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
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Barna just released the results of a survey related to church architecture / worship space and millennials (18-29). This is the "prize demographic" for church leaders, so much money has been spent on programs and appearances designed to appeal to this group. The Barna Group worked with focus groups in Atlanta and Chicago as well as online surveys, and what they found was interesting. If you are one who follows trends in church matters, it's not surprising. However, it did help me see the cognitive dissonance among my younger peers that has been elusive. No survey is perfect. The fine print puts the margin of error at +/-5.2%. Plus, there's no guarantee that the millennials in your area are anything like those surveyed (even within margin of error). But hopefully you find this interesting - I struggled with how I would interpret these results (you can read how Barna's researchers interpreted it on their site). Frankly, none of them appeal to me. I get that #1 is too large, too much like a concert venue. I get that #3 and #4 are too small and too huh? #2, the most popular, isn't too big or too small, but it's also neither very traditional nor modern. I don't know what to do with it. My guess is that it's more about size than anything. These results make more sense. There's a strong awareness that young people don't want to worship in an auditorium or a gymnasium or a wedding chapel. They want a sacred space with clear Christian imagery. The appeal of #3 is clearly associated with the turn to a more Catholic iconography among the marginally churched (I don't want to call that trend "superstition" because it is such a pejorative term, but note that the more churched millennials are less likely to want to see Jesus still hanging on the cross).
*At least, not in the way people seem to want to use the term (including some Southern Baptists). I regularly hear people call the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a "denomination", including its "denominational leaders" (tongue-in-cheek), moreso at the local and state levels. Depending on how they are using the term, they might be right. If you just want to pull out the dictionary definition, denomination, n. 1. a name or designation, esp. one for a class of things then yes, you could call the Southern Baptist Convention a denomination. Likewise, if you are using the classic Weber church/sect typology (some interpreting it as "church" being an all-encompassing social monolith, "denomination" being a set of competing church-institutions on good terms with society, "sect" being more of a protest movement and less organized, and "cult" being more centered around an individual), you could also call the Southern Baptist Convention a denomination, though I think that would overplaying the intent of the classification and overselling the organization of the SBC (I still think we would be termed a "sect" even under that system as compared with denominations).
In my opinion, the real issue the relationship between a local church and a denomination. If we simply say that denominations are associations of local churches, then fine. But that's not the way I hear people use the term. Rather, I hear people speak of a church as a local chapter of a denomination, like a franchise or a chain. Do you see the difference? Our two options: A denomination is an association of local churches (fine) -OR- a church is a local chapter of a denomination (ergh). If you are using the term in the latter way, and I think many people are without necessarily realizing it, then you are using it inappropriately with Southern Baptists. A World of Chains and Franchises It's not hard to understand why people would use the term in this way. The truly independent store or restaurant doesn't have the influence it once did. Either it has been marginalized by a competing franchise (cf. Walmart) or it has been so successful that it has decided to reproduce itself (cf. McDonalds). Most of us live and operate in a culture dominated by a "parent company" in our workplace, where we eat, or where we shop. It's natural for us to think in these terms. In the case of a chain, a parent company assumes the risk of creating stores at new locations, staffing those stores, and maintaining central management for each store. In the case of a chain, a parent company offers a business model for purchase by individual investors who assume the risk of new locations and pay some sort of franchise fee. In the case of a chain, the parent company maintains "quality control" authority. In the case of a franchise, the parent company has "sold" that authority to the local franchise owner. Frankly, quite a few denominations operate according to the chain or franchise model, though they may have been doing it long before there were business chains or franchises. {Brief historical aside: both the chain and the franchise models started in the mid 1800s partly through observing the success of denominations in the United States. Over time, denominations have modified their practices to emulate the success of certain chains and franchises. There's nothing wrong with that. They're simply finding answers to questions the Bible doesn't address. My concern is that they perhaps shouldn't have been asking some of those questions to begin with, but more on that later.} |
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