Meeting in Regina this summer for the first time since before the pandemic, the National Worship Conference will examine how church liturgy and worship practices can better reflect the diversity of modern congregations, says the co-chair of the event’s planning committee, Kate Berringer.
The conference, held jointly by the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), normally happens every three years. An online gathering was held in 2021, but the conference has not met in person since 2018. Because of this interruption, Berringer told the Journalin late April, it was unclear how many guests would be making their way to Regina July 18-21 to participate. Still, she confirmed as this article was being written that registration was open and guests had begun to trickle in.
This year’s conference, titled “The Stones Cry Out,” will feature guest speakers Michelle Nieviadomy, a Cree woman and assistant director of the Edmonton Healing Centre, a nonprofit which provides counseling and outreach services; Becca Whitla, a professor of practical ministry and pastoral theology at Saskatoon’s St. Andrew’s College who studies ways to decolonize liturgical practice; and the Rev. Chung Yan Lam, a Lutheran pastor at All Saints’ Anglican Church Westboro in the diocese of Ottawa with expertise in expressions of worship across cultures.
Berringer said she expected the subject matter of this year’s conference to be sensitive and controversial. The event’s website describes its purpose as exploring what it means to decolonize expressions of worship in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. Berringer says it’s about identifying the ways in which Anglicans and Lutherans from outside European-derived culture don’t see themselves reflected in the churches’ worship, and about finding ways to make it their own.
The word “decolonize” has so many disparate meanings to people according to their backgrounds and preconceived ideas, she says, that the conference may not get beyond negotiating a shared understanding of what the churches need to do to make themselves more inclusive. But even if that means having some difficult and uncomfortable conversations, she says it’s worth doing.
“I fully expect people to attend this conference and have pushback on everything from the title, to the description, to who we’ve included as far as workshop leaders,” she says. “We do expect people to be uncomfortable, probably. We’re providing prayer support, we’ve got chaplains ready … It’s human nature to feel defensive when the perception is ‘what you’re doing isn’t working, we’ve got to change it and make it better.’”
Berringer adds that acknowledging the limitations of worship practices and liturgy that were formed by and reflect a mostly European worldview doesn’t necessarily mean scrapping them all and starting over. Rather, she sees the conference as an opportunity to talk about how Anglicans and Lutherans can add to their traditional repertoires and create new opportunities to reflect a wider variety of cultures.
“From an African perspective, the thing I’ve heard is that inclusive worship would allow for more movement and expression of emotion,” she says. But attempts to integrate these elements into worship here have sometimes met with resistance. “Typically what some people have experienced is, ‘We don’t do that in North America,’” she says.
“What does it look like to build upon [existing liturgy] and also include people from other perspectives?”
Registration for the National Worship Conference is currently open through the event’s website, nationalworshipconference.org.
