Conference Rehash

Time for a little conference rehash! I am happy to report that I attended two very good conferences at Concordia Theological Seminary this past week: the Good Shepherd Institute, which focuses on pastoral care and sacred music, with its theme of “A Living Tradition and Something New,” and a Symposium for Hymn Writers and Translators with the theme, “Teach Us Jesus Christ to Know Aright.”

You won’t be surprised to hear me encourage you all to attend either and both. 🙂

It always does my heart good when I can be immersed in beautiful music. Even better when I can be in a beautiful place with beautiful things to look at as well! This year the Good Shepherd Institute coincided/ possibly co-hosting (?) an art show with Angels as its theme.   

The Good Shepherd Institute is a yearly occurrence, and thankfully next year, again, it will be after All Saints’! While I adore the hymn festival and choral vespers anchored around such a wonderful holiday, um, I also want to be at home with my own congregation for it! So, thankful that some calendar years allow us to attend without missing that holiday at home.

The hymn writers symposium has been happening about every three years, so, whether you’re a hymn writer at this point or not, you have time to start before the next one! 🙂 The schedule was full of a great many things, including an emphasis on clear Lutheran content, cultivating language arts (as both hymn writers, musicians, and translators), and developing awareness of high quality text & music.

There were two large chunks of time set aside for mentoring with the hymn writing “faculty,” as they were described. They were all easy to respect and speak with. I do think I’ll know better what to expect next time, though. 

If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them. 🙂 I know that hearing a conference rehash affects the degree I’m interested in future conferences. Oh, and let’s remember one other important conference: the Here I Write Lutheran writers’ conference in Sherman, IL, June 25-27th! Woo hoo!

PS. I’ll also share this because it’s cool: a Lutheran Pastor, Harri Huovinen, in Finland, has just released a third music CD! You can look at it www.aitotrio.com, although you’ll want to translate it. I’m not sure whether you can order it to be mailed to the States, but you can now listen to 2 songs from the album “Odotan sinua” on Spotify! (The Lutheran we’re supporting plays the drums, percussion, vibes, and some acoustic guitar, with, I believe, occasional background vocals.) Yay!

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