Children will join their families when we celebrate communion on September 9. This “family communion” is a tradition that goes back quite a way at COS, and the worship committee has decided to revive the practice in conjunction with our current bi-monthly baptism schedule. The children will leave the service as usual, but will return [...]

The Worshiping Community
A number of people have asked me who those two new, young musicians are who have been at COS lately. Forgive me for not properly introducing to you our interns from Calvin’s worship and music program, Jordan Clegg and Melinda Campbell.
Melinda hails from Saginaw and is a senior environmental geology major who really [...]

Canticles
Astute observers will have noticed that in today’s liturgy we sang a song based on Isaiah 12:2-6 where we normally sing a lectionary Psalm.
The Psalms are the official songbook of the Bible and part of the weekly lectionary scripture, but they are not the only songs in the Bible. Non-Psalm biblical songs, called canticles, have [...]

Happy New Year!
Just as the civic calendar begins a new cycle on January 1, the liturgical calendar begins with the first Sunday in Advent. So happy new (liturgical) year! The liturgical calendar unfolds in two broad sweeps. The first half of the cycle (from Advent to Easter) follows the life of Christ and the second [...]

A COS Choir?
My understanding of the history of Church of the Servant is that the church was established in a time when choirs and pipe organ often took away the voice of the congregation. In order to encourage the “full and active participation” of those in the pews (er…seats), COS shied away from anything but [...]

Liturgy
I was raised in a Pentecostal church. As you can imagine, we were always suspicious of liturgical worship. To tell you the truth, I don’t know that I ever encountered the word liturgy. But if I had, I’m sure I would have considered it the “vain repetitions” of people so distant from God that they [...]