Week of Renewal

Join us after Christmas at PLTS for a time of learning and renewal. Week of Renewal is now an integrative event*, with morning plenary sessions and afternoon workshops. The week begins Monday afternoon and ends Thursday with lunch. Each afternoon has two workshops in which all participants partake. Optional excursions in the Bay Area happen Thursday afternoon and Friday all-day.

2016: "Worship: Beyond Style"

January 11-14, 2016

Presenters: Susan Briehl, Jonathan Rundman, and Kyle Schiefelbein

This year’s theme is “Worship: Beyond Style.” Susan will lead a workshop on liturgical language, and Jonathan will lead a workshop on liturgical participation through music. Morning plenary sessions will bring these together with our diverse liturgical heritage, in which Kyle will facilitate a conversation among Susan, Jonathan and the participants. Each participant attends both workshops (the whole group is split in half, with each half attending one workshop and then switching to the other).

Workshop with Susan

Susan Briehl will lead a workshop on stewarding the words we use for worship, and the three aspects of this stewardship: Cherishing (receiving, recovering, and sometimes reforming the words that are our heritage, including knowing what words do), Curating (how to choose wisely from among the multiple resources available to us and where and when and how to use such texts), and Crafting (writing new texts or adapting other texts).

Workshop with Jonathan

Over the course of three days, spend time with songleader/composer Jonathan Rundman in an interactive discussion about worship and congregational participation. We’ll examine our personal histories as people-in-the-pews, explore our own creativity, focus on lots of practical application (technology, psychology, theology, repertoire), and crowdsource best practices for worship/music planning in our congregations. Fun! Joy! Harmony! Contemplation! Wondering! Friends!

Plenary Facilitated by Kyle

In the mornings, Kyle Schiefelbein facilitates a conversation among the two workshop leaders and participants about connecting liturgical language and participation with the larger Lutheran traditions that we do and will encounter. These interactive plenaries bring together the various themes throughout the week to look at worship's "deep meaning and purpose."

[*In the past, Week of Renewal has offered a menu of course choices. That approach to continuing and community education is now online through the Praxis program.]

Registration

Program costs $400, which includes tuition, the concert, and meals (4 breakfasts, 3 lunches, 2 dinners). Housing and the optional excursion are extra.

REGISTER

Schedule

Presenter Biographies

Susan Briehl

A PLTS alumna, is a Lutheran pastor rostered in the Indiana-Kentucky Synod (ELCA), called to serve the wider church and to work with the Valparaiso Project. She has as director of Holden Village, campus pastor at Pacific Lutheran University, and pastor of Our Saviour's Lutheran in Bellingham, WA and has taught parish worship and preaching at Wartburg Seminary. Her publications include On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life, a book for emerging adults edited with Dorothy Bass (Upper Room, 2010), Holden Prayer Around the Cross, with Tom Witt (Augsburg, 2009), contributions to Sundays and Seasons Preaching and several liturgical and hymn texts.

Jonathan Rundman

A Midwest-based songwriter, performer, and recording artist. His critically acclaimed songs have been highlighted in publications such as Billboard, The New York Times, The Christian Century, and The Lutheran, and have received radio airplay from coast to coast and in Europe. Jonathan’s songs have been used as programmatic theme music for regional and national Youth Gatherings. Dozens of congregations across the country use his Heartland Liturgy for their church services. In addition to being a leading voice in new Lutheran music, he was also a contributing author for the bestselling theology/comedy manual The Lutheran Handbook.

Dr. Kyle Schiefelbein

Coordinator of Online and Continuing Education at PLTS, where he also teaches Lutheran history, theology and worship. His dissertation analyzed the Healing rite inEvangelical Lutheran Worship through historical, theological and anthropological lenses. He has published articles on liturgy and theology in Dialog and Word and World, and has contributed worship materials to Sundays and Seasons and for ELCA churchwide assembly. Kyle is an active member of St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.