Worship Symposium (Calvin Institute)

I went to the Calvin Institute’s worship symposium last week as part of my continuing education this year. It was a very good event and I found much to think about and felt gratified about what we have going on at BMPCNC while also perceiving areas we can grow.  Here’s a very brief summary and review

Thursday

Morning worship Reggie Smith preaching, music by Hope College musicians (band with a young organist on the hall’s pipe organ added to the mix! Awesome! All hail Christ was probably my favorite song from the event)

Seminar: Wisdom for leading through changes in worship in diverse communities (experiences with Calvin Institute grants)

Seminar: Worship in times of tension (panel discussion)

Vesper Service: Were you there (Biblical drama led by students from Northwestern College under the direction of Jeff Barker (Donna Marie Todd, a Biblical story-teller who worships with us, knows Jeff.)

Evening worship: Mary Hulst (chaplain at Calvin College) preaching and students from Calvin College's LOFT team (the bass player was my hero for the hour, giving everything he had in his performance)

Friday

Morning worship: Frank A Thomas, preaching, Rawn Harbor and Michael Burkhardt accompanying

Plenary Session: Barbara J. Newman Universal design for worship: shaping worship for people of all abilities (a video from First Church Dyer, Indiana which we saw Thursday morning was used again in this session, it consists of various members of their congregation of all ages and abilities saying the Apostles' Creed: very moving)

Seminar: Psalms from the Soul: Rawn Harbor used the group to sing through brand new settings of the psalms to get an idea of how well they “worked” in real life. He also spoke about his experience writing psalm-settings within the context of the Roman Catholic church

Seminar: Ron and Debra Rienstra. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (drawing on various resources, old, new, global, indigenous to create authentic worship)

Seminar: Marking Time; dressing the church for the liturgical year (Deborah Sokolove, on the faculty of my alma mater, Westley Theological Seminary) I presented our model for the Advent Wreath at our FirstLight services in 2015 and 2014, which seemed well-received by the participants.

Vespers: Sandra McCracken and students from Hope College

Festival of Song and Scripture (gospel music from a variety of musicians and churches)

Saturday

Morning worship: Richard Mouw preaching musicians from East End Fellowship, Richmond, VA

Plenary session: L Gregory Jones on “traditioned innovation,” co-presented with an ad hoc jazz ensemble exploring vividly the notion of spontaneously generated expressions of faith and theology unique but grounded in our rich theological heritage

Seminar: Projection practices Becky Steel Halstead creative and tasteful methods for developing the Sunday worship projection

Seminar: From the inside out: guiding adolescents in worship leadership Eric Mathis (we do this a lot already and I wanted to see if we were doing it according to anyone else's model) I felt like what we do with youth leadership held its own in the critical light of “best practices”

Seminar: Revitalized worship spaces: architecture of renewal (we did nothing but look at pictures of some very creative spatial reconfigurations around the country) It was wonderful!

Closing Worship: Anne Zaki preaching. The end of the service and the blessing rite, in many languages and including a simple sending song from China was quite stirring.