Refreshing Winds 2005 explores worship

Some 135 pastors, musicians and worship leaders from a variety of church traditions spent Jan. 20–22 at the Canadian Mennonite University campus for Refreshing Winds 2005, a dynamic weekend conference on worship and music.

“Worship is at the heart of all our churches,” said event organizer and CMU professor Irma Fast Dueck. “We share this as the heart of our lives as congregations: the need to resource ourselves and our congregations and nurture our worshipping life.”

Thomas Troeger

The CMU-sponsored biennial conference was preceded by a pre-conference preaching workshop led by poet, preacher and liturgist Thomas Troeger of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Col. which attracted about 100 people.

Troeger, who also led the four plenary sessions of the weekend, has written widely in the areas of preaching, worship and hymnody. He joined composer and church musician Eleanor Daley and Winnipeg singer/songwriter Steve Bell as the resource team for a weekend of celebration and learning about worship and music.

Daley is the director of music at Fairlawn Heights United Church in Toronto and her compositions appear in many new hymnbooks. She led workshops that explored some of these works and the process of composition.

Winnipeg songwriter Steve Bell has recorded ten albums over the past 15 years, winning Junos for Romantics & Mystics and Simple Songs. Bell, who makes frequent use of the Psalms as lyrics, led a group in an afternoon with the Psalms as well as a songwriting workshop.

Irma Fast Dueck says she was gratified to see a Mennonite institution host a conversation on worship with persons from a number of denominational backgrounds. “Somehow, together there was a wholeness there that reflected the diversity,” she said.

The weekend also featured two public worship services. One featured Thomas Troeger leading worship with a musical homily by Steve Bell, and the other premiered the choral composition Four Canticles of Praise by Eleanor Daley based on text from Troeger, who provided the homily.

The biennial Refreshing Winds seminar is a continuation of a 30-year tradition of church music seminars that the Canadian Mennonite Bible College and MBBC/Concord College had cooperated in sponsoring. The 2003 conference featured John Bell of the Iona Community in Scotland, while the previous one was led by Robert Webber.

—CMU release