Happy New Year to our Reformed Worship family. We hope that your Christmas season was one that allowed for rest and provided grace-filled reminders of God’s Word made flesh through Jesus Christ. In the coming month we bask in the light of Epiphany with an eye turned towards the season of Lent. In this season of light, we pray for the darkness in this world and prepare our hearts for an upcoming season of penitence and self-examination as we journey with Jesus to the cross. This eNewsletter features some helpful planning resources for this “inbetween time” including Black History Month in February and Ash Wednesday on March 2, 2022. The staff and consultants at Reformed Worship have been working diligently and patiently in the past few months on our redesigned website. The new Reformed Worship web portal has now been launched! Here you will find a clean interface highlighting timely resources for worship planning. The website also has value-added resources (such as blogs) that are not found in the print or digital journal. While you read the articles, don’t forget to explore further on the ‘related articles’ and ‘current topics’ on the right-side column. Become a subscriber today to have full access to all of these resources. Come and visit our new website and let us know what you think. Send your comments to info@ReformedWorship.org. We love to hear from you. | | |  | | | Proclaiming the Gospel through African-American Prayer and Song This worship service beautifully weaves together Scripture, song and readings from African-American writers. In the month of February, designated as Black History Month, consider incorporating parts of this service in your worship, regardless of your context, giving attribution to the writers who faithfully contributed their voice as a person of color. “We continue to sing. Our preachers continue to proclaim God’s word in apocalyptic language. And thus we affirm ourselves, celebrate life, and, in the midst of nightmarish realities, find comfort for broken hearts and receive political, social, and personal strength for the days and struggles ahead. When, like Job, we had enough reasons to curse God and die, we glorified God. We weep when we remember our Zions on the shores of Africa, but we also rejoice because we know that “trouble don’t last always.” This affirmation is not theological pie-in-the-sky but eschatological realism.” | | | | |  | | | The Approach, Word, and Response in African American Worship Regardless of one’s ethnicity, worship is the appropriate response to God. We were created ultimately to worship God. Worship is the chief responsibility of every Christian. Growing up in the African American worship experience, I longed to see what worship could look like as a musical and cultural collision with the faithful who didn’t look like me.  | | | | |  | | | God’s Actions Told Through Musical and Literary Heritage of African Americans Take, for example, the Exodus story, how God's people were made slaves in Egypt until the Lord sent Moses to tell Pharaoh, "Let my people go." The Black church would remind us that Pharaohs still live today. These modern Pharaohs demand our allegiance, siphon away our life strength, profit from the toil of our hands, enslave and dehumanize through weapons of fear, oppression, violence, or greed. | | | | |  | | | | | | Articles and resources in this eNewsletter marked with are premium content for Reformed Worship subscribers. They are available to non-subscribers until November 30, 2021. To access premium content at the Reformed Worship website and our digital library, please subscribe today. | | | | | Worship planning Resources | | | | | Reformed Worship has rich resources for preachers and worship planners whose worship services follow the Lectionary. Check out this chart for Year C resources for the rest of the liturgical year. | | | A full Ash Wednesday service incorporating Psalm 103 and excerpts from the book of Hosea. There are options for adapting to fit your local context within this framework, including music, readings and imposition of ashes. Read more » | | | A full Ash Wednesday service from a church who is new to this particular service. If you haven’t done an Ash Wednesday service and are considering how to do one, start with this resource. Read more » | | | Paid advertisements |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I have a growing conviction that the Reformed emphasis on right theology has us living far too much in our heads and not enough in our bodies. As a result we miss out on many of the good gifts God surrounds us with daily, brushing blindly past them, distracted and absorbed with the thoughts in our heads. | | | | | | | | | | | When the pandemic hit in 2020, many religious leaders lacked the basic vocabulary needed to speak to the fear and pain being experienced by the body of believers. | | | | | | | | | | | Thus to write poetry is to partake in the process of giving form to something formless . . . By creating, we act in hope as we push back the darkness of isolation and disconnection. Moreover, by creating we worship: we act out our imago dei, imitating the creator and making good out of his Good. | | | | | | | Subscribe to our award-winning quarterly worship journal and be able to read articles with this symbol:
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