Teaching Worship Leadership: Content and Context
Leading worship requires attending to the specifics of a worshiping congregation, and yet many classrooms tend toward the general. This workshop looked at a new multi-media resource documenting the life of one Chicago congregation and designed to be a kind of “flight simulator” for worship leaders. It explored teaching worship leadership with a dual emphasis on theological content and congregational context.
Bridging Cultures: Worship Renewal in Culturally Diverse Congregations
This panel of Worship Renewal Grant recipients --from First Christian Reformed Church, Hamilton, Ont.; Eliot Presbyterian, Lowell, Mass.; Rehoboth Christian Reformed Church, Rehoboth, N.M.; and Bridgeway Community Church, Haledon, N.J.-- told their stories of how they are bringing together worshipers of different cultures, experiences, and perspectives. They offered practical ideas of how visual art, music, and testimony can help people honor their heritage and grow in unity.
Symposium 2009 - The Glory of God and Faithful Worship
This session probed key scriptural texts on the theme of divine glory, reviewed contributions of influential theological texts, and explored the pastoral dimensions of weaving this luminous theme into everyday ministry back home.
Resources for Acknowledging Our Military Members in Worship
A set of resources for acknowledging military members in worship.
Autism and Your Church
If your church is larger than 150 people, statistics say that you have members who fall on the Autism Spectrum, including Asperger Syndrome.
Prayer in the Life of a Third Millennium Monastery: What We're Learning
This session featured stories, prayers, and insights from the first year of the Stockbridge Boiler Room, a simple Christian community that practices a daily rhythm of prayer, study, and celebration while caring actively for the poor and the lost.
Symposium 2009 - Standards for Excellence in Worship
Worship planners and leaders often speak of excellence in worship. What are these standards and who determines them?
Helping Children Understand the Psalms
The Psalms have been a great source of inspiration for generations of Christians but children seldom get the chance to interact with more than a handful of Psalms in a meaningful way. This workshop will explore how we can help children do this and why it matters.
Building a Healthy and Interdependent Church Community
The session presented several practical tools for building a church community that welcomes and embraces diversity in membership. Highlighting examples from churches including members with disabilities, this session offered ideas that allow people to see one another through God's eyes.
What the Psalms Have to Teach Us about Song Writing
Psalms allow us to express a whole range of emotions in powerful ways and at the same time, they tell us a lot about God. This workshop will examine how worship song writers can learn from the psalms as they work on their own craft.
Second Life: New Creations
In this hands-on workshop, participants delved into the limitless process of multi-colored mono-prints, working with various found objects that are considered to be dead or discarded and seeking to imbue/resurrect them with life through the creative process, thus making a "new creation" --2 Corinthians 5:17--.
Creating Scripts from the Bible
The Bible is a rich source of dramatic material for worship. From medieval tropes to contemporary sketches, this workshop surveyed the ways people have adapted scripture for performance and then formed groups to create original scripture plays.