Saturday, May 19, 2007

Worship Central

Well, I'm exhausted, but it was a really great day. I think I may have been the only American there, haha, because they asked who was there from overseas and only a handful of people raised their hands. :) So, I'm really too tired right now to do the subject justice, but I will give a full write up of everything tomorrow, including speakers notes and things like that.

The conference had a main session in the morning, then break for lunch, then workshops, a break, workshops repeated, another break, and then the final session went from 6:30-8:30. I got back to my flat around 9:30 because I had to take the tube back for quite a few stations and do some walking. The workshops that I chose to go to focused on vocal performance and developing one's technique so that one can focus better on leading in worship and less on how one sounds. It was a lot like a University Chorus class, actually, which was kind of fun.

The morning session speaker, Amy Ewing, spoke about the magnificence of Christ and His qualities as revealed through seven miracles in the book of John. The evening session speaker was Tim Hughes (surprise surprise :) not that I was complaining) and he spoke about worship and injustice. Very interesting.

I also got to know a really nice man named John who happened to sit next to me at the morning session and who had also come alone. He's a worship leader at a church near Windsor, but he lived in the States for some years as he works for Microsoft. Since we didn't really know anybody else there, we hung out for the day and had some really great discussions about worship, the church, USA vs UK, churches in both the US and the UK, politics (since I'm here for a politics class anyway, haha), college systems (he went to Cambridge), and fun things like that. It was really a blessing to have someone to talk to throughout the day and to have company during the lunch and other breaks. God knows what He's doing when He brings people places. :)

So, between doing a LOT of singing, talking, notetaking, walking, and listening, I'm really tired. It's only 10:00, but I think I might be headed to bed by 10:30 or 10:45. :-P Lame, I know. But there's no one here to entertain me (haha), we only get four channels on the television, and I don't have enough bandwidth to watch anything on my computer. I definitely don't have enough energy to be creative. :-P Perhaps I'll read a book. Anyway, there's my very brief report about the day. Sunny weather again! And we're supposed to have it tomorrow, too. Lovely.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Abri, it was great to meet and hang out with you on Saturday. It really was a brilliant day for me and I went home with an awful lot to think about. I think folks at church have been taken aback by my general enthusiasm this week!

I'm looking forward to seeing your full notes from Worship Central in the hope I might be able to skip writing up my own... I'm sure you're going to do a much better job than I will!

Anyway, hope we can keep in touch - I'm really enjoying reading your commentary on your visit to the UK; I defintely want to know what you think of Cambridge!

John

Abri said...

John, I don't know if you'll get a notice about this if I leave a comment, but I hope that you will. I lost the card you gave me with your information and I'd love to get back in contact if possible. Please leave me a comment if you get this! Thanks.