Curation: the act of imagining and overseeing an exhibition or art experience. Worship Curation: the act of imagining and overseeing a worship experience. Worship curator Jonny Baker introduces this original approach to the design and sharing of worship. Rather than simply presiding over liturgy or leading a worship team, Baker and a new generation of leaders are negotiating between institutions and artists, crafting beauty for God out of whatever they’ve got on hand, helping people to make connections between their own lives and stories and the life and story of God. Curating Worship is presented in two parts. The first considers the kind of thinking, skills and disciplines involved in good curation. The second part features in-depth interviews that tease out the ideas, theories and processes behind the creative approaches of people who are curating worship experiences around the world.
The Art of Worship is about transitioning our understanding and practice of worship to one of design or curation. According to Mark Pierson, a pioneer in worship, worship needs to be seen as an art form rather than a linear task of filling in the gaps on an order of service. Many practical examples are used to illustrate ways in which worship in regular services as well as in specially designed spaces inside and outside the church building can be designed and delivered for spiritual formation and mission.
If we are willing to shift our approach to church, we will better connect with increasingly heterogeneous cultures. This shifting requires curation. Church leaders must learn to be curators! Churches in modernity were set up to facilitate a particular kind of experience with God. Church was its own (protected) culture. In the wake of postmodernity, facilitated by new forms of (digital) communication, we are entering a new epoch in the history of the church. Curators manage the tasks of connection, preservation, and transformation, in their care for cultural artifacts and communities. When someone serves as a curator, they make connections between different elements in the culture, preserving the best of cultural traditions, and promoting fresh ways of thinking and being in the world. What might this work of curation mean for us? In Curating Church, readers learn how curation can reorient and sharpen the ways and work of the church. Curation can inform how we connect with cultures beyond the church, preserve what is best in the rich history of Christian thought and expression, and nurture spaces where contemporary persons may be transformed by the gospel. This book helps readers to understand with new richness the church and the world, and it equips them to become active in making those connections—as curators—with and for others.
Worship is a dynamic, living encounter that should never be static. In the Church of England, although Common Worship provides texts for every season and occasion, the church constantly needs to refresh its worship, just as it reshapes its presence in local communities. In this comprehensive volume, a wide range of experienced liturgists, musicians and pastoral practitioners consider the principles that will determine the character and quality, as well as the content, of our worship in the future. It explores how new forms can meet new needs while remaining faithful to the church’s essential understanding of worship. Over twenty chapters consider how emerging forms of worship can be: - Relational, accessible and inclusive - Rooted in Scripture, the Creeds, and Spirit-filled - Sacramental, symbolic and multi-sensory - Transformative, pastoral and prophetic The contributors are all members of the Group for the Renewal of Worship, a broadly evangelical group within the Church of England and including senior clergy, musicians, theological college tutors in liturgy and former members of the Liturgical Commission.
Now is the time for the church to reclaim its role as a center of creativity. Among your members are artists and musicians whose gifts can enhance your worship, inform your theology and impact your community. Christian arts advocate J. Scott McElroy gives a comprehensive vision and manual for unleashing creativity in your congregation.
Black British Gospel Music is a dynamic and multifaceted musical practice, a diasporic river rooted in the experiences of Black British Christian communities. This book examines gospel music in Britain in both historical and contemporary perspectives, demonstrating the importance of this this vital genre to scholars across disciplines. Drawing on a plurality of voices, the book examines the diverse streams that contribute to and flow out of this significant genre. Gospel can be heard resonating within a diverse array of Christian worship spaces; as a form of community music-making in school halls; and as a foundation for ‘secular’ British popular music, including R&B, hip hop and grime.
This book employs the figure of curation—the selection, arrangement, and display of objects, concepts, and things—to explore the cultures of platform capitalism. Considering its rise in the global art world as an authorial, meaning-making activity and an organizational-entrepreneurial endeavour, it looks at curation as the interweaving of innovative concepts, elaborate storytelling, and trusted experts leaking out from galleries to hashtags. Its logic encompasses diverse spheres ranging from high-brow art and the fashion world to low-brow experience economies and economies of authenticity, from confidence cultures and relationship gurus to algorithmic spectacles. More than an economy, “curate and be curated” is a diffused imperative amidst the disorienting spread of information that digital platforms enable: What to post, what to wear, what to eat, what friends to have, what music to hear, what films to watch, what places to visit, what socks to choose, and what opinion to have about serious issues like climate change, military coups, AI, genetics, space colonization, and cryonics, or everyday issues like football, fashion, and diet. Drawing on critical platform theory, material culture, and multi-sited ethnography, the book examines curated worlds of coolness, authenticity, and inspiration, including the luxury fashion brands Vetements and Balenciaga, Airbnb food experiences, and the figure of the life coach. The book argues that the curatorial imperative endorses an aspirational class imaginary and the idea that handling self-narratives is a strategic means of socialization that can assist upward mobilities as well as neoliberal narratives of well-being, promotion, and success. This book will be of key interest to academics, researchers, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of cultural studies, media studies, communication studies, curating, contemporary art theory, critical management studies, and art history, as well as to more general readers interested in new media, platforms, and digital culture.
In the wake of the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks we, as an increasingly secular nation, were reminded that religion is, for good and bad, still significant in the modern world. Alongside this new awareness, religion reporters adopted the tools of so-called New Journalists, reporters of the 1960s and '70s like Truman Capote and Joan Didion who inserted themselves into the stories they covered while borrowing the narrative tool kit of fiction to avail themselves of a deeper truth. At the turn of the millennium, this personal, subjective, voice-driven New Religion Journalism was employed by young writers, willing to scrutinize questions of faith and doubt while taking God-talk seriously. Articles emerged from such journalists as Kelly Baker, Ann Neumann, Patrick Blanchfield, Jeff Kripal, and Meghan O'Gieblyn, characterized by their brash, innovative, daring, and stylistically sophisticated writing and an unprecedented willingness to detail their own interaction with faith (or their lack thereof). The God Beat brings together some of the finest and most representative samples of this emerging genre. By curating and presenting them as part of a meaningful trend, this compellingly edited collection helps us understand how we talk about God in public spaces--and why it matters--in a whole new way.
This book is designed for those who wish to encourage and empower through their leadership skills. Facilitation is about managing process - drawing people in, enabling them to contribute and holding the boundaries and values of a context to create a safe and productive place. Many ministry training courses do not teach facilitation skills per se and ministers are often left to learn on the job. Some become effective facilitators through reflection on their practice, others develop tacit skills. Many others flounder when it comes to facilitating effectively and participatively. In a culture where ministry roles increasingly involve community involvement and working with congregations who expect to participate in decision making and ministry, this skill set is one that is increasingly needed. This is particularly important in pioneer contexts where a more team-based approach is the norm.
