We Sing Our Faith: Intercultural music in the UCC

We Sing Our Faith: A conversation on the evolution of intercultural music in the United Church of Canada, Thursday September 19 2024, 11:30AM-1:30 PM Pacific, 12:30-2:30PM MDT/ CST, 1:30-3:30 CDT. Join us for some singing, a look at our past music, and a look forward to living more fully into expressing our intercultural hopes through song. As we turn 100 in less than a year, we’ll bring an intercultural approach to exploring together what our music could become. Resource people: Rev Dr OhWang Kwon, Rev Dr Lisa Waites, and Dr Becca Whitla.

Free; all welcome. Please invite others! Sponsored by the Western Intercultural Ministries Network. This is also a 100^th Anniversary event.  Keep scrolling for the draft agenda and bios.

Zoom link: Meeting ID: 848 4772 4451.      1 855 703 8985 Canada Toll-free

https://united-church.zoom.us/j/84847724451?pwd=TGLbW01HvlR4xk7bWDfWuKDO3fmpTB.1

Draft Schedule

Opening, Land Acknowledgement, introductions and session overview

Opening Worship: Rev. OhWang Kwon

The Hymnology of the United Church of Canada, within singing and samples.

Celebrating intercultural Music: Whose voices are missing? Cultural misappropriation concerns.|

Panel: Expectations for the future for intercultural music in our denomination. Loss of cultural dominance by mainstream congregation. Letting go to introduce music from other cultures in a welcoming way.

Questions

Closing Worship and Reflection – Kathy Yamashita

 About our presenters

Rev Dr OhWang Kwon is the minister of Stettler, Erskine and Big Valley United Churches in Alberta.  He received his Ph.D. in religion from Claremont Graduate University. Kwon is interested in looking for the relevance of theology to the United Church’s Vision for Becoming an Intercultural Church from a Korean theologian’s perspective. He co-authored the books Jesus and the Marginalized: Jesus Christ for Koreans in The United Church of Canada, and Hope, Peace, Unrest: The Holy Spirit in the Korean Community in The United Church of Canada with Dr. Donald Schweitzer.

Dr Becca Whitla is the professor of practical ministry and the Dr. Lydia E. Gruchy Chair in Pastoral Theology at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan where she teaches worship and liturgy, preaching, religious education, and practical theology. Her book Liberation, (De)Coloniality, and Liturgical Practices: Flipping the Song Bird was released in December, 2020 (Palgrave McMillan). From her White Euro-Canadian settler perspective, she examines ways to decolonize liturgical practices, especially community singing. She worked in Toronto for many years as a music director in both Anglican and United Churches (Church of the Holy Trinity, and Trinity St Paul’s United Church). She also co-directed Echo, a 70 voice women’s choir, and worked in the trade union movement developing leadership through choral singing.

Rev. Dr. Lisa Waites is an ordained minister with the United Church of Canada. She is a woman of faith with a deep passion for theology, music, liturgy, and ministry. She currently leads worship services as a pulpit supply minister, workshop facilitator, guest speaker, and musical worship leader for United Church congregations and ecumenical partners.

She’s lived out her vocational calling since the 1990’s among several congregations in Ontario and Alberta, including almost a decade of ecumenical campus ministry and military chaplaincy. Lisa earned her doctorate in Christian Worship Studies in 2016, and she is now delighted to be teaching worship arts with student ministers and experienced clergy alike as a Sessional Instructor at the Vancouver School of Theology in B.C. and, as of 2024, also at Huron University College in Ontario.

Lisa makes her home in Calgary with her husband Jeff, and their three young adult children, Josh, Hannah, and Simon. Lisa founded her company, Servant Song Music & Ministry in 1998. She has written and published hundreds of contemporary Christian hymns and service music pieces, providing new worship resources for children, families, congregations, and church choirs. Her compositions point people to God and they facilitate fresh expressions of liturgical worship. Lisa contributed ten of her contemporary hymns and prayers to the recent resource “A Liturgy for All Bodies,” which was published by Cyclical Press last spring; this book is available for purchase on Amazon, or directly from the author.