The Spirit's Tether: Liturgy as Teacher and Caregiver

That clergy must be teachers and pastors is no less true for the Church’s musicians. Even so, this Conference will explore how it is that our first work, our first joy–the liturgy–is itself the primary teacher and pastor of the people of God. Yes, liturgy is transcendent and iconic, and thus is beyond the pedantic and earthbound. But to experience such things that our rites of worship enable us to see, to touch, to hear, and to taste, and to smell should never fail to be the great teacher for what we must know about the Triune God and what our God wants us to know about ourselves. And because in Christian spirituality information is so often the gateway into transformation, what we learn about eternal truths is profoundly healing, balm for our hearts and souls.

It is our premise that the Church’s liturgy is a direct agency for the work of the Holy Spirit, that our worship is itself “the Spirit’s tether,” by which we are drawn into God’s dynamic and infinitely-layered purposes. When we are prepared and thoughtful enough to enter our worship trusting the wisdom and empathy of liturgy, the divine service will not let go of us! Given our authenticity in presenting ourselves before the One who makes all things new, liturgical worship will certainly be a rich experience, but also it can be one wild ride, a roller-coaster of cosmic conundrums and, when we arrive, peace, all the more enriched and exhilarated by the journey.

We will explore what makes this so, examining the fundamental principles and actions that lie beneath the “Order of Service.” Music will serve as our portal into the ethereal (what mere words simply cannot do), proving yet again that far from being an adornment of worship it is an essential catalyst into the depths of the Christian longings, realizations, and proclamations of that Kingdom within us and around us.