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Knowing Our Limits: Job's Wisdom on Worship

This session explored what the book of Job teaches about the meaning and spiritual significance of worship, and offered worshipers both theological insights and some evocative poetic images to guide their approach to worship.

January 1, 2007 | 61 min listen
Love Your Neighborhood: Thinking about Church Buildings and Congregations as Part of the Neighborhood

This session considered a church building as being part of, and contributing to, the neighborhood that surrounds it. We explored how a building connects to a neighborhood in terms of scale and style, helping to shape the public realm, and how threshold points operate between the church and the public.

January 1, 2007 | 58 min listen
Choosing Global Songs for Christian Worship in Multiethnic Settings

The 21st century is characterized by people moving and mixing all over the world, trying to fit into new communities that are varied and diverse. That reality is pushing the church to be multiethnic like the church of the 1st century. We'll explore how to plan worship that is inclusive, allowing everyone to feel welcome by including musical gifts from their culture and worship "back home" in their new church home.

January 1, 2007 | 15 min listen

Preaching as a Pastoral Care

While preaching is a craft and a skill to be carefully honed and developed, it is also a form of caring. Historically the preacher was called a "shepherd of souls," but cultural shifts have moved us away from this concept. This sectional examines the two-way street that exists in the integration of preaching and pastoral care. Good preaching provides pastoral care. Yet, at the same time good preaching is formed by pastoral care. Both sides of this balance will be examined.

January 1, 2007 | 59 min listen
Working with Your Local Media

The relationship between churches and the news media is too often one of mutual indifference or mistrust. This session explores practical ways of connecting with local reporters and maintaining healthy and beneficial relationships with the media.

January 1, 2007 | 51 min listen
Worship in Difficult Times

All congregations experience crises, transitions, and conflicts. Worship will be affected by these difficult times, and can be the place where healing begins and continues.

January 1, 2007 | 36 min listen

Culturally Diverse and Holistic Worship

Worship throughout scripture and history is culturally diverse, not monolithic, reflecting the diversity of God and his creation. True biblical worship is also holistic, involving the soul, the mind, and the body. This workshop explored the culturally diverse and holistic nature of worship, with reference especially to African American, Caribbean, and Hispanic worship.

January 1, 2007 | 19 min listen
What Is Excellence in Preaching?

What should preachers keep in mind in composing sermons? This session will hold up the rubrics "Biblical, Authentic, Contextual, and Life-Changing" as goals for preachers and as helpful categories for congregations to use in discussing sermons.

January 1, 2007 | 58 min listen

Connecting Disconnected Young People through Worship

This interactive seminar explored the cultural forces shaping teenagers' attitudes towards life as well as current research on teenage spirituality, in order to help think strategically about connecting young people with the Christian faith through worship.

January 1, 2007 | 38 min listen
Preaching as Teaching and Proclamation

As preachers we commonly assume that preaching and proclamation are synonyms. This workshop will introduce ways in which proclamation has distinct forms that are in contrast to those of teaching. By becoming familiar with them we can be more faithful to the gospel, more creative in our articulation of it, and more effective in making our sermons a joyous witness to the triune God.

January 1, 2007 | 52 min listen
Healthy Tensions in Corporate Worship

Throughout church history views of worship have tended toward polarization: Spirit or Word? Planned or spontaneous? Reverent or celebratory? Relevant or historically rooted? For God or for us?

January 1, 2007 | 65 min listen