Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy 2020

Exploring Contemporary and Alternative Worship Convener: Rev. Nelson Cowan, PhD, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in High Springs, FL, instructional faculty for The United Methodist Course of Study program at Candler School of Theology, Emory University Members in Attendance: Emily Andrews, David Bains, Susan Blain, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Nelson Cowan, Brenda Grauer, Swee Hong Lim, Jim Marriott, Haejung Park, Ed Phillips, Lester Ruth, Alydia Smith, Noel Snyder, Richard Vosko, Karen Westerfield Tucker, Nicholas Zork Visitors in Attendance: Chingyu Huang, Billy Kangas, Michael Lee, Nate Myrick, Saya Ojiri, Kat Olson, Jonathan Ottaway, Adam Perez, Diana Sanchez-Bushong, John Choi Seungkeun, Glenn Stallsmith, J. Terry Todd, Debbie Wong Description of Work: The Exploring Contemporary and Alternative Worship seminar had a vibrant series of paper presentations, facilitated conversations, and short communications. Our time began with a presentation from Taylor Burton Edwards on the topic of “Shame in the CCLI Top 100.” Burton-Edwards reported his findings from an in-depth study of the lyrical content related to “shame” across the 100 most reported songs among Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) users in the United States. Emily Snider Andrews presented on Bethel Church in Redding, California’s “worship-rooted lifestyle” and the implications of this “worship-rootedness” in forming Evangelical ethics.

Our next presenters moved our discussions to contemporary and alternative worship practices in east Asia. Swee Hong Lim’s paper examined Chinese contemporary praise and worship songs and the strong link between worship music practice in the country of origin and the diasporic faith community. Haejung Park’s paper and multimedia presentation showcased an experimental worship conference led by seminarians in South Korea.

We then concluded the day with a segment on the topic of intercultural worship, where Jim Marriott presented his paper, “Disrupting the Dichotomy: How Intercultural Music Changes the Contemporary/Traditional Conversation.” Moving from theory to practice, Alydia Smith led us in a conversation about the United Church of Canada’s intercultural worship resource, “Questioning Worship: Engaging All God’s People Worship.”