This book includes thirty-three provocative essays on corporate worship, hymnody and psalmody, issues, and composers and composition. It explores scripture teaching on the role of music in the church. This volume exists because it contains ideas that every worshiper (pastor and layperson) and Christian musician (performer and academic) may benefit from reading, since it is entirely possible to live in the subculture of the evangelical church without encountering some of them. - Publisher.
Important centres of charity, hospitality and representation, the national churches of Rome were also major hubs of musical production. This collective work is the fruit of several years of largely unpublished research on the musical life of these institutions, considered for the first time as a whole. What it primarily brings to light is the common model which emerged from the interactions between the national churches, as well as between these and other Roman churches, in musical matters - eloquent example of a unifying cultural paradigm. The repertories used by these churches, the ceremonies and celebrations they orchestrated in the teatro del mondo which Rome constituted at the time, their role in the placing of musicians within the city's professional networks are just some of the themes explored in this work. The cultural exchanges between the national churches and the "nations" that they represented in the pontifical city form another important area of investigation: whether musical or devotional, connecting places of worship and private palaces or extending from one side of the Alps to the other, these exchanges reveal the permeability that characterised many national traditions. At the heart of this richly illustrated study are two fundamental lines of inquiry: the fi rst concerns the processes of identity construction developed by communities installed in foreign lands, the second line of inquiry is cultural hybridity. In pursuing these, we aim to further understanding of the dialectics of exchange at work in Rome during the modern period.
Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes--concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations--Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice--in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.
For many churches today, music has become one of the most important factors in attempting to reach unbelievers with the gospel. Writing from his own personal experience as a former worship leader, Dan Lucarini questions the use of contemporary music in the worship of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
In The Spirit of Praise, Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong bring together a multidisciplinary, scholarly exploration of music and worship in global pentecostal-charismatic Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Spirit of Praise contends that gaining a full understanding of this influential religious movement requires close listening to its songs and careful attention to its patterns of worship. The essays in this volume place ethnomusicological, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives into dialogue. By engaging with these disciplines and exploring themes of interconnection, interface, and identity within musical and ritual practices, the essays illuminate larger social processes such as globalization, sacralization, and secularization, as well as the role of religion in social and cultural change. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Peter Althouse, Will Boone, Mark Evans, Ryan R. Gladwin, Birgitta J. Johnson, Jean Ngoya Kidula, Miranda Klaver, Andrew Mall, Kimberly Jenkins Marshall, Andrew M. McCoy, Martijn Oosterbaan, Dave Perkins, Wen Reagan, Tanya Riches, Michael Webb, and Michael Wilkinson.
An intimate look at movie star Steve McQueen's reckless life of fast cars, women, and drugs all the way up to his dramatic life-change and terminal cancer diagnosis. Join Greg Laurie as he takes a cross-country drive in his 1968 Highland Green Ford Mustang 390 GT through the canyons of Malibu, the alleys of Hollywood, the wide and open roads of the Midwest, and the streets of New York as he traces the woolly geography of actor Steve McQueen's life, relationships, career, and spiritual journey. This iconic muscle car was the vehicle McQueen drove in his most raucous and enduring film, Bullitt. In the 1960s, McQueen was, according to box office receipts, the biggest movie star of his generation and one of the coolest men to ever walk the planet. Greg Laurie was a teen at the time and an ardent fan of "The King of Cool," first mesmerized by McQueen in 1963's The Great Escape. Like millions of cinema fans, Greg developed a lifelong fascination with the actor. Now he has a chance to tell McQueen's story. McQueen was a complex, contradictory man who lived the same way he drove his motorcycles and cars: fearlessly, ruthlessly, and at top speed. After a lifetime of fast cars, women, and drugs, McQueen took a surprising detour. In this book, Laurie thoughtfully interviews Steve McQueen's friends, co-stars, associates, widow, and pastor to tell of the dramatic life-change for the actor in the spring of 1979--six months before McQueen was diagnosed with terminal cancer. What were the critical steps that led McQueen to make such a life-altering decision? Perhaps more importantly, why is that part of his story so rarely told? This book answers these questions. Greg Laurie will follow the seeds of Christianity that were sown throughout McQueen's improbable life where a Light finally shone into the darkness of his troubled life. These seeds miraculously germinated, allowing McQueen to see that redemption through Jesus Christ is a lasting truth more glittering and real than any magic of the entertainment industry.
This book is about the culture of American Christianity and what it does to our understanding of God, self, and community as reflected in the way Christians worship.
Many scholars and church leaders believe that music and worship style are essential in stimulating diversity in congregations. Gerardo Marti draws on interviews with more than 170 congregational leaders and parishioners, as well as his experiences participating in worship services in a wide variety of Protestant, multiracial Southern Californian churches, to present this insightful study of the role of music in creating congregational diversity. Worship across the Racial Divide offers a surprising conclusion: that there is no single style of worship or music that determines the likelihood of achieving a multiracial church. Far more important are the complex of practices of the worshipping community in the production and absorption of music. Multiracial churches successfully diversify by stimulating unobtrusive means of interracial and interethnic relations; in fact, preparation for music apart from worship gatherings proves to be just as important as its performance during services. Marti shows that aside from and even in spite of the varying beliefs of attendees and church leaders, diversity happens because music and worship create practical spaces where cross-racial bonds are formed. This groundbreaking book sheds light on how race affects worship in multiracial churches. It will allow a new understanding of the dynamics of such churches, and provide crucial aid to church leaders for avoiding the pitfalls that inadvertently widen the racial divide.
