Bücher der Reihe Vital Worship Healthy Congregations

Much more than a "how-to" for worship planners. Drawing on more than two decades of collaborative worship planning, as well as numerous conversations with other worship planners. Pastor Howard Vanderwell and musician Norma de Waal Malefyt lay out a thoughtful, field-tested process for planning, implementing, and evaluating life-enriching weekly worship. Well over a dozen field-tested tools and a selected bibliography round out this invaluable resource for worship planners.

Today the Christian faith is moving through one of the greatest sea changes in its two thousand year history, and we can no longer assume we know exactly what kind of animal preaching is or ought to be. Choosing the Kingdom is both a work of theology and a how-to guide for preachers who want to rethink both the form and the content of their preaching to move a congregation from maintenance to mission. As a post-Christendom church reorients itself toward the mission of God, what might preaching look like? If we're truly living through one of the great sea changes in the history of the Christian faith, can preaching remain the same? Do we speak as bureaucrats in an imperial hierarchy, anticipating automatic acceptance of our message, or as servants of the reign of God, bringing news of God's activity in history as fresh as today's headlines? Is the announcement of the gospel a demand for submission or an invitation to wisdom? Choosing the Kingdom explores these issues and offers an entirely new orientation to sermon preparation. It offers concrete suggestions for a reconception of preaching for those whose imaginations have already been captured by the possibilities inherent in a missional identity.

Many churches have active worship committees or planning teams, and an abundance of books and resources guide pastors and laity. Encounters with the Holy offers a conversational model of worship planning that was developed to train practitioners to be more reflective in their planning of worship experiences. The model planning, ordering, worshiping, reflecting is a flexible, fluid pattern. It provides a more circular, spiraling practice of imaginative planning, preparing the leaders and the space, and reflecting theologically to understand more fully the experience of worship. It has been tested in congregations, seminaries, and campus ministries amid a wide range of denominational and cultural styles. An underlying theological assumption of this approach is that we are engaged in holy work when we plan and prepare for worship. Leaders study, preparation, and training are themselves an encounter with the Holy. Therefore, we are called to become more informed and better prepared liturgical leaders. The language and encouraging style of the book is accessible to student pastors, pastors, and lay people interested in learning to think more deeply about worship.