The Liturgy Collective Gathering aims to offer a reprieve to the leaders responsible for filling the soundtracks of our services.
It’s easy to find songs and hymns on the theme of rest and stillness. There’s Anna L. Waring’s “My Heart Is Resting, O My God,” Kari Jobe’s “Rest,” and Fanny Crosby’s “Jesus Will Give You Rest,” which beckons us:
Will you come, will you come?
How He pleads with you now!
Fly to His loving breast;
And whatever your sin or your sorrow may be,
Jesus will give you rest.
Even with musical selections like these, it can be a challenge to bring rest itself into liturgy and corporate worship. And worship leaders, whose Sabbath Sundays are filled with the work of preparing and facilitating services, aren’t always good models of rest in worship.
Leaders at the second annual Liturgy Collective Gathering are exploring how to find rest together through liturgy, art, and community, a topic inspired in part by the sense of burnout that has plagued church staff during the pandemic.
Initially, Tim Nicholson, music director at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, envisioned the Liturgy Collective as a culture-renewal project as part of his participation in the Gotham Fellowship program at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He wanted to design a retreat or conference that would increase cooperation and fellowship between the worship directors at the 30-or-so PCA churches currently based in Nashville.
“That project fell on its face,” said Nicholson, who had hoped for a gathering in 2020. The pandemic abruptly put his plans on hold.
As gathering and travel became safer, he and fellow leaders were eager to come together for worship and encouragement after a difficult two years.
“Coming off of COVID-19, there was this need to get together,” …
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