St. Olaf Conference on Worship, Theology and the Arts

July 21 - 25, 2008

 

"Fling Wide The Gates"

 

Pastors, church musicians, lay leaders and volunteers from all denominations and any size congregation participate in CWTA. The theme "Fling Wide the Gates" calls us to examine in scripture and worship how we open wide the gifts of Christianity for others and for our own hearts.

It is a strange thing about humans, but true: open gates and open doors generally feel more welcoming than no gate at all. The absence of walls, boundaries, fences and gates gives no signal about welcome or unwelcome, while a gate, thrown open, says, "Come on in." The New Jerusalem of John's Apocalypse has 12 gates to the city -- a gracious, extravagant welcome. 

The 2008 CWTA will contemplate and celebrate open gates:

1. Daily worship, always a higlight of the conference, will serve as a gateway into the welcoming presence of Grace.
2. The gates of a beautifully renovated Boe Memorial Chapel will be thrown open for conference participants to enjoy, featuring the newly built Holtkamp pipe organ.
3. Thoughtful lectures, plenary addresses and seminars will be open gates to new understanding.
4. And through the lively mix of learning and worship, all will be called to a renewal of life in a covenant where love and justice work together to "Fling Wide the Gates."
   

Join us and let us think together about opening gates and hearts. Conference participants experience and apply the concepts introduced at the conference through conference sessions and worship services. These daily services refresh and inspire those who are leaders in their home congregations. The services use the lectionary for specific Sunday in the upcoming church year, serving as an inspiring model to use in participants' home churches.

As a community of learners, the conference faculty and the participants foster spiritual renewal and affirm vocation. Participants develop personal and professional networks to call upon for support, expertise and counsel.

Registration brochures will be mailed in early January 2008. If you have been a conference participant during the past six years, you will automatically be on the mailing list. To request a brochure, contact the Church Relations Office at the phone number on the left or e-mail the office. Online registration will begin in early January 2008.

As information on faculty members, topics and titles become available, this web site will be updated.

Worship services are open to the public in Boe Memorial Chapel: 1:30 p.m. on Monday; 8:15 a.m. on Tue., Wed. and Thurs; and 10:45 a.m. on Friday. Evening worship will at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday evening worship will be from 8:30-9 p.m. led by the Youth Choir and the Teen Choir in the Choir Connection program (see below). Worship services will be streamed lived at the St. Olaf College web site.

The organ recital on Wednesday, 8:30-9:00 p.m. will be in Boe Memorial Chapel and is open to the public.

The Choir Connection

July 21 - 25, 2008

Youth and teen singers, rising grades 4th through 12th, are invited to participate in the Choir Connection, a weeklong program of song, music education, Bible study and recreation. Christopher Aspaas is the director of the Teen Choir, and Elizabeth Shepley is the conductor of he Youth Choir.

A College of the Church

As a college of the church, St. Olaf seeks not only to develop its own students in mind, body and spirit, but also to support in vital ways the church at large in its mission of bearing witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Conference on Worship, Theology and the Arts grows out of this larger sense of the college’s mission, offering spiritual nurture and professional growth for persons engaged in congregational ministry, especially those who lead and enable worship. The conference provides a supportive forum for enhancing theological understanding and pastoral skills in worship, church music and the arts.

 

 

For information on earlier conferences, please visit this link.

 

 

Mary Albing

Tuesday and Wednesday

Mary Albing taught homiletics for two years at Luther Seminary. She has published a number of parish education materials for the ELCA and the book Called Into Ministry. She is a pastor of the ELCA, ordained for word and sacrament ministry in 1988. She has served parishes in eastern North Dakota and Minneapolis, and as a chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisory candidate at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. Mary currently serves Lutheran Church of Christ the Redeemer in southwest Minneapolis, a congregation devoted to worship and social justice. Visit her church web site at lccronpenn.org.

Randy Engle

Thursday and Friday

Randall Engle is the Pastor of the North Hills Christian Reformed Church of Troy, Michigan. After graduating from Calvin College and Seminary, he was the first-ever ordained minister of Music in the Christian Reformed Church, a position he held at the Calvary Christian Reformed Church of Bloomington, MN. After moving to Michigan he received a Ph.D. from Oxford where he researched the organ controversy in the Netherlands during the Reformation. His current project is a book entitled Sound Theology, an examination of protestant conceptions of sound, and how sound (instrumental, choral, spoken) could best be used, or not used, in worship. Engle is President-elect of the Choristers Guild. Visit his church web site at northhillscrc.org.