WorshipArts Jul Aug Sep 2023

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ach year, there is a migration into the heart of the mountains of North Carolina of church musicians, choir members, dancers, handbell ringers, visual artists, worship committee members, pastors, and more. Cutting across generations, children. youth, and adults all find a place to explore and grow at The Fellowship’s Music & Worship Arts Week, as they practice their particular passions in worship

arts with others. New relationships with people and with nature are formed, others are renewed. In this time, set aside, the Spirit moves,

breaking through to our spirits in worship, rehearsal, and around the table, offering encouragement, new visions, and challenges. Next summer, we will set aside the week of June 24 - 28 as our time together at Lake Junaluska, as we encounter Jesus through our worship, our rehearsing, and, of course, our fellowship together.

More Than Continuing Education I first began attending Music & Worship Arts Week, often referred to as MWAW, in 1996, when I began working in my first (and only) United Methodist Church. I went with their expectation that it would help me as I sought to expand my denominational understanding and grow in my music ministry skills. Having been a child of conferences in a couple of other denominations, and having finished seminary with an M. Div. with a focus in music and worship, I was not a novice. In those early years, I came by myself, preferring not to give up my continuing education time to responsibility for others. A colleague, however, suggested that I could bring our youth choir singers without sacrificing my continuing education funds simply by working that expense into our music budget and using my continuing education for a different event. I was able to make that work, and thus I began to bring youth choir members with me to MWAW (along with a chaperone who accompanied us year after year and assumed “head” status!). These MWAW events worked on and with me in ways known and unknown, especially at that time. I regularly came away from conferences renewed and inspired. But at MWAW, we worship under a leader

ship team that is not only particularly gifted, but that has had a year to plan a week of services knowing that it will have a significantly higher percentage of participants who love to dance and sing than is found in most of our home churches. Through this daily worship, we are challenged in faith and practice. We join our hearts in lament and praise led by the collaborative efforts of leadership and participating attendees. A Seminal Moment I have cherished the opportunity to sing under master directors, who not only bring their choral skills, but also weave their faith and grace as we seek to live into the promise of their music. Those of us who are directors get precious little opportunity to sing. Besides learning from their modeling and teaching – besides learning from the perspective of our own singers – we are renewed as the text and music reach in and resonate with our spirits as we sing through phrases again and again and again. A seminal moment continues to burn brightly in my heart: I was in rehearsal one morning in the late 1990s, feeling overwhelmed and burned out. We were working on Robert Lau’s setting of “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart” when the words