Worship engages our deepest human needs and has the power to transform our lives. Join the Brothers of SSJE in exploring the signs and symbols at the heart of Christian worship.
This free 5-week offering encourages individuals and groups to explore the riches of our worship traditions, liturgy and sacraments, and the art and architecture of our worship spaces, revealing the full meaning of these signs, deepening our experience of Christian vocation and guiding us toward ongoing conversion.
Our ongoing collaboration with Lifelong Learning at VTS has produced deep facilitation materials to support those who plan to use Signs of Life in small groups or with their Sunday forum - resources below.
Watch an invitation from Br. James Koester >
Practices to go deeper
Everything that I do in the chapel is actually an act of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration to God, who’s gazing at me. And I’m returning that gaze – wanting to return that gaze every moment I have because I’m so in love with Jesus.
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Baptism is our birth into the church as a whole, and we enter these baptismal waters again when we physically enter the worship space. When I begin to enter the chapel and put my fingers in the holy water stoop, then make the sign of the cross, I have this experience of going through the veil. It’s an experience of entering into the baptismal waters of death and birth; saying that the preoccupations, worries, thoughts, and feelings that might be a distraction are dying in this entrance into God’s time, into the time of prayer and worship, and in this entrance into the Christian community.
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The Eucharist and the liturgy continue to be an ongoing invitation. Even when I think I’ve got it all figured out, there’s always more. I’ve been receiving communion now for thirteen years, and it’s never the same any day. I never walk away feeling fed in the same way. I always feel fed.
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We want our churches to be places of safety, places of welcome where people feel like they can be themselves. Places where they will be embraced just as they are, where they will be encouraged to become the person that they’re meant to be.
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We’re not only a gathered people, we’re also a sent people. Jesus says, “I send you into the world. Just as the Father sent me into the world, I’m sending you.” We need to be sent out from the church building itself – and from the church community itself – to have a wider rippling effect in the world.
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Explore Signs of Life with this reader on the signs and symbols of our common worship.
Signs of Life Lenten calendar.