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.”

Saturday morning opened with a series of short communications from first-time visitors. Each presentation was roughly fifteen minutes long, followed by fifteen minutes of discussion. Glenn Stallsmith presented, “The Path to a Second Service: Mainline Decline, Church Growth, and Apostolic Leadership.” Adam Perez presented on “Worship Conferences in the 1980s,” offering a “family tree” of sorts to the seminar members. Nate Myrick led the seminar in discussing the topic of “Whiteness and Multicultural Worship.” Debbie Wong shared her research project, “Charismatic versus Contemporary: Praise and Worship in Singapore Methodism.”

We concluded our time of presentations with Billy Kangas’ research on “Unique Forms of Worship within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal,” which is a part of his dissertation project. Noel Snyder’s shared his paper, “Pairs with Hillsong: Musical Features of Brian Houston’s Preaching,” which is a part of his forthcoming book with Intervarsity Press Academic.

Other Work and Plans for the Future: During our business meeting, our seminar discussed the possibility of doing a joint session with another seminar. However, because our seminar has had a record number of proposed presentations, it would make it difficult to incorporate the work of another seminar at this time.

To support the burgeoning interest in this field of study, we created a new website for the work of our seminar (a private link solely shared with seminar members) where presentations are uploaded and feedback is solicited. Our site also features a paper proposal submission form for next year’s meeting.