"Beadles and big ideas: a conversation about formation"

Alex Pappas (MDiv’19), associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, Louisiana, and student Aiden Diaz, a Chapel beadle who serves on the Seminary’s Worship Committee, chat about learning and leading worship.

ALEX: Coming to Austin Seminary and doing the “Intro to Worship” class with [Professor] Jen Lord really built a foundation to understand why we do what we do. We also spent time considering, Why does that matter? Why do we do the Confession at the beginning versus at the end? That first part of the education was about getting the groundwork to build out and explore creativity.

Jen would tell us, “You have to know it in your bones,” so that class gave me three different pieces of liturgy that I just know I can do. I came into my [pastoral] residency with confidence; it affected my presence in worship. It makes a difference, say, in the Pardon to Confession, to be able to look around the congregation, speak it confidently, and not have the running script in your head of What am I gonna say next?

I also took the “Sunday and Sacraments” class with Jen, an elective where you get to practice baptism and communion. And that’s fun and also such a gift to be able to focus on the two sacraments of our Presbyterian denomination.

AIDEN: I also took the worship class and I’m considering auditing it again this spring, because I was part of the class that got sent online at the start of the pandemic before we really got heavily into doing our practicums. So I know how to do communion online ...

ALEX: [Professor] Eric [Wall]’s “Music in the Church” class is one of the most underrated classes offered at the Seminary. Everyone should take it! It is delightful. As someone with no music background—I can’t read music, I can look up hymns by theme, but even now in our worship meetings, I’m asking our music director, “Do you mind humming a bar?” But that class really helped build my comfort with how to use a hymnal, how to communicate with your music director, how to have a collaborative relationship instead of a top-down relationship.

AIDEN: I’m actually currently in the “Music in the Church” class and I agree with you—I wish that more of my classmates were taking it with us. I am a musician, but I don’t play often in churches anymore, so understanding how this kind of this partnership works has been really enlightening for me as well. I serve a church as their technology person so I get to sit in our roundtable for worship planning. My senior pastor tries to make it collaborative, but every now and again she does have a specific preference for the music. So I’m experiencing that as I hear Eric explaining it. So many things are making sense because I’m hearing Eric talk about how people navigate the conversations in that space.

ALEX: I took Eric's class the first semester of my senior year. The final for that class was to come up with some kind of church event that wasn’t a worship service but had worship elements to it. Basically he asked us, What is the soundtrack for this event? We had to use music from different places around the world, different time periods; we really had to dig into the hymnals, and Eric is so generous with his time and his ideas. That kind of got me started, and I actually ended up writing the words for the song for my senior service, and Eric helped me figure out the tune.

I also did a directed study about art and worship with Jen Lord, and that was a really wonderful experience incorporating my interest in pottery. She was so enthusiastic and I ended up making a communion set for the Seminary. It’s wonderful to have professors who recognize how your gifts can add to the worship experience and who are willing to help you develop those.

AIDEN: As a beadle and working with Eric on technology in the chapel, I appreciate that he always encourages me to remain in that creative space and kind of dream about how we can expand worship without losing worship.

ALEX: Right? Being in seminary, you can really try different things, different spaces—and space is such a cool aspect of worship! Having the freedom to try different things was just really fun, and Eric is so game to try things as long as you’re thoughtful about them. If you’re like, I don’t know, it’d just be cool to shoot off fireworks, he’s like, But why? Why the fireworks?

AIDEN: My main coursework in worship was limited because the pandemic took some of that away, but I feel my role as a chapel beadle has helped fill in those gaps. As beadles we work alongside Eric on every worship service to make sure that everything gets from point A to point B. For Tuesday worship we reach out to the professor who is preaching to make sure they have what they need. We start with the Scripture in that first meeting, and we kind of expand on what we’re hearing, throwing out ideas of what the liturgy could be, and that begins to blossom organically as a collaborative experience.

ALEX: That reminds me of the times after a service in my church people will say to me, Wow, this was so seamless, and I’m like, Yeah, because there were six people that had multiple meetings to try to figure things out!

AIDEN: Exactly! Beadles also serve on the Worship Committee where faculty and other students take the expansive view of worship for the entire semester. We field ideas from the community on what kind of worship services to integrate into our calendar.

ALEX: Working on worship services was really cool because you get that planning experience and learn all that goes into preparing for worship. I remember [Professor] Cindy [Rigby] initially coming in with this big idea for her service and then working with her as she focused it. That helped us figure out how the liturgy was going to go. How great to work with someone who’s such a gifted preacher. It was nice to learn the whole process: how she worked with us, how much give or take you can allow your liturgist, how to convey the idea without being too controlling and giving your liturgist space to write the liturgy that God is calling them to write within the context of what the Bible passages are.

Learning at Austin Seminary was truly a gift—to be with people who feel deeply called to share why worship and music matter. I’m really thankful that even after graduation these are relationships you can continue to cultivate and carry with you throughout your ministry.