A Day in Rhode Island

This past Saturday I woke up WWWWAAAAAAAYYYYY too early for a Saturday, 5:45am to be exact.  Faith, the pastor of the local Covenant church, invited me to join her for a worship conference that a Covenant Church in Rhode Island was hosting.  Fortunately, Faith's husband Dan, who was also attending the conference, has his pilot's license and had his plane in Danbury.  So instead of having to leave at 5am we were able to leave a bit later and fly up.

The flight was gorgeous!  The sun was barely up when we left, there were a few clouds and the amount of trees in Connecticut was astounding.  It was amazing looking down from the sky at this fairly populated area, in many ways you would never know how many people lived there.  

The conference was on worship, especially using blended worship techniques and the arts and it consisted of three workshop sessions and an opening and closing worship.  I normally do not get to worship in a "contemporary" manner, and I enjoyed singing along with a band and learning new songs.  But the worships were blended, we sang Blessed Assurance to guitar, some songs were played on piano, they were wonderful worship services.

The Covenant church is much more based in scripture and word and less sacrament than the Lutheran Church (which I find interesting because most Lutheran churches read more scripture during worship than the average Covenant congregation, but basically the sermons are longer and communion not as frequent).  So there is a larger emphasis on music with multiple songs/hymns being played in a row with maybe a verse of the psalms being disbursed between songs.  

The three workshops I attended were on worship leadership, blended worship and the arts in worship.  I feel like the first two workshops just started the conversation for me in many ways.  I have been a worship leader for years now and have gone through worship wars, but one of the presenters put this conversation in a new light for me.  He basically said that worship is about finding ways to speak God's word to as many people as possible, and when you visit a 90 year old in the hospital you will bring with you a different set of prayers and music to comfort her than if you were visiting a 16 year old.  In worship, we need to find ways to help the 90 year old and the 16 year old better understand and speak to God.  

The last workshop on the arts was very inspirational about how to use art in worship to set the theme for worship.  It also made me realize that things that Bethlehem does, from decorating for Christmas and Easter to the origami doves on Pentecost is art and not just crafts and decorations.  I already have ideas about what to do for some festivals coming up this fall and winter.  

But my day in Rhode Island did not end there.  At the end of the conference, Bob met me at the church and we went to Newport for Newport Winefest.  Bob had won tickets when he entered a contest (though he didn't realize that he entered) by registering for The Day a newspaper in New London.  Unfortunately the tickets were for a Saturday night and I'm a little busy on Sunday mornings, so we were not able to enjoy everything at Winefest.  But we did enjoy some of the many wine, beer, liqueur, cheese, hummus, chips and other samples that were offered.  We also enjoyed walking around Newport for awhile before we drove home.  On our previous trip to Newport we spent more time near the big houses and not much in the more commercial area where Winefest was at.  

All in all, it was a very wonderful day in Rhode Island, but it was also and extremely LONG day.  I think I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep.