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    Caring Worship: Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy
    Caring Worship: Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy
    Caring Worship: Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy
    Ebook165 pages2 hours

    Caring Worship: Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy

    By Howard D. Vanderwell and John D. Witvliet

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    In a perfect world we might expect that all worshipers would be ready for a worship service of thorough praise and adoration. But that is not the case. Those who come for worship bring with them all the cares, anxieties, and stresses of life in this broken world. All are needy people. Some will find help for those needs in the pastor's office during a one-on-one conversation; some may find it in a pastoral call; but many will never experience either of those. The opportunity to minister to their needs will occur during that special time when all are gathered for worship. The sermon has received much attention as the avenue for help with their hurts, but what about the liturgy?

    This book takes a new and fresh look at the worship liturgy. It insists that the liturgy, regardless of denomination or style, is not merely preparatory to the main event--the sermon--but is rather the time in which the worshiper can be healthily cared for. The worshiper who comes before the face of God should be able to expect help, care, and healing. Blessed are the Pastors and worship planners who develop a sensitive concern for the care that worshipers come expecting.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateNov 6, 2017
    ISBN9781498241786
    Caring Worship: Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy
    Author

    Howard D. Vanderwell

    Howard Vanderwell has served as a pastor for over forty years in Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan. Currently he serves as a Resource Specialist of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and as Adjunct Professor of Worship at Calvin Theological Seminary.

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      Book preview

      Caring Worship - Howard D. Vanderwell

      9781532617232.kindle.jpg

      Caring Worship

      Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy

      Howard Vanderwell

      Foreword by John D. Witvliet

      11626.png

      Caring Worship

      Helping Worship Leaders Provide Pastoral Care through the Liturgy

      Copyright © 2017 Howard Vanderwell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1723-2

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4179-3

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4178-6

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Vanderwell, Howard | Witvliet, John D., foreword writer.

      Title: Caring worship : helping worship leaders provide pastoral care through the liturgy / Howard Vanderwell, with a foreword by John D. Witvliet.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017 | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-1723-2 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-4179-3 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-4178-6 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Worship | Public worship—Planning | Ministers of music | Liturgics | Pastoral care

      Classification: BV15 V152 2017 (paperback) | BV15 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 12/04/17

      All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible New International Version NIV Copyright 1978, New York International Bible Society.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Foreword

      Preface

      Introduction

      Part One: Perspectives on Worshipping

      Chapter 1: When the Needy Come to Church

      Chapter 2: Needs in Every Pew

      Chapter 3: More Than a Sermon

      Chapter 4: It’s Not about You, or Maybe It Is!

      Chapter 5: Priests and Pastors Who Lead

      Part Two: Where Caring Happens Weekly

      Chapter 6: Welcomed by God

      Chapter 7: Sitting Together

      Chapter 8: Liturgy with Room for All

      Chapter 9: Learning to Use Words That Care

      Chapter 10: Receiving God’s Pardon

      Chapter 11: Passing the Peace

      Chapter 12: When We Sing

      Chapter 13: When We Pray

      Chapter 14: Reading the Bible

      Chapter 15: Affirming Our Faith

      Chapter 16: God Goes with Us

      Part Three: Special Occasions in the Liturgy

      Chapter 17: When Crises Arise

      Chapter 18: Receiving Our Identity in Baptism

      Chapter 19: Remembering Our Baptism

      Chapter 20: Nurture at the Table

      Chapter 21: When We Need to Cry

      Chapter 22: Prayers on Challenging Issues

      Chapter 23: When We Say Our Last Good-bye

      Chapter 24: When We Marry

      Bibliography

      To

      Norma deWaal Malefyt

      My colleague in worship planning for nearly twenty years.

      While we planned two worship liturgies each Wednesday

      we wrestled with all the issues, taught each other, and enriched the worship

      for the eager worshipers at Hillcrest Church

      Foreword

      As you stand before them, always love them.

      When Howard Vanderwell received the distinguished alumni award from Calvin Theological Seminary in May 2017 , he wrote a beautiful commendation to graduates that ended with this simple, but profound challenge. What a compelling and crucial invitation this is for everyone who has the privilege of preaching, presiding, praying, or leading music in Christian worship services.

      As you stand before them, always love them is also an apt summary of the vision offered in this book. It is a vision that has emerged with passion and clarity throughout Rev. Vanderwell’s years of service in Christian ministry. He has served as pastor of four congregations over a span of forty years, weaving together weekly preaching and worship leadership duties in both morning and evening Sunday services with weekday pastoral visits to nursing homes and hospitals, pastoral conversations with those preparing for marriage and those preparing for new church leadership roles, and pastoral leadership opportunities on councils, committees, and ministries within his own congregation and in a variety of significant denominational leadership roles. In all these ministry tasks, he learned increasingly to forge connections—to allow each weekday ministry activity to connect with the task of preaching and worship leadership, to engage in preaching and worship leadership as profoundly pastoral tasks.

      Following these forty years, he has contributed for fifteen years now as a resource development specialist in our work at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, writing, teaching, advising, and serving as a mentor to a wide variety of ministry leaders—urging each of us to grow in our capacity as genuinely pastoral leaders whose service is marked by Christ-shaped love. For these fifteen years, I have been privileged to co-teach with him and to hear the stories that forged this deep pastoral vision in his own life. His own rich tapestry of ministry experiences and ministry advice could well be turned into a litany for seminary commencements or ordination services. I can almost hear it:

      In winter and summer, as you stand before them, always love them.

      At baptism and funerals, always love them.

      As members come and as they go, always love them.

      In seasons of growth and seasons of pruning, always love them.

      In times of lament and in times of thanksgiving, always love them.

      In brand new churches and in established ones, always love them.

      In times of unity and in times of dissent, always love them.

      When you are young and when you are old, always love them.

      When they affirm you and even when they don’t, always love them.

      When are you filled with energy and when you are fatigued, always love them.

      In life and in death, always love them.

      The more I have pondered this theme, the more it strikes me as a profound prophetic challenge to pastoral leaders today. So many discussions of church leadership invite us, often implicitly, to view our congregations in quite different ways—as problems to be solved, as a bundle of tensions to be managed, even as barriers to be overcome in the pursuit of some ministry dream. Too often discussions of worship or mission or leadership invite us, at least implicitly, to shape and lead a worship service beholden first to some evangelistic or liturgical or missional ideal, regardless of who is standing before us in the assembly, and the specific hopes and fears they bring with them to worship.

      Into that world, Rev. Vanderwell’s vision speaks a powerful word: always love them.

      With this in mind, what it would be like for all of us to meditate on 1 Corinthians 13 every time we prepare for leading worship? As we lead worship, how can we be patient and kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, not insisting on own way, nor being irritable or resentful, never rejoicing in wrongdoing, but rejoicing in the truth?

      To be sure, our love for those we lead must not be sentimental or simplistic. Loving those who we stand before does not mean giving them everything they want or dumbing down the message to gain high approval ratings. To the contrary, such love, cultivated through empathy, at times invites us to give voice to difficult themes and to convey warnings as well as comfort. Like wise parents, the posture here is one of a fierce, enduring love that seeks long-term flourishing for everyone as dearly loved children of God. It is a love that invites us to profound attentiveness to those with whom we serve, profound attentiveness to the spoken and unspoken fears and hopes that weave together in our daily lives.

      Importantly, the vision explored here is not limited to human relationships. This is not merely about the love that pastoral worship leaders and preachers should cultivate toward their congregation—and the profound pastoral care that will emerge. More fully, this is about how pastoral leaders can learn to see, to savor, to celebrate, and ultimately to rest in the profound love of God that works through human relationality to embrace, nourish, and challenge us as we worship. In worship and through our lives, God is promising and blessing and speaking and convicting us. It is precisely in worship that we are invited to drink deeply of this awareness of God’s love, and God’s active and healing presence among us. Indeed, any healing or care that worship offers is not ultimately produced by the sole agency of a given leader, but rather by the Holy Spirit at work through us, alongside us, and—when necessary—in spite of us. This vision of the overflowing love of God is what makes ministry such a privilege and joy—even in the most challenging moments. We are called to love each other, ultimately, because God loves us first (1 John 4:7, 19). And thus this book offers a profoundly theocentric vision for how we can walk in step with God’s Spirit, participating in the remarkable, redemptive work of God to offer the kind of care we all so deeply long for.

      So may God bless all who read of this book. Indeed, may God, according to the riches of divine glory, bless all who minister through worship and pastoral care, strengthening us in our inner being with power through the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus Christ may dwell deeply in our hearts through faith. In worship and in life together, may God’s Spirit guide us to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. To this triune God, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine—to this God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Based on Ephesians 3:14–21.)

      John D. Witvliet

      Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

      Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary

      June 2017

      Preface

      Those of us who worship regularly are privileged people. We are welcomed to come just as we are into the presence of God to meet with him. And those of us who are privileged to plan and lead worship stand in a sacred place—the place between God and his people when they meet together.

      Those who come to worship are participating in a noble service, and they deserve to be served well and never disappointed. And those who serve together as the planners and the leaders of a worship service carry a large responsibility to the worshiping community and also to God. As they craft a worship liturgy, they must be conscious of how important their task is. What they plan, the thought they put into it, and the manner in which they lead will determine how engaging this worship encounter will be. Some elements of worship carry the power to bless quite aside from the role of planners and leaders. Yet even at such times, the caring that is experienced will be greatly enhanced when worship is planned and led well. Consequently, the movement toward including a wide range of lay leaders in worship should also include a concern for the training they have for such a task. Some may be adequately trained for such a leadership role, but it may be new to some others of them. How able they are to handle such responsibilities will either aid worship or hinder it.

      So these materials have those two groups of people in mind—those who work together in designing and planning a worship service, and those, clergy or lay, who serve together in leading the worship services. Both of these groups are found in virtually all churches, regardless of size, style, or pattern of worship. The insights we provide here are valid for all leaders, clergy and lay, those who plan and design and those who lead. And these insights are equally valid for all churches, regardless of whether the Sunday morning worshipers number fifty-five or fifteen hundred, regardless of whether their worship

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