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Cultivating Community with Artists: An Interview with Ben Grace
Ben Grace is the Worship Director at Forefront Church in Brooklyn. He also works as a songwriter and performer in the broader New York City music community. Nicholas Zork sat down with Ben to discuss his approach to cultivating community and engaging artists in worship ministry.
Nicholas Zork: Many churches find it very difficult to engage artists in their community. Worship ministry would seem to afford space for artists to become involved and contribute. But so often that doesn't happen. Where's the disconnect?
Ben Grace:
Well, most of the artists I know are question askers. They want to know the "why" behind what we're doing. Sometimes we're not asking the right questions as a church, or we're afraid to ask the big questions. Also, for many churches worship has a very functional purpose: namely, to unite worshipers in praise of God. But I think we're often afraid of the other function of worship, which is to promote beauty and awe and wonder. So when an artist doesn't fit the typical mold of a worship leader - maybe they sing like Bob Dylan or they're hard to understand in some way - we think we haven't worshiped properly. But I would argue that if we're going to unite together in all our diversity, with worship leaders being who they are and being authentic, we need a slightly different way of looking at what worship is and how people connect with God.
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Latifah will be a featured presenter and performer at the 13th Annual
Andrews University Music & Worship Conference, coming up in just two weeks, February 18-20, 2016. She will
be leading worship and working with our songwriting track.
Join us to connect, collaborate, learn and worship together!
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Cada vez tenemos m
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sica que guarda un cierto equilibrio entre sus elementos y crea una atm
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sfera positiva nos ayuda a salir de la depresi
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n de la ansiedad, estimula la concentraci
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n, la memoria y entrena el cerebro hacia formas de pensamiento positivo, entre otros muchos beneficios.
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mo puede la m
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jame darte un ejemplo. Imag
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nate que te encierran injustamente en una prisi
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¿
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ltimo que pasar
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sica y pensamiento positivo en la Biblia.
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"Successful" Songwriting for Worship
I'm fortunate to be part of a church family that loves to sing. Even better, they enjoy learning new original songs that come out of our journey together as a church. Consequently, in addition to my other duties as a pastor of a local congregation, I am occasionally tasked with writing original worship music for us to sing together as a church family.
Writing a song that comes out of our shared experience and then leading a congregation in singing it is a uniquely rich and rewarding experience. That said, the songwriting process alone can often be overwhelming to the point that even seasoned songwriters will sit down to begin work, only to return their notebooks back on the shelf after a few frustrating and fruitless minutes. Writer's block can be a devastating place to live. With that in mind, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the worship songwriting process. You might be a struggling pastor or worship leader. Or you might not be musically inclined, but rather find yourself in a place where you are supporting or mentoring an aspiring musician in your congregation. In either case, I hope the following will be both helpful and motivating.
Editor's Note: Elia King will be facilitating the songwriting workshops
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Winning the Worship Wars (Part 2)
In the
first part of this series on winning the worship wars, we looked at the place of music in worship. Considering the strong relationship of Adventist history with music as well as the many myths about music and worship being propagated in our midst, I proposed that a first step in winning the worship wars is the "reductionist approach" to church music. This method encompasses at least two aspects: 1) church music should not be viewed as having "heavenly," mystical or supernatural qualities but, rather, as a product of the human experience; 2) as such, music should be viewed as a tool for human communication and not be given a "spiritual" role in worship.
I recognize that at first brush, this "reductionist" approach may seem to consider music as an unimportant element in worship. So in this Part 2, with the view of music's primary function as
language, we can now briefly look at
how music communicates in worship.
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