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Worship leaders and Christian singers/songwriters are invited to a two-day conference this September in Winnipeg geared specifically for them.
"We are so excited about this, and it's been a long time coming," says Co-lead Pastor Richard Hale of Bethel Community Church in Winnipeg. "The time is now."
Hale and his wife, Krisjana, write worship songs of their own and have been involved in Christian music ministry for the past few decades.
"My wife and I were involved in Hear the Music ministries with Jon Buller. We did worship nights and conferences. When that came to an end, we were left thinking, How can we continue this at some level?"
That's when they launched ONE Worship Nights in Winnipeg in 2017 with monthly times of praise with an open invitation for all. This ran for two years before a three-year pause, before they started it up again.
"We've always had it in the back of our mind, and we had this dream of equipping the church in worship ministry. About six months ago, we thought we got to put some traction to this dream of ours; otherwise, it's never going to happen."
The Hales decided to call this two-day conference the Thrive Conference, taking place at Bethel Community Church from September 26-27.
"It's Friday night and all day Saturday, plus it includes a concert. We wanted to bring a lot of value to this. It's really geared towards songwriters, worship leaders, pastors, and people who work with tech in their church. Anyone within the worship arts ministry that do music."
During the conference, the lineup of singers and speakers will include the Hales, Christian artists originally from Manitoba now living in Tennessee, Jordan St. Cyr, as well as Love & the Outcome.
"There's going to be worship, keynote sessions, breakout sessions with practical knowledge, and people just developing their craft. So we can do what we do, better. We feel like we've been given a lot, so what are we going to do to pass that along to someone else? It's about community and what can we learn from each other."
Anyone interested in attending the Thrive Conference can register and find the detailed schedule here.