Practicums

ILS registration now includes two 90-minute practicum sessions in lieu of the pre-conference seminars and includes your attendance for the Awards Dinner (formerly the ILS banquet), which will take place on Monday, April 28 at 6:30 p.m. 

There is no additional fee required for these events.

All practicums will be presented twice:

• Practicum Session I on Tuesday, April 29 at 2 p.m.
• Practicum Session II on Wednesday, April 30 at 8:30 a.m.

What’s your favorite style of worship? Does your church do traditional or contemporary worship? Why don’t we sing any familiar hymns anymore? Why do we only sing contemporary songs from the 1990’s? As cringy as these questions might be, asking them can lead to a limited understanding of the essential role the assembly plays during liturgy. When lines are drawn or blurred between worship times and predictable styles, labels become unhelpful and impossible to expand, causing harmful division among the body of Christ. Let’s get a little cringy together and explore how to breathe new life into a tired dichotomy.

Speaker Bio:
Nate Crary has served as a church musician in the Twin Cities (MN) since 2011. He specializes in curating seasonal liturgies and composing songs that help connect what we do on Sunday mornings with our daily journey as followers of Christ in the world. Since graduating Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) in 2007 with degrees in music and art, Nate has served with ELCA Global Mission personnel, with leaders throughout the Saint Paul Area Synod, and with students at Lutheran Campus Ministry – Twin Cities. He also consults with Augsburg Fortress and Church Anew, providing worship-planning resources for the broader church.

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Death is personalized in contemporary Western societies, and this also affects the way people ritualize it. In the How do we listen to the occasional practitioner in liturgy and take their perspective seriously without succumbing to the perceived need to direct or correct them to our perspective? The approach of intercultural hermeneutics can provide a path to guide both our listening and our speaking in these moments of critical interaction. How might this approach bless our conversation partner? How might it bless our ministry with them?

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Weddings and funerals may have provided the first signs that our culture was entering what we now recognize as a secular age. For as long as many of us can remember, families have wanted their weddings and funerals held in church settings, but they have also wanted as little as possible said about God, Jesus, or the role of faith in living and dying. Nevertheless, weddings and funerals, whether of active members or occasional practitioners, and whether conducted in park gazebos or funeral homes, remain occasions for winsome, faithful hospitality, witness to the gospel, and a renewed welcome into the family of faith. Participants in this practicum will examine and discuss “best practices” in the ministries of marrying and burying. 

Speaker Bio:
Rev. Frederick Niedner is a Senior Research Professor in Theology at Valparaiso University. Prior to retirement, he taught primarily biblical studies in Valpo’s Department of Theology. He has also preached regularly in Valpo’s Chapel and in regional parishes. He writes for several publications that serve the ministry of preaching.

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Based on my own personal life experience, and deep, close examination of human nature, I believe that when a person is going through a crisis they become more awake to the world. I’m talking about the world we can see and the one that we can’t. You and I are familiar with this invisible world, but a lot of people are not. And that’s why we’re all here at this Institute; to talk about how to show it to the people who can’t see. I have a lot of creative ideas about this and I’m excited to share them.

Speaker Bio:
April Parviz is an interdisciplinary artist working for Intersect Arts Center and Holy Cross Lutheran Church in St. Louis, MO. Intersect is a nonprofit opened by the church as a space to love its neighbors. The space gives lots of exercise deeply loving occasional practitioners who have secular backgrounds or perhaps very deeply-rooted church hurt. Many people they interact with at Intersect have never come into the church. But that’s not the end goal. Instead, their HOPE is that the seeds of Christ’s love that they plant at Intersect will one day grow.

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Increasingly, people are finding partnerships across lines of culture and religion. How do we build ceremonies that honor everyone involved (including you as the officiant)? This workshop will not only explore the how of interfaith ceremonies, but also the what — as in, what exactly is happening when people of different backgrounds with different relationships to the idea of marriage say “I do.”

Speaker Bio:
Steven Philp is the Associate Rabbi of Mishkan, a spiritual community in Chicago reclaiming Judaism’s transformative essence. Steven was ordained in 2019 by the Jewish Theological Seminary. He also received his M.St. in Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford, and his M.Div./M.S.W. from the University of Chicago. He currently serves on the board of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, is a fellow with the Chicago Commons Project, and is part of the inaugural class of the Interfaith Leadership Network with the Interfaith Alliance. Steven lives with his partner, Carter, and their cat, Miso.

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Increasingly, people are finding partnerships across lines of culture and religion. How do we build ceremonies that Ministers are accustomed to the pastoral role in the time approaching death, the rites and rituals of funerals, and care for the grieving. But much of our pastoral work amid death and dying has ignored the most palpable and embodied reality of death: the dead body. This practicum will center the corpse as a matter of theological significance as well as pastoral and liturgical praxis, looking at the rise of the home funeral movement and the movement toward green or natural burial, along with the many ways the dead body invites our ritual response.

Speaker Bio:
The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Prior to Luther, he served as pastor to Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA, and as a chaplain at both Harvard and MIT. He has published several books including, most recently, Spiritual Care First Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community (Fortress, 2025), and Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending the Dead (Fortress, 2023). He is also a leading voice in LGBTQIA+ spiritual care, writing and teaching on the subject frequently. 

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You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

—Deuteronomy 10:19

The occasional participant in our midst is likely not like the occasional “C&E Christian” participant of days gone by. How do Christian liturgical assemblies respond to the Biblical imperative to love and embrace, even when – especially when – planning for, providing hospitality for and responding to the wide array of backgrounds of today and tomorrow’s occasional participants. 

This practicum considers how to move beyond words of welcome, to being an assembly of welcome. Several examples from Saint Peter’s Church, an urban, bi-lingual and liturgically diverse congregation, will serve as a starting point. Together, we’ll explore and experiment some approaches and consider how to apply them in a variety of settings.

Speaker Bio:
Pastor Jared R. Stahler is interested in the practice of religion and contemporary society, focusing on marginalized voices. As Senior Pastor of Saint Peter’s Church, NYC, he works at the intersection of liturgy, the arts, and community action. He holds a Master of Divinity and a Diploma in Lutheran Studies from Yale, and a Bachelor of Music in Organ Performance from Oberlin. Pastor Stahler is active in various church organizations and has consulted for several secular nonprofits. He co-chairs A Partnership of Faith in NYC, a network of senior Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faith leaders.

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