Summer Music Institute

You’re Invited to…a Praise Party!!

Drew Theological School Seventh Annual Summer Music Institute

July 26 – 27, 2012

Mark your calendars for this exciting two-day institute specially designed for church musicians and worship leaders!

• Registration
• Leadership
• Schedule of Events
  
• Off-Campus Accommodations

Keynote Speaker:
Mark Miller, Director of Music and Assistant Professor of Church Music, Drew Theological School

Co-Directors:
Mark Miller, Director of Music and Assistant Professor of Church Music, Drew Theological School
Rev. Tanya Linn Bennett, PhD., Director of the Chapel & Religious Life and University Chaplain, Drew Theological School

You’re Invited to…a Praise Party!!
What if our invitations to worship in our local church sounded like this one, inviting everyone to a praise party? Would people come expecting to sit quietly in their pews and sing softly out of hardbound hymnals and pray with hands folded and heads bowed. Or would they come ready to shout, laugh, dance, cry–and sing with mouths wide open and voices raised in a community roused by joyful choirs and worship leaders? This year’s Summer Music Institute will feature engaging and exciting techniques of song leading, liturgical design and aesthetics that renew our passion for worship. Worship that is focused on a Holy Spirit-filled, Justice-driven liturgy, Our hope is that the worship at SMI will create and model for its participants an intentionally diverse community passionately welcoming all people.

Plenary Sessions with Mark Miller:
“Spiritual Singing:  Rehearsing for Divine Encounter”
The SMI plenary sessions will focus on rekindling a passion for worship through congregational & choral singing, and emphasize the embodied experience. ‘Spiritual’ singing is to be present in the moment. We are not preparing for a performance so much as we are making ourselves available to be moved by the Spirit. In this way, every time we sing we are rehearsing for the experience of being touched by the Divine, by being swept up into something much larger than ourselves. Every rehearsal is a performance of this experience. Music, particularly sacred music, can exclude; only trained singers are allowed to join, choir members must be of a certain age or ability, or the theology communicated by the music (or musicians!) may connote judgment or alienation. For me, “Spiritual Singing” creates a space for people across all spectrums of ability, age, belief, ethnicity, cultures, and orientations to gather, create community, and make music that invites the Holy and allows authentic divine encounter.  We recognize in each other our common humanity, and together we transcend our brokenness to create something profoundly beautiful and joyful.

Questions?:
Please contact Nancy VanderVeen, Director of Theological Lifelong Learning, at nvanderveen@drew.edu or 973-408-3084.