Summer School 2024
A Symphony of Praise in Word and Music

KEYNOTES

A SYMPHONY OF PRAISE: ALL ARE WELCOME?
Sue Price – Director of Pastoral Outreach, Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge

SEEING SCRIPTURE THROUGH SOUNDS AND COLOURS
Fleur Dorrell is Biblical Apostolate Manager, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales

LECTIONARY: PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE
Martin Foster, Director of the Liturgy Office, Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and, on Sunday mornings, Director of Music at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

THE WORSHIPPING COMMUNITY AT THE HEART OF MISSION
David McLoughlin, Emeritus Fellow in Christian Theology, Newman University, Birmingham.

WORKSHOPS

Sue Price
ALL ARE WELCOME
[Thursday am; Friday pm]
This workshop will consider ideas that help make people feel welcome within a church setting and liturgies.  We will be looking at the needs of different groups of people that come together in a church and what can be done to support access to the liturgy. This will be a practical workshop, looking at various examples of good practice, and coming up with some take away ideas to try out.

Fleur Dorrell
A FAITH FOR ALL SEASONS
[Thursday am; Thursday pm]
This workshop explores how we can be more creative and inclusive in celebrating the seasons in our parishes.  How can we make Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Creationtide and other times more dynamic?  What can we do differently? Who do we need to reach? What happens between the key feasts? Together we will get creative and share some new ideas to inspire and enrich our faith in all seasons.

David McLoughlin
THE DIDACHE AND MISION: HELP FROM THE PAST!
[Thursday pm; Friday am]
We’ll explore the Didache as the earliest Christian text on mission. Its nineteen pages, in direct clear and everyday language, tell us more about life in the early first century community than any single text of the New Testament! It was a guide showing how to prepare and receive new members into the Way of Jesus. All members of the community were expected to be willing and able to do this – 99% of the text is written in inclusive language! It expresses the core identity of an open, welcoming community, living, working, eating and worshipping together. It will provoke us to reflect on how we might model this sense of shared inclusive mission, and the life of prayer and worship that would serve it. It’s a reminder that things have been, and can, be different! As our basic text we’ll use Tom O’Loughlin’s excellent translation pp. 161-171 of his 2010 The Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians (London: SPCK).

Kathryn Turner
PRAYER: AN UNCEASING DIALOGUE OF LOVE WITH WORDS AND WITHOUT
[Thursday am; Friday pm]
Kathryn Turner, Freelance Writer, Workshop Leader, Member of the Bishops’ Conference Spirituality Committee
The title of the workshop comes from “Teach us to Pray: Prayer in Preparation for Jubilee 2025”and gives an opportunity to explore some of Pope Francis’ teaching on prayer. Pope Francis reminds us that “prayer is an intimate dialogue with the Creator, a dialogue that starts from the human heart and reaches the merciful “Heart” of God, that can transform our lives…”  He invites us to see prayer as the spiritual «breath of life» that, like our breathing, never ceases, not even while we sleep. He asserts that the life of prayer is not an alternative to the work and commitments to which we are called during the day, but rather something that accompanies every action of life, even in the moments when it is not explicit. How then, do we infuse our lives with prayer? What are the movements during the course of a day, for example, that help us to experience that unceasing dialogue of love between us and God? How do we play our part in the dialogue – with words and without – and open ourselves to God’s – in words and without them? It could be helpful – though by no means essential to have looked through Teach us to Pray: Living the Year of Prayer in Preparation for Jubilee 2025

Fraser Macdonald
RAISE YOUR VOICE
[Thursday am]
Fraser David Macdonald is a emerging composer and conductor, based in Edinburgh. His writings are predominantly for voices and instruments, and infuse history and heritage with contemporary settings and issues. As the assistant conductor of the Schola Cantorum at Edinburgh Jesuit Church, Fraser combines vocal and choral technique, to ensure the student singers are developing individually and that the choir continues to grow in excellence. With the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, his recent repertoire includes  Bach B-Minor Mass and Mendelssohn Elijah. This Workshop  will include: group vocal warm up and developmental exercises for choral improvement; repertoire from early music and the baroque, to romantic and contemporary compositions; exercises around harmonisation and improvisation; and exploring other types and styles of group singing, finishing in a warm down.

Adrian Porter sj
PSALMS AND THE NEW PSALTER
[Friday am; Friday pm]
An introduction to the psalms as prayers of praise, lament and petition; the challenges of translation and the changes expected in the new Lectionary for Advent 2024.  We will look at different ways of singing the psalms suited to different congregations and musical resources.

Christopher Walker
CHOIR REHEARSAL: WHERE WE ARE FORMED MUSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY
[Friday am; Friday pm]
The workshop will explore how we can make the best use of our time in rehearsal and create a unified focus for our music ministry.

Martin Foster
A GUIDE TO THE LECTIONARY
[Thursday pm; Friday am]
An opportunity to look at some of the details of the new lectionary and the process which developed the text.