Joyce Borger
I am a self-professed worship geek, nerd, or wonk (chose your term). In other words, I love to talk about, participate in, and lead worship. I currently serve as the Director of Worship Ministries for the Christian Reformed Church.
I took my first worship class in 1990 at Kuyper College (Reformed Bible College when I went there), which was a major “aha” moment in my life. After graduating from Kuyper with a Bachelor of Religious Education I continued to study music at Calvin College and graduated from there with a BA in Music Education. During those years I worked with developmentally challenged individuals of all ages, began an inner city youth ministry with a group of young adults, and worked with established church ministries. After graduating I taught highschool Music, Bible, and History for a year before becoming a youth director at a Covenant CRC in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
God continued to lead me this time to seminary and I wondered how God was going to bring all these experiences together. When I graduated with an MDiv from Calvin Theological Seminary in 2003, that question was answered with a call to serve as music and worship editor for Faith Alive Christian Resources. As the music editor I edited the music for educational curriculums, Friendship Ministries, and 7 songbooks including Lift Up Your Hearts. This means that I got to be in conversation with people as we together talk about and discern what various groups within the church and the church as a whole needs to sing to express their joys, sorrows, prayers, and praises. It is a great honor to have been able to serve the church in this way, to listen, and then mould a songbook. As the worship editor I have worked on several projects including the quarterly journal Reformed Worship. As a worship planner I relied on RW to provide me with thoughtful articles and useful resources and as an editor my challenge is to continue doing so, relying on the readers themselves to share of their treasury of creative gifts. Again I got to listen to the churches, take the gifts given and mould them into a useful tool for the church.
I am grateful for the privilege I know have to serve the CRC in a new way as Director of Worship Ministries. For more information on what that is all about check out our developing website at crcna.org/worship.
Posted in: When Did Evening Worship Services Begin in the CRCNA?
Gathering twice on Sunday with a preaching service in the morning and a teaching service (on the catechism) in the afternoon or evening was the practice in the Netherlands well before folks immigrated to the United States and Canada. That practice of two services was maintained with the formation of the CRC in 1857.
You might be interested in knowing that in 1920 three orders of worship were presented to Synod from a study committee to reflect the fact that many churches had 2 services in Dutch and 1 in English every Sunday. 1928 Synod adopted an order for the "first service of the Lord's Day" and though the same study committee was asked to prepare another order for the second service (and potentially other services as well) that was never accomplished and the committee was disbanded in 1932.
Posted in: Thoughts on Easy Worship?
I posted your question on the CRC Worship Ministries facebook page and this is the advice given there. Big thanks to all those who responded.
Carmen Huttenga We used to use EasyWorship and switched to MediaShout. If you have a PC MediaShout is what a recommend if you have a Mac I recommend ProPresenter.
My experience with MediaShout is that it has so many more multi media options. We can integrate videos much more smoothly. I can incorporate songs from Digital Songs and Hymns one time into the database and use them over and over. The multiple Bibles are a great tool, I could go on.
Alicia Boekee We use EasyWorship and it works very well for us! Easy to input songs or search for them on the fly. I updated a few of the options to personalize it a bit (live view, etc). It works very well for our volunteers as well.
Sarah 'Sikma' Cupery We use Easy Worship and like it. Even my 9 and 7 year old sons can do it!
Elly Boersma We are currently looking into other options besides Easy Worship - mostly because of issues we've had with the program freezing or crashing, and most recently in upgrading to Windows 10, Easy Worship had some major glitches that made for a VERY stressful Sunday morning that is still etched in my memory. (They may have fixed those bugs, but I still haven't done the most recent upgrade since I don't trust it to be right yet.) It also struggles when switching from song slides to powerpoint slides, which is what we use for litanies and sermons - I'd love something with smoother transition. That said, it is very user-friendly and easy to run - One of my projection guys always says "a monkey could do this."
Carmen Huttenga There is a compatibility issue with PowerPoint and MediaShout. It is best to save files as jpeg interchange files and import them into MediaShout that way. That is what has worked best for us. Microsoft did an update that wasn't compatible with MediaShout. Last I knew MediaShout was working on a patch. I don't know the status of that. I do know the jpeg works great for us.
Richard Bodini As well, if you run a PPT file outside of EasyWorship while the program is still running, when you return to EW, it has a tendency to crash. So you have to restart the program. That was happening every week after my sermon PPT. So I had them put it into the program... and they now switch the slides when I Q them instead of my doing it throuhg my phone. Problem has been solved.... for now.
Carmen Huttenga EasyWorship was constantly crashing for us which led to our change.
John Medendorp We use ProPresenter...but you really need a mac to use it...and you really need a pro to run it...building slides for Sunday worship is a 2-5 hour job per week on its own.
Posted in: Funeral Liturgy?
Historically the funeral has not been a "church/ecclesiastical" event. The Church Order was changed in 2010 to soften that approach but as a result to my knowledge the CRC has never had an official liturgy for funerals which is why you don't find any on the Liturgical Forms page. Of course, synod could change that by requesting that some be provided. Currently one of the best resources out there is the book "In Life and in Death" which is available through Faith Alive https://www.faithaliveresources.org/Products/400150/in-life-and-in-death.aspx
Don't forget to check out the "Death and Dying" section of Lift Up Your Hearts, which includes "A Litany for the Sick and Dying" #461
For some additional reflections and a sample liturgy see:
https://www.reformedworship.org/article/june-1992/rethinking-reformed-reluctance-call-church-reclaim-funeral-worship-service
Posted in: Printable Church Year Calendar?
This one isn't printable but I've used it in the past and appreciated it: http://christiancalendar.squarespace.com/
Posted in: Looking for a Christmas Liturgy
Wilma,
Have you taken a look at Reformed Worship's website? (www.ReformedWorship.org) There are about 30 years of worship resources available for free! If you put "Christmas" in the search box you will come up with quite the list.
If you are looking for something particular email [email protected] and we will see what we can do to help.
Posted in: Looking for a Christmas Liturgy
Two other suggestions:
http://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/listing.html?search=christmas&type=tag
https://re-worship.blogspot.ca/search?q=+Christmas
Posted in: Affirming Baptism Liturgy?
There is a liturgy that is found in both Sing! A New Creation (#240), and Lift Up Your Hearts (#848) that you can use as is or adapt for your context. I cannot find it online but if you don't have a copy of either hymnal send an email to [email protected] and we will see how we can help get you a copy of the litany.
Posted in: Inclusivity in Alternative Worship Formats
Kory, what a wonderful conversation your church is having and your concern for inclusiveness is wonderful.
It may be possible to do small group conversations that include both the hearing and a wide range of cognitive abilities with just a few modifications.
What room are you having the small group conversations in? If it is exceptionally "live" acoustically a change in venue may be all that a hearing challenged person needs. Also sitting in a circle may help so that the reading of lips is possible and the sound of the voice isn't muffled by people's backs.
As for reaching the full range of cognitive abilities. I'd encourage presenting the material using as many media as possible. Can every topic be presented in two different ways? Could a discussion on a scripture passage be set up by both reading from scripture and a storybook Bible or a thematically related picture book? Or use scripture and video? Then in setting up the questions keep at least some of them very open ended. "I wonder..." questions work well for adults as well as children or "What would you do if..." If there are no right/wrong answers then it is possible for everyone to feel comfortable participating.
I don't know, maybe you've already tried these things and they didn't work in your context. If you haven't tried them, it may be a place to start.
If you do decide to move forward with this let us know how it goes and what you learned because I think you are right that many churches are struggling with answering that same question.
Posted in: What are the pros and cons of using Planning Center Online?
I spent a fair amount of time looking at it and was blown away by what it can do and how user friendly it was. I am curious if other similar programs exist that people are using.
Posted in: What are the pros and cons of using Planning Center Online?
Do you use other programs in addition to the Planning Center? (i.e. Song Select from CCLI) Do you project and if so, is it just words or words and music and what program do you use for projection?
Posted in: What's the best way to share original worship music?
I think this Network site is the perfect way for CRC musicians to share their music with other CRC folk. You can't attach the actual file but you can always point us to where we can find it. Personally, I would love it if people like Nick would post a simple note like: "Hey, I just wrote a new song X about XX and you can find it at XXX." If you include information on how we can use your song legally (i.e. this is free for your church to use, or this song is listed under CCLI, or contact me for permission to use this song, or...) that would be helpful. Some additional background information on the song,some interesting points about its musical structure or textual references for example, would be a great aid for worship leaders. So Nick, what is the link to your music?
Posted in: Is it possible to have a keyboard, connected to a computer, that would create musical notation from what is played?
Yes, you would need a music program like Finale or Sibelius and buy a keyboard w/ a midi interface so you can hook it up to your computer. There should be a computer techie around who can help you hook things up and download the right programs. There may be some free music softward online as well.
I do need to add a friendly reminder regarding copyrights. Arrangements of published music are not allowed to be made without the permission of the copyright holders.