What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in WorshipThis is an article that I have published in the Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies. Introduction: Admitting a Need Worship leaders (of whatever title) might prefer this article to be titled, “What Worship Leaders Wish Their Pastors Knew.” That article gets to dance through all kinds of subjects from the perspective of a worship leader. It already exists, by the way, as a series of excellent and highly recommended blog posts by Bob Kauflin on his website, worshipmatters.com. This article approaches that general idea from the perspective of the needs of the local church. Churches need more from their pastors in worship than a decent working relationship with the so-named worship leaders. Churches need their pastors to understand the nature of their relationship with all the worship ministries—and the worship leaders need that as well. This relationship is vital to a healthy church but misunderstood by many and flatly abused by some. In their defense, many pastors have not been given a proper model for their role in worship, so they do what pastors always do in such situations—make it up as they go. Unfortunately, pastoral training often does not provide the tools necessary for pastors to evaluate their intuitive approach to their worship ministries. They develop an approach to their worship ministries from any number of sources, having a hard enough time deciding if it works to worry if it is right. Consider these analogies:
[Read the rest of this article at jbtsonline.org.]
What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in Worship
0 Comments
To the American church’s never-ending (and appropriate) obsession with worship renewal, Jamie Smith’s Cultural Liturgies series adds some interesting breadth and depth. Believing that the Christian faith is more than “a set of ideas, principles, claims and propositions that are known and believed,” Smith calls on church leaders to step beyond the categories of form and content to see worship as the thick, formative practices through which churches make and become disciples of Jesus Christ. Rather than isolate the intellect in Christian “disciple education,” Smith sees the whole experience of Christian worship as the necessary counter to the cultural liturgies of consumption and hedonism in which we are immersed every day. He uses words such as “formation” and “imagination” and “gut” and “native” and “second nature” and “habit” to encourage us to think beyond the didactic model of worship used in so many evangelical churches. He wants church leaders to approach Christian formation from a new perspective that “understands human persons as embodied actors rather than merely thinking things; prioritizes practices rather than ideas as the site of challenge and resistance; looks at cultural practices and institutions through the lens of worship or liturgy.” Those principles are best engaged in corporate worship.
Within my own, Baptist, context, “Worship has not traditionally been one of the strengths of Baptist local church practice.” Worse than this, “the denomination which gives its ministers maximum freedom in liturgical practices is the same denomination which offers minimum training in liturgical principles.” Indeed, there are some who would assume that Baptists have no liturgical principles let alone the ability to discourse about them, and there are many who think that Baptists will thus always be at a significant disadvantage in all discussions of the church’s worship. That’s serious. And frustrating. And I lived it for more than a decade of full-time music ministry. And that made me think of Robert Webber. |
AuthorIf I ever say something in here that doesn't make sense, please ask me to clarify. It always makes sense in my head, but that doesn't necessary mean anything to you . . . Categories
All
|