FOCUS ON OUR CHAPTERS
Thirty years of joy:
celebrating 30 years of worship arts in the Pacific Northwest
by Diane B. Walker
Photo: Erin Walker
n an area of over 109,000 square miles and an annual conference where the largest congregation is 1200 and the smallest church has 12, Jubilate! has created a worship arts community that reaches out to connect to local churches, districts and to the conference. We are diverse in personalities, ages, backgrounds, sizes of home churches and roles we take in church, but we share a sense of place and common perspectives that
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ways to encourage the arts in worship in the local church. Patterned after Choir School at Epworth Forest in Warsaw, IN, Jubilate! began as the seed for a conference-wide community and a broadly-based, internation- ally known program in the worship arts. It widened its community further when it became the Pacific Northwest Chapter of The Fellowship in 1994 and hosted “Shalom Pieces,” the Fellowship’s national convoca- tion in Tacoma, in 1995.
From the beginning, the desire for stimulating worship and theological integrity combined with a belief in the power of the arts in liturgy have guided the format and personnel for the yearly festival and retreat. The master class, the choir and the chap- laincy have formed the core for the Jubilate! community since the first festival was held in 1979.
The master class sets the theme for the
Above all – in whatever we do – laughter abounds.
bring us together to be inspired and renewed, then to go back out to serve.
How did this happen? What went into creating the entity known as Jubilate! that serves the Pacific Northwest today? Our 30 years of history and common experiences weave us together and have built the Jubilate! community.
Jubilate! originated in 1978 when the
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Worship Section of the Pacific Northwest Conference Board of Discipleship looked for
community. Most keynoters have been drawn from the conference, but recently inspira- tional presenters such as Dan Benedict, Robin K. Wallace, Jorge Lockward, Margie Brown, Rosalie Branigan and Dan Damon have enriched our communal experiences. Within a couple of years, a clear vision of Jubilate! evolved. “Instead of preparing worship for others, we began to see ourselves as choir and congregation and began prepar- ing each worship service for ourselves,” says Tom Richardson, one of the three Jubilate! founders.
The buoyant daily worship service has several goals: to provide a worshipful retreat experience for everyone, to demonstrate how
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010 • WORSHIP ARTS
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