment and even destruction of them by Protestant reformers. The motivation for each approach was the desire to please and praise God. Across Christendom today, we find everything from formal liturgy in classic settings to simple, quiet contemplative gatherings in smaller groups to exuberant, loud, guitar-driven, drum-syncopated megachurch

December 7, 2015

Christian Standard

Worship Worship & Prayer

Storytellers: Worship Beyond Music

By Laura Dingman Everyone loves a good story. We live for the intrigue, the action, the surprise, the mystery. We love a valiant hero, a triumphant underdog, a liberated prisoner, a conquered villain. Hearing good stories never grows old. God wired us to love story. He reveals his character in the stories of the patriarchs and moves the plot forward in the books of history. He discloses his compassionate and just nature in words contained in the poetry of the Psalms. Jesus, a masterful storyteller, taught in parables, explaining new truths to his listeners in accessible, everyday forms. God authored

April 10, 2014

Christian Standard

Worship Worship & Prayer

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

December 31, 2007

Christian Standard

Worship Worship & Prayer

Worship Ideas from The Creek

Laura Dingman has shared a few examples of worship services and worship elements from gatherings her team has planned at The Creek in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Creek-Download contains orders of worship, monologues, and responsive readings to stimulate your creativity, and even to use where you worship.