Bethel College in Kansas Looks at Role of Arts in Worship

BETHEL COLLEGE NEWS
By Melanie Zuercher

KANSAS – Bethel College's first major symposium in a decade, “Think, Celebrate, Sing: Worship and the Arts,” brought to campus two nationally known resource people in the areas of church music and preaching: John Ferguson from St. Olaf College and Thomas Long from Emory University.“Music is an art form that unfolds over time,” Ferguson said. “No matter how creative the structure, the final question is: ‘Does it work?’” The visual arts were also part of the symposium, through the cut-paper banners created by members of Hope Mennonite Church in Wichita that hung in Memorial Hall for the hymn festival and in the work of Martha Becker Yoder, a Bethel graduate who spent 22 years working at the University of Iowa Museum of Art before accepting a call to pastor at West Union Mennonite Church, Parnell, Iowa. The four-year liberal arts college is affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. For more information, see http://www.bethelks.edu/.