mcintyre re: worship

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Dan Wilt’s article “The Rise of the Worship Artisan” and his companion video teaching, strike several chords with me (no pun intended). I, too, have always “looked back” to what Christian worship has been historically and sought to understand ancient practices. Like Dan, I stood as a boy in my own Methodist congregation and sang the Doxology week after week, with the sense that the ritual was tapping into a depth that transcended the tumult of the current times. For those of us who matured as adults in the contemporary worship movement, emergent worship styles are not completely new and foreign. The use of ritual, candles, symbols and meditation were part of our childhood practice.

Yet, reclaiming even the ancient expressions we knew is not always natural. Contemporary worship training ran deep, particularly in two concepts… de-symbolize and de-ritualize the church. As the emerging culture asks for a return to that “mystery”, the contemporary worship leader asks, “Really? Are you sure?”

I also appreciated Dan’s thoughts on what has happened to the title, “worship leader”, particularly as it communicates that the leader is unstudied in higher education, and that he or she is responsible for not much more than good worship singing. (Dan believes neither to be true). Even though I have higher education degrees in music and religion, I may have mistakenly felt that deeper theological study and its incorporation were not welcome from me in the congregations I’ve served. It’s not my “place”. (This is a time when I’m discovering whether or not that was a correct perspective.) Regardless, I agree with Dan that the present environment requires worship artisans to take these pursuits and practices to a new level.