One Friday morning recently I had the opportunity to reminisce with Reformed Worship’s art director, Dean Heetderks, about the visual aspects of the journal. Because Dean has been involved with Reformed Worship from the first print issue to this last one, the conversation became a reflection on the history of the journal in general. This article highlights some of what we talked about.
As art director, Dean gives guidance on layout and graphics and oversees the design process. But you may know him best as the author of seventy-nine “Come and See” columns that appeared on RW’s back cover. We are grateful for Dean’s leadership and the work of his team, including our current designer, Frank Gutbrod, who has been with us since RW 63.
—JB
Where It All Began
Dean: It was an interesting exercise going through past issues. It brought back lots of memories—problems we had, decisions we made, the publishing process—but it’s all right, it’s all good. We had lots of conversations about covers and colors. Oh, and I remember the long titling meetings to decide on the titles of all the articles. I’m not sure where we found the time!
Joyce: Yes! I remember when I started we would meet at least quarterly with at least ten people in the room to talk about titles and marketing. It certainly was a different day with a much bigger staff.
Dean: The titles were one thing, but we also spent a lot of time on the layouts. Of course there was a different process—in the early days it wasn’t digital.
Education and Inspiration
Dean: The conversations we had as a team were lots of fun. But by far what I’ve appreciated about working on the magazine since 1986 has been the worship education. I learned so much about the theology of worship and worship planning, and I received a lot of inspiration as well.
It’s also been interesting to watch the transition as more church members became involved with worship planning and creating visuals. Prior to the ’80s and for some churches well into the ’90s, it was only the pastor who planned and led worship, with an organist or pianist receiving a list of songs a few days or hours before the service. Reformed Worship marked a shift toward including lay people in worship planning, and as they became involved they learned the theology of worship. Just as they needed to learn about worship in order to plan it, I needed to learn about it in order to design for the magazine. Vertical habits? What is that? Lament? Some might learn about such things through a seminary class, but for me that significant education happened through RW.
Joyce: I think many of us—writers, designers, editors, and readers—received worship education through Reformed Worship. It was the curriculum for worship planners, committees, elders, and even pastors. When RW began, many of our congregations hadn’t been attentive to the Christian year outside of celebrating Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Ascension. We certainly didn’t know anything about the liturgical seasons or colors. While Reformed Worship encouraged the observance of the Christian year, we approached it as a tool that could help us deepen our understanding of the arc of Scripture and the salvation story, but we’ve never claimed it was the only tool that could do so, and that flexibility has allowed more space for creativity.
Changing Times
Joyce: Truth be told, I have taken and even taught worship classes, but I’m still learning from the resources that people send in for publication. The world changes, and the acoustics of our worship change. While God remains faithful, the conversation we need to have with God changes over time, as do some of the tools that we use as a medium for that conversation. It’s not surprising, then, that Reformed Worship has also changed over time.
Dean: That change is visually evident in the covers and layouts.
Dean: Until RW 54, the journal was primarily published with only two colors: black and the color that represented the liturgical season. Starting with RW 54, the front and back covers were printed in full color while the inside continued with two colors. For each interior page, we had to indicate to production which parts were to be printed in the second color. Then two different printing plates were made, one for each color. It was a fun challenge that required a lot of clear communication and review. Everything changed, of course, when printing became digitized.
I’m not sure when we switched to digital page assembly and digitally assisted printing, but it coincided with the time that churches began to think more about projection, beginning with the overhead projector. This change affected church architecture: there needed to be room for projector screens, then flat screens, and now entire video walls with snazzy lighting.
Gifts from Our Subscribers
Dean: RW certainly changed over the years, which is evident visually. The art and images originally had a more homemade feel. Then the internet gave us access to a world of art created by professional artists. When you look back at the first issues, it’s not all great work, but it is what we could do with the tools we had and our own experience—or inexperience.
Joyce: Something I’ve noticed is that in the earlier issues there were always bulletin covers to go with the worship series. There would even be instructions on how to photocopy the image from the printed journal for bulletin use. Over time we stopped doing those. I’m guessing that the “homemade” look of bulletin covers also became dated, and photocopies of black and white images no longer made the grade. Or maybe folks simply stopped sending them in?
Dean: I certainly do appreciate those who send in artwork and photos to accompany their resources, especially when they provide ideas that other churches can use or adapt.
Joyce: One of my hopes for the future is that this generosity of spirit among those who use the RW website will continue and that it will be a place where ideas from worshiping communities around the world are curated and then shared to bless others.
Dean: Folks shouldn’t be afraid to send in their ideas. You don’t need to be a professional artist, and the work doesn’t need to be fancy or high-tech either.
Highlighting Artists
Joyce: You talked about how much you learned about the theology and practice of worship through Reformed Worship, and as a parallel to that, I grew in my appreciation of beauty. Some might think that spending money on art or installations or purchasing fabric for banners or paraments might be a waste, but our Creator God obviously delights in beauty. How can we worship the Creator of all things beautiful without attending to beauty? Over the years it became more important to me to find Christian artists whose work we could highlight—not only to encourage them, but to encourage the use of art in the church and to help make RW a beautiful offering to God. I like so many of the covers—it’s hard to choose which ones to highlight.
Challenges
Joyce: I’ve been on RW’s editorial team for 21 years. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything left to say or if this is the year we will run out of ideas. Truthfully, some issues come together more easily than others. Yet time and again I’m surprised at how the Holy Spirit manages to bring articles together—sometimes singing in harmony, sometimes as counterpoints to each other.
Dean: We face a similar challenge visually. It’s great when we find an image that communicates something unique, providing a different angle from which to see what has become too familiar.
Joyce: There are lots of challenges facing the church now too. Statistics tell us that the majority of Christians attend a megachurch. These churches, often with multiple sites, are very professionalized and high-tech. Yet most churches are small and becoming smaller. The trend in these churches, it seems to me, is to use less technology and be less professionalized. In a sense, we may be coming full circle to the homemade, folksy feel of the earlier days of Reformed Worship.
Dean: I like that term “folksy.” It is more permission-giving than simply thinking it’s only about how many paid staff a church has. I want to attend the church where I am needed, where everyone is needed to make worship happen, because worship is the work of the people. I get a little worried about how, with the hiring of worship staff and tech staff, we’ve stopped including lay people. In the process of reprofessionalizing worship, something was lost. Many people like myself need the worship education, need the involvement, need to hear other people talk about worship and learn about worship, but all of a sudden we’ve once again become observers and consumers of worship that is being done for us. But I think there’s hope. I read an article recently from a blogger on design and culture (Tobias van Schneider, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards—From the Desk of van Schneider—Edition No. 255,” January 20, 2025). The blogger points out a trend toward less-than-perfect images. You may have a very large, high-resolution image, but before users put it on Instagram, they are applying filters that break down the high resolution and break down the color quality, and the resulting image has this “chromy” sort of look to it. Van Schneider goes on to talk about fashion being sort of thrown together rather than coordinated, he talks about interiors becoming less minimalist and more lived in, and he mentions dumber electronic devices—instead of having a smartphone that can do everything, we have tools that do just one thing. This trend has been driven by younger people. He suspects it’s a shift to something a little more organic. I’m curious about what that trend might mean for worship and worship visuals (though I’m not wanting to get back to using only felt!).
Joyce: Indeed, though it’s not that there isn’t a need for those with the professional skills. I don’t think either of us is ready to give up the art of Rachel Durfee or Wayne Forte (See sidebar p. 22). It’s a question of balance. But it is also a call for those who do have gifts to constantly be looking for someone to mentor and for ways to engage more people in the process. The pastoral and formative aspects of worship and worship planning have certainly been a consistent theme across RW’s history.
Trees! Trees! Trees!
Joyce: Another unintentional theme of RW has got to be trees. As I looked through back issues, it struck me just how often trees appeared. Given the use of the image throughout Scripture and how trees express both groundedness and growth, it shouldn’t be a surprise. (In addition to the covers highlighted below, trees featured prominently in RW 60, 77, 90, 104, 110, 114, and 140.)
The Work Continues
Dean: My work with the print version of RW has been wonderful, both in what I learned and in giving me a creative outlet. What a privilege it was. Every once in a while I would get a letter or email about one of the “Come and See” columns, and I would be caught off guard a little—someone is actually reading this? It was always a highlight to see how they would interpret the idea I had written about and make it their own.
While my work with Reformed Worship might be done, there’s still a lot of work to be done around worship visuals. If I could leave RW readers with one charge, it would be to give people the opportunity to learn to express themselves visually in worship—especially the kids. Don’t forget that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and when it comes to visual expression, “Yes, you can!” (see article by that title).