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.
