Symposium thoughts

After three long days of Worship Symposium I'm back home and ready to dive into the new semester. But first things first – for the next month you can hear Debbie Chavez interview me on KMGI radio from Bellingham, Washington. If you go here and scroll down to January 23 you can hear me in segments 2-5.

That was Wednesday night, the night before Symposium, so it was great for me to be able to do that (it was actually still afternoon on the west coast) and then move on to thinking more about symposium. I presented my session twice to a nice sized group (about 150-170 total over the two days I think) and also go to play bass with the Alternative Worship group as they lead a group in worship on Friday evening. It was a good experience for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my daughter Bethany and my good friend Ron were both leaders for this service and so I got to see a bit more of the behind the scenes stuff that went on. I also got to know Doug Gay, from Scotland, a bit and hung out with Luke Hyder from Milwaukee and local musician/friend Greg Scheer . We lead with three of Doug's songs written specifically for this occasion. It was cool.

The worship services were stellar, as usual, with the service lead by Calvin's LoFT team perhaps being my favorite. Trig Johnson preached and did a wonderful job and my daughter Meredith played viola along with the team (which she does often) but also got to accompany Michael Card. She got to know Card and Calvin Seerveld a bit by assisting them in their workshop on lament. It was really good.

I also got to hear Scott Hozee, Jane Vann, Dallas Willard and Richard Ostling (who was interviewed very nicely by my friend Nathan Bierma.) Where else can one have breakfast with Calvin Seerveld, lunch with hymn writers Rae Whitney and Ed Doemland, and share a walk with Lester Ruth? Or run into Jorge Lockward and Jimmie Abbington and have a brief chat on your way to get coffee.

They also handed out my new books (see them here and here) to the people who came. You can see the picture of the books all stacked up and ready to be handed out. One exciting moment came as Laura and I sat down to lunch with three delightful people who we had not met before. I looked over to see a woman sitting alone at a table reading my book. Pretty cool.

I'm already excited about next year.