Emily R. Brink

How many members of your congregation are taking organ lessons? How many have pianos in their homes? Probably far fewer than a generation ago. Some congregations are getting desperate to find competent organists.

If the trend continues, we could consider going back to unaccompanied singing, typical of the early days of the Protestant Reformation. It's likely, though, that few congregations would have much success with acapel-la singing. Our culture is simply not a singing culture.

Prelude: Variations on vater unser (Our Father)

Call to Worship: "Built on the Rock" [stanzas 1-2, choir, stanza 3, all]
(PsH 503, TH 351]

Greetings

OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN

Hymn: "Our Father, Clothed with Majesty," [stanza 1]
(PsH 562)

Why did Christ command us to call God "our Father"?

Recently we asked several of our Reformed Worship readers about their understanding of the Praise and . Worship style and its effect on congregational worship. We wanted to know what questions and concerns they had about the movement. Then we turned to Henry Wildeboer, a pastor involved with this style of worship. We invited him to answer these questions from his experiences in churches in Calgary and Oshawa.

It happened in a Christian Reformed Church one Sunday night during the intermission of a Calvin Seminary Choir program. As director of the choir, I had asked two of the seminarians to say a few words about their background and plans for ministry. First came Bruce Gritter—a young Canadian student, full of enthusiam. Then Gabriella Farkas spoke.

JUNE

Protect Me, God, I Trust in You

© Consider the following scenario: Your worship planning team is planning a service. Everything goes smoothly until it comes to selecting the hymns. Your pew hymnal just doesn't have a song that will go along with the service's theme. Finally someone in your group picks up another hymnal and comes across just the right hymn. Everyone agrees. "Let's print it in the bulletin," one member of your group suggests. "How about using an overhead?" another says. "Do we have to get permission?" wonders still another.

David P. Schaap and John Worst, editors. New Brunswick: Selah Publishing Company, 1989. $8.75 soft cover; $12.00 hard cover. Available from Selah Publishing Co. P.O. Box 103, Accord, NY 12404; 1-800-852-6172

The worship life of the church traditionally begins with Advent, the season in which we anticipate and then celebrate the birth of our Lord, the long-awaited Messiah. This year Advent begins on December 2, and this issue is filled with ideas and resources that will help you plan your worship services for this significant time in the church year.

Again, we are indebted to people who send us their bulletins, their ideas, and sometimes entire articles.

I'm at the age now where I'm getting invitations to weddings of the next generation: nieces, nephews, and children of friends. Weddings haven't changed that much from a generation ago. For that matter, weddings have stayed remarkably unchanged for centuries. They, along with funerals, are just about the only ceremonies left in our culture that are broadly celebrated in similar ways.

The other day I had parking-lot security duty during our worship service. The person who shared that duty with me used the opportunity to express his frustration about organists who play different arrangements of the hymns on different stanzas. He likes to sing bass and is irritated when organists take off on strange harmonies and lose him. "Why do they do it?" he asked.