Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Christian Reformed Churches

Prior to the 1960s, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) practiced a form of worship drawn from its Reformation heritage, which entailed a calendar of observances distinct from the traditional Christian year. In the 1960s, liturgical renewal in the CRC coincided with the worship reforms of Vatican II, leading to the widespread recovery of the Christian year in the CRC. However, many congregations still worship in accordance with the traditional Reformed pattern. Other congregations that have adopted a praise-and-worship style recognize major Christian holidays but do not adhere to the church calendar.

It was not long ago that a church in the Christian Reformed tradition could be identified by its acts of worship. The Sunday morning service always included a reading of the Ten Commandments from either Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5. The congregation sang Psalms as well as hymns. Most worshipers referred to the pastoral prayer as “the long prayer” because it occupied nearly fifteen and sometimes even twenty minutes of the service. And the sermon at the first of the two Sunday services was almost always an explication of a Lord’s Day section of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Each year every congregation was expected to conduct a worship service on Christmas Day, Ascension Day, Thanksgiving Day, Old and New Year’s Days, and the synodically designated Prayer Day. These were unusual worship services in that they almost always took place on a weekday. But most awesome of all worship experiences were the quarterly observances of the Lord’s Supper. Each of these services required a preparatory message the week prior and an applicatory message at the service immediately following the sacrament.

In those days, members of the Christian Reformed churches knew little or nothing about the Christian year. The Advent season and the Advent wreath were foreign concepts, as were Epiphany and the season of Lent.

Today, there is so much variety of liturgical expression in Christian Reformed churches that it would be nearly impossible to recognize many of them as having their roots in the Swiss reformation. This changing attitude toward worship cannot be appreciated without some understanding of the concept of worship in the Reformed tradition.

The Reformation Legacy

The Reformed tradition has its origin in the Swiss cities of Zurich and Geneva. Although the Reformation leaders of these two cities, Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva, were of different temperaments and diverse opinions about worship, they were united in rejecting the worship patterns of the Roman Catholic church.

Instead of following Luther, who devoted his energy to revising the existing patterns of worship, Zwingli and Calvin made a clean break. They decided to begin anew by recovering the pattern of worship of the churches in the New Testament and post-New Testament periods prior to the Constantinian era.

Although Zwingli was an accomplished musician and had a great appreciation for the arts, he believed human artistic expressions belonged to the physical realm and were not intended to convey spiritual realities. According to Zwingli, the grace of God was conveyed only through the faithful proclamation of God’s Word. He, therefore, abandoned the Roman Catholic practice of honoring saints, removed all images from the worship space, rejected the prescribed order for worship, and discontinued the use of music in worship. Zwingli was convinced there was only one means of grace: the Word of God and its faithful proclamation. The Lord’s Supper was relegated to the status of being a memorial meal rather than a sacramental action on a par with the Word of God.

Calvin differed markedly from Zwingli in his understanding of worship. He was not nearly as suspicious of signs and symbols as was Zwingli. He recognized the Supper as an effective means of grace and believed that when the faithful gathered for worship, they should always have the opportunity to participate in both Word and sacrament. He also encouraged the singing of Psalms and other biblical texts in worship. However, he and Zwingli were agreed in their rejection of the Christian year as practiced by the Church of Rome in their day. They were also together in advocating biblical preaching which followed the lectio continua method.

Calvin’s wishes regarding the frequency of celebrating the Supper were not realized during his lifetime and are still not followed in most Reformed churches today. However, Christians in the Reformed tradition continue to place a strong emphasis on preaching and still attend worship to hear a “good” sermon.

Twentieth-Century Renewal Efforts

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was an attempt to initiate a new order of worship in Christian Reformed churches. A proposed liturgy was rejected, however, primarily for two reasons: the inclusion of absolution in the liturgy for the morning worship, and the recommendation that every congregation is required to follow the new liturgy.

The rejection of the proposed order left the churches without liturgical guidance. As a result, nearly every church in the denomination followed a very barren order of worship in which the sermon occupied the dominant position. The other acts of worship—the votum and salutation, the reading of the law, the singing of Psalms, the “long prayer,” and the offering—were usually referred to as “preliminaries” to the sermon.

In the mid-1960s, a new attempt at liturgical renewal began. Attention was centered primarily on revising the formularies used for the sacramental and ordination services. A concerted effort was made to create formularies that were somewhat shorter and a bit less didactic than the classic ones. This attempt at renewal had no relationship whatsoever to an observance of the Christian year.

Vatican II and Reformed Worship

While Reformed churches were revising their formularies, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman church was in the process of developing a new concept of worship rooted in the Christian year. Most leaders in the Reformed tradition had no idea at that time that the Christian year and its corresponding lectionary as formulated by Vatican II would one day have a significant influence on the way worship would be done in their churches.

Although there were no representatives from the Christian Reformed denomination involved in the Vatican II study of the liturgy, some of its congregations began to recognize the value of the work done by this commission. The later development of the Common Lectionary was also appealing and proved to be a helpful device for developing a weekly liturgy that celebrated the redemption acts of God on an annual basis.

Thus, by the mid-1980s, a growing number of Christian Reformed congregations were following the Christian year in their worship services. Many members of these churches are still learning about the symbolism of the colors that go with each of the seasons and may not be satisfied that their observance of Lent is as it should be. But they recognize a new depth of spirituality in their worship when the Christian year is observed.

A new quarterly called Reformed Worship is being published by CRC Publications. It color-codes the issues to correspond with the seasons of the Christian year. Each issue provides refreshing insights into worship and offers many helpful suggestions on how to create liturgies that follow the Christian year. Calvin Seminary now offers electives to students who wish to know more about the Christian year and the rationale behind the lectionary readings corresponding to the liturgical seasons.

Contemporary Diversity

Some Christian Reformed congregations adhere to the Christian year and follow the Common Lectionary throughout the entire year. Others observe the Christmas and Easter cycles and then depart from the suggested biblical readings of the lectionary during Ordinary Time. Many new congregations being planted by missionaries are following a more spontaneous style of worship sometimes called praise and worship. Even some of the long-established congregations are moving in this direction. These churches do observe the major Christian holidays but would not necessarily consider themselves adherents of the Christian year in their style of worship. The majority of churches in the Christian Reformed denomination continue with a more traditional style of Reformed worship.

A challenge now before this denomination is to determine whether it can remain a unified body while permitting considerable diversity in liturgical practice.