Saturday, April 18  |  8:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.

8:30 a.m.     Coffee and Treats  |  Kirk Parlour 

9 a.m.          Session I:  The Subversive Potentials of Sung Text

10 a.m.        Break

10:30 a.m.   Session 2:  Correcting the Balance 
The song of the church is not a closed canon enshrined in a denominational hymnbook. It has to be constantly renewed as our awareness and understanding of God’s will and God’s world increases.

11:30 a.m. Discussion and Closing Remarks

Sunday, April 19

Rev. John Bell will join us in worship at 10 a.m. to preach and lead our Sunday Enrichment.

Sunday Enrichment: The Importance of the Imagination in Unlocking Holy Scripture
Assembly Room  |  11:15 a.m.
To take the Bible seriously, for many people, means to study it. That is often a cerebral pursuit. Perhaps there are other means by which the depths of divine truth may be discovered through music, hymns, and song. 

Reverend John L. Bell

John Bell is a preacher, hymn writer, composer, lecturer, and broadcaster, who spends much of the year traveling, mostly in the Americas and Europe. He is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland and a member of the Iona Community. During his studies in Theology, he became the first (and last) student Rector of the University of Glasgow. After a period in the Netherlands and two posts in church youth work, he became employed, first in youth work and then in the areas of music and worship, founding during that time, with Graham Maule, the Wild Goose Worship Group and the Wild Goose Resource Group.

He is a past convenor of the Church of Scotland’s Panel on Worship and the committee that produced the ground-breaking Church Hymnary 4. In 1999, he was honored by the Presbyterian Church of Canada and the Royal School of Church Music which bestowed on him a Fellowship. In 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow. In 2013, he was awarded the Community of Christ International Peace Award, and in 2018, presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Thomas Cranmer Award for Worship, and for his outstanding Christian witness, through hymn writing, broadcasting and social action.

John has produced many collections of liturgy, scripts, sermons and reflections, original hymns, and songs (some in collaboration with Graham) and three collections of songs of the World Church. These are published by Wild Goose Publications, the Iona Community’s publishing arm, in Scotland and by G.I.A. Publications (Chicago) in N. America. He lectures in theological colleges in Britain and U.S., but is primarily concerned with the renewal of congregational worship at grass roots level.