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.

The Worship Workshop, rather than providing simply another manual for doing worship, offers instead an interactive workshop that helps worship teams develop more meaningful and memorable worship for the congregation. By combining liturgical history and the creative process, The Worship Workshop encourages worship teams and staff to break out of the traditional worship box in order to create diverse ways to present the Good News in worship. Through a variety of activities, ideas, and informational handouts, The Worship Workshop helps worship committees, planners, and designers evaluate the state of their current worship, get more people involved in the planning and designing process, explore the diverse designs of congregational worship, learn the history of worship, and utilize the arts and artists in worship.

Worship professor and practitioner Constance Cherry shows how to create services that are faithful to Scripture, historically conscious, relevant to God, Christ-centered, and engaging for worshipers of all ages in the twenty-first century. More than 150 colleges and seminaries have used or currently use the first edition as a required text. In this new edition, each chapter has been substantially updated and revised, including illustrations, key terms, examples, technological references, and suggested resources for further reading. A new chapter on global worship and a new appendix on live-streamed worship are included.

Leading preaching authority offers a revolutionary exploration of the role of preaching in worship.

Many congregations today experience collisions between parents who ant to spend time with their children and age-segregated church programming, as well as between the children worshiping in their pews and the increasing number of seniors in the same pew. Among the questions these congregations struggle to address are these: Should we try to hold the generations together when we worship/ Is it even possible? Led by pastor and resource developer Howard Vanderwell, nine writers--pastors, teachers, worship planners, and others serving in specialized ministries--offer their reflections on issues congregational leaders need to address as they design their worship ministry. In addition, numerous sidebars illustrate the diversity of practices in the church today. Contributors do not propose easy answers or instant solutions. Rather, they guide readers as they craft ministries and practices that fit their own community, heritage, and history. Each chapter includes questions for reflection and group discussion, and an appendix provides guidelines for small group use. The thread that connects these varied contributions is the belief that there is no greater privilege for Christians than worshiping God, and there is no better way to do that than as an intergenerational community in which all are important and all encourage and nurture the faith of the others.

One of the foundations of life in the black church is the proliferation of various worship practices and music. Reconciliation of Worship in the Black Church seeks to pave the way to the revitalization and restoration of faith celebration within the black church. There is a need to develop a practical theology of worship, incorporating the two main types used within the black churchtraditional, devotional-style worship, with its focus on spontaneous praise and testimony; and contemporary praise and worship, with its emphasis on rehearsed liturgy. In recent years, the rich history of traditional, spontaneous worship of the black church has been challenged by the praise-and-worship movement. Charles Lewiss insightful look at his own denomination demonstrates the importance of clinging to traditional practices while giving due consideration to modern modes of worship. Lewis sees the issue not as a choice between two competing styles but as a challenge for the church to blend the styles without compromising genuine worship or alienating large segments of the church. Carefully researched and presented from the heart, Reconciliation of Worship in the Black Church hopes to contribute to a lasting unification of worship practices.

Pastors and others who lead Christian worship want to offer worship that is truthful and hopeful. They yearn to create worship that involves and includes everyone in their midst. To develop new approaches to planning, so that their worship can reflect and respond to the realities of the community. To create worship for the church that is becoming. A Worship Workbook introduces crucial and under-examined liturgical and social concepts for students and leaders of worship. Each chapter offers a brief lesson, teaching new skills and inspiring creativity for honest, faithful, and versatile worship leadership.