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Calvin Worship Symposium Nears

January 3, 2014

The Calvin Symposium on Worship will be offering a wide range of presentations, performances and workshops that can be used by churches of any size or denomination to offer theologically rich and creative worship services in 2014.

Music and preaching out of the Book of Exodus will be a central theme of the event that takes place Jan. 30--Feb. 1 on the campus of Calvin College.

Each day begins and ends with worship occurring in both the Calvin Covenant Fine Arts Center and the Calvin chapel. A communion service will cap the three-day gathering.

The symposium program includes presentations by praise and jazz bands, a choir, hymn singers, an expert in Kenyan hip hop music, and liturgical dancers.

Similarly, there will be sermons as well as seminars discussing different dimensions of preaching, especially as it relates to the book of Exodus.

Presenters and participants will be coming in from all over the world to take part in the annual symposium, sponsored by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Calvin Theological Seminary’s Center for Excellence in Preaching.

There will be exhibitions and presentations by scholars, pastors, artists, and authors as well as workshops on prayer and youth ministry, and information on spiritual renewal for congregations and for individuals.

Planning worship in a digital age, singing the songs of the worldwide church, and learning to lead worship will also be topics.

One pastor will talk about trends in church planting, a retired missionary will discuss the biblical prints of an Oriental artist, and a theater professor will discuss the value of using stories to make the Bible come alive in worship.

Concurrent plenary sessions will be held on Friday and Saturday. The sessions will switch between the Fine Arts Center and the chapel so people can hear both.

Jeremy Begbie, professor at Duke University Divinity School, Durham, N.C., and founding director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, will present "The Mystery of Worship" on Friday morning and then again Saturday.

“Strengthening Gospel-Shaped Prayers of the People: A Spirit-Shaped Agenda for the Next Decade of Worship Ministry” is the topic of the other plenary address.

The speakers for this session will be Eric Sarwar, an ordained Presbyterian pastor from Pakistan, and founder and director of the Tehillim School of Church Music & Worship in Karachi, and Anne Zaki, who teaches at the Evangelical Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo, Egypt, and serves the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship on global initiatives.