Music and Worship
Ever wondered how you can make songs in a more African style? Have you wanted to make songs that are closer to your heart and speak deep to your Christian faith? "A Time to Sing" gives you biblical guidelines for making and singing new songs based on scripture in your church.
Available from Fuller Seminary Bookstore. [more...]
This “tool chest” of materials brings together a compilation of documents and research tools, each describing an idea, activity or concept to enable the missionary or Christian worker to encourage some aspect of indigenous hymnody.
Book & CD-ROM, available from Ethnodoxology at $29.00. [more...]
June 3-8, 2013 (USA) and July 7-12, 2013 (UK)
Arts for a Better Future (ABF) is a one-week workshop that trains participants to spark local, Scripture-infused creativity that moves communities toward the kingdom of God.
The training content follows the 7-step process contained in Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities Reach Their Kingdom Goals (2013, William Carey Library). Participants join in a condensed application of this flexible model to an existing cultural context. They then develop plans to implement principles for encouraging Scripture engagement through the arts to a community in which they work.
ABF focuses on discovering all artistic forms of communication in a community, and then helping local Christians communicate Scripture in these forms by a process of critical contextualization. The workshop is drenched in warm, artistic personal interaction with other people and God. A wide range of people interested in increasing the penetration of Scripture into a group have benefited from ABF: missionaries with artistic gifts, cross-cultural ministry strategic planners, pastors, worship leaders, people interested in developing multicultural worship, artists of all kinds, and others.
Sponsored by the International Council of Ethnodoxologists, SIL International, Pioneer Bible Translators, and the World Arts program at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (and All Nations Christian College for the UK event).
Upcoming ABF workshops:
Dallas - June 3-8, 2013 (Registration ends May 15). See here for more details.
England - July 7-12, 2013 - See here for more details.
Videos:
England 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/AiMvideo6
Dallas 2012 - http://tinyurl.com/ABF2012video [more...]
Brian Schrag’s Creating Local Arts Together manual has both a stirring and exhilarating effect as the reader envisions the possibility of a community’s arts used for the purposes of God’s kingdom and, at the same time, is thorough and informative with respect to the research process involved in getting to know the arts and worldview of a community.
The manual contains seven sections which correspond to the seven steps of Creating Local Arts Together. They are:
- Meet a community and its arts
- Specify kingdom goals
- Select effects, content, genre, and events
- Analyze an event containing the chosen genre
- Spark creativity
- Improve new works
- Integrate and celebrate for continuity
Gunnhild Bremer has written a review of the book (downloadable below) which includes reasons why it is useful for Scripture Engagement practitioners. [more...]
EthnoDoxology is a journal devoted to the multifaceted music, arts, and worship of every tribe, tongue, and nation. Among the many people groups (ethnos) across the globe, God is raising up meaningful worship (doxology). Keep up with how God's Spirit is inspiring culturally appropriate worship throughout the world by reading this journal.
Music In World Cultures (MIWC) developed the graduate program in ethnomusicology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. This new degree—a Master of Arts in Worship Studies (Ethnomusicology)—is housed at Liberty’s Center for Worship
Ethnomusicology is the study of music, in particular worship, in the context of culture. This degree prepares musicians to serve as missionaries focused on establishing worship programs specific to the culture and people of a particular nation.
 | Monday 20 August - Friday 14 September, 2012 The Wycliffe Centre, Horsleys Green, High Wycombe, UK Sponsor: European Training Programme |
This course comprises a number of short intensive modules, the availability of which varies from year to year depending on instructors. The modules that may be offered are:
- Research Methods for Performing Arts
- Applied Cultural Arts
- Audio Techniques for Field Workers
- Analysis of Music (Non-western)
'Arts' will encompass music (primarily songs or chants with communicative text); musical instruments; drama/ theatre; dance; and oral arts (story telling, poetics and proverbs). Visual arts (painting, sculpture) will also be discussed.
These modules are designed to help students with prior training/experience in an aspect of creative arts to develop a comprehensive approach to faith-based ministry using music and/or arts. They can be taken by anyone interested in using EthnoArts with any agency. [more...]
 | GIAL, Dallas, Texas, USA Sponsor: Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics |
Courses on ethnomusicology and arts include:
- Audio and Video Techniques for Fieldworkers
- Research Methods for Performing Arts
- Expressive Form Analysis
- Song Transcription and Analysis
- Applied Arts
Heart Sounds International exists to help ignite culturally relevant and biblically appropriate worship, especially in places where Christ-followers are restricted, persecuted or unknown.
Heart Sounds International promotes worship predominantly in the non-western world by providing services in audio and video production, training and teaching, and song writing workshops.
HSI is an international division of Operation Mobilisation (OM), based at OM USA.
In seeking to free ourselves from the biases of a print-oriented culture, we need to consider, not only the kinds of media and discourse genre (e.g. narrative) that are most appropriate for oral cultures, but also the most effective ways to use those genres and media. What do non-readers like to see and hear? What do they enjoy listening to? Their choices will not necessarily be the same as those of print communicators. If the styles of presentation are ones which oral communicators prefer, then they will be more likely to listen, to understand, and to remember what they hear.
In this paper, Rick Brown argues that oral cultures have their own preferences for ways to communicate truth, and that these are often different from what print-oriented people prefer. In order to share the message most effectively, we need to find out what media and methods work best for them. In most cases this will include a multi-media approach with an emphasis on memorizing the Scriptures with the aid of high-quality recordings from skilled actors or voicers. [more...]