Faith & Worship

‘It is very good’

After telling the 450 or so people attending the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School on Monday that they’re co-creators with God and, as John Calvin once said, “little manifestations of God’s glory,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield proved her point by asking participants to use their cellphones to take first a selfie and then a photo of the people seated around them.

Presbyterian Writers Guild offers panel on hymn-writing

As congregations — and congregational singing — return to in-person worship, the Presbyterian Writers Guild is sponsoring a one-hour panel presentation on hymn-writing featuring three renowned Presbyterian hymn composers.

Everyday God-talk reimagined

Everyday God-talk returns for its first official season using the lens of Reformed theology to focus on environmental justice and climate crisis.

Ordinary Time gets a new image

Ordinary Time is a span of the Church calendar between major feasts and their seasons, occupying more than 30 Sundays each year.

With help from its youngest attendees, PAM conference ends on a high note

Since Friday’s closing worship at the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference focused on communion, dozens of loaves of bread from all over the world were spread on the communion table before worshipers. For this service, children were also front and center — right where Jesus wants them to be, according to Mark 10:13-16, one of the texts selected by the conference preacher, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong of St. James Presbyterian Church in Charleston, S.C.

Servants’ Entrance

For a minister of music who’s also a choral music and conducting professor, Tom Trenney is a born storyteller.

‘We are free’

During Thursday morning’s worship service at the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference, the Rev. Cecilia (Ce Ce) Armstrong told those gathered in person and online that she was not going to preach a devotional sermon.

Words matter

To prove his assertion that, in music and in other life pursuits, words matter, Tom Trenney led off his Routley lecture Wednesday with examples of paraprosedokians — sentences that begin innocently enough, then veer off in unexpected directions.

Whistle while you worship

One Sunday morning, Tom Trenney, the Routley Lecturer this week for the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference and the minister of music at First-Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, invited the choir and whoever wanted to in the congregation to whistle during the hymn “Lord of the Dance,” except during the somber fourth verse. He tried the same thing Tuesday, inviting class participants to pucker up behind their masks and whistle.