By Frank Michael McCormack

NEW ORLEANS -- A group of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary faculty members and graduates, along with worship leadership experts from across the Southeast, recently held a pair of worship conferences aimed at improving the quality of contemporary worship music in churches and laying a better theological foundation for worship.

The first conference, called “Unlimited,” was held Sept. 25 at North Metro First Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., while “The Rehearsal” took place Oct. 2 at the NOBTS main campus and Celebration Church in Metairie, La.

The conferences grew out of a series of conversations between NOBTS faculty and graduates over the past year regarding what could be done to help churches of all sorts achieve improved worship experiences each week. While the conferences targeted worship leaders from all types of music, both traditional and contemporary, they were especially geared toward the contemporary worship style, where training strategies are still in flux.

"Training the contemporary worship leader in an academic setting and the local church has a short history and little research is available to authenticate an efficient and effective approach," said Greg Woodward, NOBTS professor and chair of the seminary's church music ministries division. "We are excited about playing a role in practical training and establishing research to support our approach."

In the Atlanta area, NOBTS professor Michael Sharp and master of divinity graduate Jake Sumner met in early 2010 to discuss what could be done in that region.

Sumner, who coordinates student worship at Sugarloaf United Methodist Church in Duluth, Ga., had been offering his students Saturday seminars on occasion to help develop their musical knowhow. Sumner and Sharp began to explore how that one-day-training model could be offered on a larger scale.

“We just started praying about that to see how we could meet those needs in our metro area,” Sharp said.

About the same time, Woodward discussed a similar idea with some of the other music professors in New Orleans. Soon, Woodward and Sharp met to combine forces. Woodward said it didn’t take long for them to realize they were on to something.

“When he (Sharp) and I talked in January, it appeared almost immediately like this was something God was leading us to do,” Woodward said.

Learning from the experts

Both Unlimited and The Rehearsal teamed participants with experts in the field of worship leadership and the Christian music industry. In Atlanta, Rory Noland, director of Heart of the Artist Ministries, led the conference, while the Atlanta-based Brett Younker Band provided music. The conference also featured Nashville-based singer/songwriter James Tealy, and Lisa Jones, former member of the group Truth, among others.

The New Orleans conference featured NOBTS professors like Ed Steele and Darryl Ferrington and local musicians like Celebration Church staff members John Frady and Dwight Fitch.

The conferences opened with a worship set and introductory remarks from leaders. Participants then attended breakout sessions that covered topics like songwriting and leading band practices and offered instruction on specific instruments.

Woodward said the morning session in New Orleans offered specific tips for communicating with band members and taught techniques like "focused listening" for learning new contemporary songs from the original recordings. He stressed that it's crucial for band leaders, especially those involved with contemporary worship music, to know how to manage a practice and to know the basics of all the instruments in the band.

"We encouraged them to go to the class they didn't know much about," Woodward said. "A really good worship leader has to think like a producer in the contemporary Christian world."

Evan Payne, bassist for New Orleans' First Baptist Church's worship band, said the breakout sessions he helped lead were made up, for the most part, of young musicians still working to master the bass guitar. For them, Payne stressed the importance of memorizing music each week in order to better follow where the worship leader leads.

"That's the one thing I really emphasized," Payne said. "You've got to learn your music, because learning your music allows you to play around it and not be bound to it."

And at both conferences, NOBTS students were also given the opportunity to apply attendance at the conference to classwork for courses like “Planning and Leading Worship.”

Balancing the theological and practical

The two conferences offered a balance of theological instruction with practical music training, and their names represented both those emphases.

Sharp and Sumner said they took the name “Unlimited” from the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer which reads “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.”

“God has an unlimited kingdom, unlimited power and unlimited glory,” Sumner explained.

Unlimited kingdom carries the idea of “we’re a part of something much bigger than what we do on Sunday,” Sumner said. Unlimited power reminds the worship leader that it’s through God’s power that people worship God, and not through the finesse of the worship leader. Unlimited glory, then, reminds worship leaders that what they do is for God’s glory and not their own.

“It’s one little word, but we definitely pulled a lot of connections out of that,” Sumner said.

But excellent worship leading doesn’t end with a good theological foundation. The name “The Rehearsal” reminds worship leaders that they must also work to achieve musical excellence – both from themselves and their band members – in order to best lead others in worship.

Successes and future plans

Unlimited and The Rehearsal both proved to be successes – and not just numerically. While the Atlanta conference drew about 150 attendees and the one in New Orleans drew about 60, it was the diversity represented at both conferences that was most impressive.

Different nationalities, a variety of music styles and both young people and older adults, the diversity at the conferences really got to the heart of worship, Sumner said.

“It was a bigger picture of what the church really is,” Sumner said. “It was really neat to see so many people come together under the banner of worshiping God and leading others to do the same.”

Sharp, Sumner and Woodward all said plans are under way for follow up conferences and possibly even expanding to additional cities.

-30-