Worship Wars Roundtable at Regent May 19, 2009
Posted by yuling in Regent.1 comment so far
just attended a talk about “Worship Wars” at Regent with Marva Dawn, Ross Hastings, and Andrea Tisher (Regent’s music and worship coordinator).
The following are a few notes from the conversation:
What do we mean about worship wars
- usually, clash of musical styles, content, lyrics
- Purpose of worship, directed where, to whom – more for God’s ppl or those outside the church
Ross
- Felt he lived through the worship wars, and its passé
- Tried for a blended service, and had to deal with critics on both side
- Now, he has 3 worship services for both styles,
- Feels there’s a new ‘war’ today
- This is to get ppl back to the core liturgy from the ancients
- He is contextualizing worship, and not to think that is naieve
- If you don’t contextualize it, you create a subculture
- Worship is for God with an eye for mission
- Contextualize in terms of music style and taste, almost generationally
- To fail to do so is not responsible
- Remove as many barriers in the way we do church
- There was not a loss of generational unity
- Ppl of all ages attended all 3 services
Marva
- From ‘reaching out without dumbing down’
- Every worship service is contemporary because we’re doing it now
- Every worship is traditional because we’re worshipping God
- Musical styles is an idolatry
- To insist that you have your own style over God is idolatry
- From ‘a royal waste of time’
- Talking about the different musical styles, etc
- Shouldn’t make worship services utilitarian, as the primary means of evangelism
- It becomes a cop out for our personal evangelism
Marva on 3 services
- She works with a church that has 3 services
- Has a difficult time with the very contemporary service because there are not enough songs that follow the liturgical service
- The liturgical calendar should be a gift to the world
- Worship is not traditional and contemporary, it’s all contemporary
- Just use these labels to argue with each other
Ross
- Would say it can be idolatrous
- Would rather say worship is missional
- In current evangelical churches, there is lack of depth in the catholicity of our worship traditions
Marva
- From her third book argued that worship is based on the ancient Judaica
- Deeply rooted in the history of the OT
Ross
- What defines worship
- Eucharist – the centering core of worship
- Participation in triune God (missing from today)
- We protestants are Trinitarian in faith, but palegian in worship (through works)
- Worship should have contemplation and silence
Comment from crowd
- Some have responded with blended worship, or separate services
- But Regent goes a third way, and tries to draw from proper liturgy while properly contextual
Marva
- Just want to object to use of word ‘blended’
- Don’t want stuff blended into a bland puree
- But instead, each music would have its own integrity
- So every hymn is played like a song and it no longer has a hymnic majesty/lament
- Would like to use the music of the whole world, but let’s be faithful to it
- (Sven) Robert Webber uses the word ‘convergent’
- else you are colonist
Ross
- Perhaps the worship wars was needed to help the church grow
- Back to issue of newer songs lacking content with the cross, or the trinity
- But ex of Brian Doerkson, see his development, he wrote a song in his new album called the ‘triune God’
- The churches who are judged as ‘good’ is all about the pastor or the worship leader
- Church should be judged about the centrality of another person, Jesus, so that’s why eucharist should be central
- Reformers say ‘Word and Sacrament’
Andrea
- Has encountered contemporary songs that are bad, but also hymns that have bad theology
- The critique against repetition (7-11 songs, that sing 7 words 11 times), is not valid
- Ie. Bach, Handel, etc
Ross
- Biblical literacy is shown to be better in liturgical churches because it has more scripture read
Marva
- In mainline churches (which is described as dying), they read 4 parts of scripture every service
Andrea
- There is a hunger for more scripture being read, not just preached
Marva
- There is a need for hearing the scriptures read well. Need to train readers
Comment from the crowd
- There is also a liturgical illiteracy, ppl don’t understand the structure, so it gets old and stale
- Ppl don’t know the liturgical calendar so are even more confuse
- Is it right for buildling our services based on others outside the church
Ross
- It’s a complex issue
- Missional factor is part of it
- 1 Cor 14 – don’t just do whatever you want, some new person will come in and say you’re nuts
- we’re here to do worship with structure that ppl can come in and worship God
- reading a book that proposes protestant worship with catholic substance
- so you have worship that is both wide and deep
- concerned with saints of the past and what they said
Comment from crowd
- What does it mean to be seeker sensitive?
- Person attended an orthodox church, had a person sit down with her to explain it
- Sometimes we push it on the service, but shouldn’t we own up to it and do it ourselves
Marva
- One of problems of our vocab – “user friendly” churches
- Where is the locus of hospitality, not in the service, building, but in the people
- Missional emphasis, our congregation needs huge training
Andrea
- Liturgy is done at every service
- Perhaps it’s just a manner of the degree in formality and thoughtfulness
- In a worship course, the class said to worship means they are focused on Jesus
- Yet our worship services are places where it’s hard to focus on Jesus
- We haven’t defined what it means to focus on Jesus
- And we haven’t explained what God is doing, it’s all about me
Marva
- Recommend James Torrance – worship, community and the triune God
Born Digital – Introduction May 7, 2009
Posted by yuling in Reading, Technology.4 comments
I’m starting off my thesis research with a book that has a similar purpose, methodology, concern, and scope. If only I could’ve written my thesis before John Palfrey and Urs Gasser were able to publish this primer to the digital world. In any case, I’m grateful for their research, and I’ll be quoting A TON from Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.
for the rest go HERE.
My Thesis Proposal – Technologizing of Faith May 4, 2009
Posted by yuling in Regent.add a comment
I’m going to just put tidbits of my faith/tech blog from now on, with a link to the actual site. This blog will be more about my inner journey and other fun things.
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The official title of my thesis (so far) is The Technologizing of Faith: An Ethnographic Study of the Internet Practices of Christian University Students Evaluated in light of the work of Marshall McLuhan and Albert Borgmann.
Yes I know it’s not very catchy, but apparently for academic work, I need to be as detailed as possible, even if that means my thesis title is 4 lines long 
.
The following is my thesis proposal (minus footnotes and bibliography… which makes up 1/3 of the paper). The end result may differ dramatically from this original thesis proposal. I think it’ll be interesting to chronicle my journey of thesis writing and share the joys and challenges that goes with it.
Go HERE for the the full proposal.
A Stumbling Journey towards getting your Thesis Proposal Approved May 1, 2009
Posted by yuling in Journey, Regent.2 comments
This post is taken from my faith and tech blog:
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To clear the air, I have to praise God that my Thesis proposal was approved at the beginning of April.
Now that I’ve finished my first school term at Regent and have some time off before the summer term begins, I have a few thoughts about my journey in getting my thesis proposal approved.
Starting with a Good Idea
Way back when I started thinking about pursuing a ThM at Regent, I already had a general problem that I wanted to research. From my background as a campus staff worker, I wanted to know how technology (specifically Internet related technology) affects University students and I wanted to research this question by means of ethnographic research. I submitted a letter of intent to Regent, outlining the basic argument to my potential thesis (which is similar to what I wrote in this post, HERE), got accepted, and then tried to come up with a definite thesis idea.
Reading for Ideas
One of my first courses at Regent was Christianity and Modern Technology taught by Craig M. Gay. The assigned readings for the class (Postman’s Technopoly and Guardini’s Letters from Lake Como) were helpful in getting me thinking about how technology shapes society. Our class also had a reader with various articles/chapters from different authors, thinkers, scholars who have varying viewpoints about technology. Craig also included a good bibliography that highlighted many other good books about technology.
What I’m getting at is that early on in thesis research (even before settling on a specific topic), you have to read widely and maybe some kind ‘o wonderful will emerge out of the readings.
Getting Supervision
I can’t stress how crucial it is in having a good supervisor for your thesis. At the beginning of the term, I approached Craig to ask for help about the entire thesis writing process. Since he was the person overseeing the ThM students, he answered a lot of my questions. Also, because his interests are in the area of technology, he became my supervisor.
Throughout the term, I met with him another 3-4 times and we hashed out a preliminary timeline for my thesis. We identified certain milestones (ie. getting research done, finalizing specific topic for thesis, and submitting my thesis proposal).
Doing School and Research at the Same Time
Having to attend classes and churning out assignments was quite challenging in the Regent environment. Having to do this while I’m working on a thesis proposal was barely manageable… but I got it done (by living in the library). I met up with Prof John Stackhouse early on in the term (I’m in his epistemology class) and he suggested that I treat my thesis work as another class – setting aside proper time for assigned readings and writing. That was great advice and that’s the way I was able to piece together my vague notions about technology and faith and begin to write down something coherent by way of a thesis.
If I were to discern the time I spent on my thesis proposal, and compare it to my classes, I would guess that my thesis proposal would be the same amount of time as two master level classes.
Overcoming Hurdles
Perhaps the biggest hurdle that I found out halfway through my term at Regent was that I only had a few months to submit a thesis proposal. Because I began my schooling in January, I had assumed I could submit a proposal sometime in the summer, and work on my research the other half of the year. Which leads me to one important concept for thesis writing.
NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING.
Apparently, the last submission date was end of April, so really I only had less than 2 months to write a thesis proposal. Then, I find out later that this date was when a committee would review my thesis. Instead, I had to submit my thesis by early April. So in total, I had less than 3 weeks to submit my thesis proposal.
Imagine my shock when I was not notified by Regent about this bizarre timeline, my thesis supervisor was also surprised by the dates, and here am I wondering how can I do this under the gun while having other final essays and exams to complete.
I just plugged in my headphones, listened to music, and started to write. I will definitely be more proactive with my work in the future, perhaps even pestering professors ad nauseam.
Oh yeah, I also begged the head of the thesis review committee (Hans Boersma) to give me an extension for my thesis (might as well ask, right?). Thankfully, he gave me a weekend extension.
The Benefits of Good Supervision
After I told Craig about the tight deadline, he offered to help out anyway he could. I gave him a brief outline of my first attempt at a thesis (without even having a solid thesis topic yet), and he helped guide my thinking.
Meanwhile, I began the first draft of my thesis proposal and by the end of a few days, I submitted my first attempt to Craig. Since I was in two of Craig’s classes, I knew how little time he had for me – yet, he was able to quickly edit my draft and offer a few suggestions of his own. We did quite a few of this back and forth via email – I submitted something, Craig edited and offered a few comments, then I would submit another draft. In the end, I think I submitted 1 outline and 4 drafts to Craig before officially submitting my thesis proposal to the committee.
Daring to be Unique
One of the things Craig told me early on was that my thesis proposal was pretty unique. Due to my ethnographic research component, he wasn’t sure if my thesis proposal would be approved. In fact, during the editing stage, he removed many of my ethnographic research remarks. I’m guessing it was in order to put more emphasis on the traditional scholarly research by highlighting the arguments that I would assert after studying many books.
In spite of this warning, I felt I wanted to include this crucial component. In true interdisciplinary style, I wanted to write a thesis that combines good scholarship and qualitative study and see if the result would be a fruitful dialogue. I wanted something that was theologically informed but conveyed with the words and ideas of students.
Ultimately, everything worked out. I received the wonderful news from the committee that they approved my thesis. So right now, I’m beginning to chronicle what I’ll be reading, my thoughts on various authors, and perhaps even start interviewing campus staff workers and students for my ethnographic research. In the meantime, please pray for me as this is quite a long and stumbling journeys towards getting my thesis finished within a year.
