APLM webinars and conferences allow our members to interact with liturgical scholars and practitioners in real time. Upcoming Webinars can be found at the top of the home page. The first webinar was held on December 17th, 2013. All available recordings for past webinars and conferences can be found by scrolling down this page.
A Year of Creation: How nature’s seasons and Christian feasts cultivate creation consciousness
For the majority of people in our congregations, Sunday worship is the primary if only time in which they participate in faith formation. As communities committed to cherishing and protecting God’s creation, our Sunday worship throughout the year offers opportunities to highlight our baptismal promise to care for the earth and its many creatures. In this conference, participants explored the ways in which congregations can celebrate nature’s seasons and Christian feasts that orient us toward care for the earth. Here we take seriously what has often been overlooked in our history: the power of worship to form creation consciousness, the first step leading to action and advocacy.
The conference took place on Saturday, February 8, 2025, at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Watch the presentations by our featured speakers by clicking the buttons below:
Presentation by Benjamin Stewart
2023 and 2024 webinars are part of our Worship in a Time of Climate Crisis project, a year-long program made possible through a Vital Worship Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds from the Lilly Endowment Inc.
Worship in a Time of Climate Crisis Project Finale
May 2024
In this webinar, the congregations who participated in our year-long project exploring liturgical responses to the climate crisis give a description of the liturgies they created and report on what they learned.
Monastic Ecological Values for Contemporary Christians
April 2024
What can we learn about our relationship to nature by looking back to Jesus’s life and teaching and to the practices of Christians in earlier centuries? Rev. Samuel Torvend explores ecological issues during the time of Jesus and early monastic communities to illuminate issues related to our current climate crisis in his book Monastic Ecological Wisdom.
Converting to Childhood in an Age of Climate Crisis
March 2024
How do children call adults to a new way of living and praying in an age of climate crisis? Drawing on the gospel of Mark in which Jesus calls disciples to welcome children, Dr. Christy Lang Hearlson of Villanova University describes what Pope Francis has called “ecological conversion” in this webinar which took place on March 14, 2024. She also discusses how adults’ ecological conversion requires a turning to children and childhood and will ask us to imagine liturgical possibilities that honor both childhood and God’s gift of Earth.
Carrying our Grief: Learning to Lament for Creation
February 2024
Dr. Sylvia Keesmat, a biblical scholar, activist and farmer, suggested ways to incorporate lament for creation in the season of Lent.
The Mourning Lands: Our Symbolic World and Death
January 2024
Kimberly Hope Belcher explores the symbolic power of land in mourning the dead, including the victims of enslavement in the United States and Catholic saints and sinners. Then she suggests ways that congregational and community leaders can apply these practices to the tragedies of ecocatastrophe. Rev. Pam Werntz responds, describing a collaboration between Christian and Jewish communities to ritually address the eco-crisis.
Making Room for a Grieving God: Personal Prayer & Climate Crisis
December 2023
In this beautiful and calming reflection using scripture and images, Rev. Suzanne Guthrie explores the connections between mysticism, prayer, and creation. She also speaks about how she was able to find a stance of prayer that was not just “flailing around in climate panic,” and shares a beautiful midrash based on the story of Rachel and Leah.
Expanding Advent in a Time of Climate Crisis
November 2023
In this webinar, Rev. Dr. Bill Petersen gives a quick overview of the practice of expanding Advent to seven weeks and participants discuss how this practice might relate to climate crisis themes.
Creation-Crisis Preaching: An EcoPreacher Study for Advent
October 2023
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade guides participants in a reflection on a text for Advent (Year B, RCL), draws out ways that the voice of creation can be heard in the text, and suggests ways to incorporate the voice of creation in preaching biblical texts.
Triduum: Symbols, Resources & Sanity
February 2023
Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers explains how to generate enthusiasm while maintaining the calm by focusing on the symbols of the Triddum. Meyers is the Dean of Academic Affairs and Haynes-Hodges Professor of Liturgics as Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, CA.
Click here to watch Symbols, Resources & Sanity
Epiphany: Insights for preaching, liturgy, and church growth November 2022
Rev. Canon John Hill, Toronto, Canada and Rev. Venerable Dr. Jay Koyle, Algoma, Canada offer insights for preaching, liturgy and church growth related to the Feast of the Epiphany. AND We also hear from Rev. Philippe Carr-Jones about C+M+B: Every Home Plus Blessing Project.
Click here to watch Epiphany Insights Webinar
Growing Community Through Advent
September 2022
The Very Rev’d William H. Petersen, Emeritus Dean & Professor of Bexley Hall (Episcopal) Seminary, founder of the Advent Project Seminar in the North American Academy of Liturgy and the author of What Are We Waiting For? Re-Imagining Advent for Time to Come. He has also served parishes in Iowa, California, Wisconsin, Ohio, & New York.
Click here to watch the Advent Webinar
The Rev’d Dr. Elise Feyerherm, Coordinator of the Anglican/Episcopal Community of Learning at the Boston University School of Theology and adjunct instructor in Anglican Studies. Serving as Associate Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, MA. She received her M. Div. from Yale Divinity School and her Ph. D. in Theological Studies from Boston College. She has been active in the Advent Project since 2010 and is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy.
Easter: The Day of Fifty Days
March 2022
Dr. James Farwell, Prof. of Theology, VTS & Dr. Juan M.C. Oliver, Custodian of the BCP engaged in conversation about the season of Easter. Their reflections were followed by a conversation with two responders from parish settings: Rev. Emily Garcia, Church of Our Redeemer, Lexington MA. and Rev. Jennifer Zogg, Church of the Epiphany, Rumford, RI. Participants will then broke into facilitated small groups.
You Are What You Sing: Congregational Song
February 2014
Marilyn Haskel is a musician, teacher, and composer who values the Congregational voice in music-making. Her work at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York reflected that commitment.
Revisiting 1979: Themes and Hopes; Promises Fulfilled?
January 2014
The Rev. Canon Patrick Malloy was Professor of Liturgics in the H. Boone Porter chair at the General Theological Seminary in New York City at the time of this webinar. His presentation explored the themes and hopes of the 1979 Prayer Book, and the ways the Episcopal Church has (and hasn’t) lived up to the promise of that prayer book.
The Influence of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy on the Anglican Communion – 50 Years Later
December 2013
Paul F. Bradshaw and John F. Baldovin, S.J., two of the world’s leading liturgical scholars, led our first webinar.
Paul Bradshaw is a specialist in the early history of Christian liturgy and has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1985. He has written or edited over twenty books and has contributed more than one hundred articles or essays. For eighteen years he was chief editor of the international journal, Studia Liturgica, and he is also a former President both of Societas Liturgica and of the North American Academy of Liturgy. His book, The Search for the Origins of Christian Liturgy, has become a standard textbook. It has gone through two editions (New York: Oxford University Press 1992, 2002), and has been translated into French, Italian, and Japanese, with Polish and Russian translations forthcoming.
John Baldovin, a long time friend of APLM, is Professor of Historical and Liturgical Theology at Boston College. His many publications include The Urban Character of Christian Worship; The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (1987. Reprint 2002), Bread of Life, Cup of Salvation: Understanding the Mass (2003) and Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (2008). He is co-editor of Liturgical Press’s Commentary on the Order of Mass of the Roman Missal (2011).