Biblical Worship

Worship Pastors, Pastors, Students – Southern Seminary’s Division of Biblical Worship is offering a special worship conference June 17-19, Monday-Wednesday. 

Some of our speakers will be: 

Harold Best  – author of Music Through the Eyes of Faith and Unceasing Worship

Matt Boswell – songwriter and worship pastor, Providence Church, Frisco, TX

Michael Card – singer, songwriter and author, Nashville

Mike Cosper – worship pastor, Sojourn Community Church and author of Rhythms of Grace

Mike Harland  – director of LifeWay Worship, Nashville

Bob Kaulfin – author of Worship Matters, director of worship for Sovereign Grace Ministries

Don Whitney – Professor at Southern Seminary

Musical Guests – Norton Hall Band from Southern Seminary

See the Schedule, Reserve Lodging and Register for the conference here: http://events.sbts.edu/thinkworship/

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two prominent worship leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention will be joining the faculty of Southern Seminary this fall. The hiring of professors Joe Crider and Chuck Lewis is part of a major new step forward in the seminary's School of Church Ministries' vision of training worship pastors equipped for the challenges of the 21st century.

Crider comes to Southern from Liberty University, where he has served as professor of music and humanities and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Crider also has served as minister of music at the First Baptist Church of Roanoke, Va., since 2008. At Southern he will serve as professor of music and worship leadership.

Bryan Smith, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Roanoke, said of Crider, “Without a doubt, Joe Crider will make a significant contribution in leading SBTS to become one of the premier centers for training the next generation of worship leaders for the SBC. He has developed a greater understanding and commitment to authentic biblical worship among our people in the context of genuine Christian unity and love. With Joe Crider, people aren’t merely commodities for ministry but people are ministry. I believe his move to SBTS will have a wonderful impact on the worship ministries for future generations.”

Crider received the bachelor of music and the master of arts from Bowling Green State University and the doctor of arts from the University of Northern Colorado. 

Lewis has served in the worship ministry of First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, Fla., since 1993. Since 2004 he has taught at Palm Beach Atlantic (PBA) University in West Palm Beach, Fla. Lewis has degrees from Florida State University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Chuck is a faithful, godly, theologically grounded worship pastor who is extremely talented and extremely committed to Christ and His church,” said Jimmy Scroggins, lead pastor of First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, Fla. “Chuck will be greatly missed at First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, but I cannot think of a better man to train men for worship leadership in the local church.”

Lloyd Mims, dean of the School of Music and Fine Arts at Palm Beach Atlantic University, said of Lewis, “At PBA Chuck helped us develop the practicums for our new popular music track in worship leadership; these courses are “cutting edge” in terms of their ability to give students strong feedback in their ministry intern positions. The students in Chuck's Creative Worship Design course have benefitted immensely from his personal, positive interaction with them. As a former dean of Southern Seminary's School of Church Music and Worship, I take great delight in the fact that one of my faculty members is now assuming an important role in Southern Baptist church music education.”

Randy Stinson, dean of the School of Church Ministries, said he was elated to see two nationally renowned scholar-practitioners joining the faculty.   “Joe Crider and Chuck Lewis share our vision,” Stinson said. “They are able to train up those who will be not only accomplished musicians but pastors who lead worship.  “These men are respected in the scholarly guild, but they are also two of the most effective worship leaders in our denomination, who know what it is, week by week, to lead the people of God in worship,” Stinson said. “I could not be more thrilled to see these two men joining us in spending the next decades of their ministry training up the next generation of worship pastors.”

The School of Church Ministries was established in 2009, with a vision for training ministers in such areas as music, worship, discipleship and family ministry.

Professor Carl Stam passed away on Sunday, May 1 after a long battle with cancer.  He was a worship professor here at Southern Seminary and a friend to me.  Chip was one of the strongest advocates I have ever met for Christ-centered worship.  His teachings on worship and related topics made a great impact on me and our students.  His concern for the Gospel and how it is worked out in the corporate worship setting was always at the forefront of his conversations. 

We not only saw how important the Gospel is in corporate worship but we observed the Gospel lived out in Chip’s daily walk with the Lord.  This was strongly evident in his life as he battled cancer.  Chip Stam made a profound impact on our music and worship department and we will endeavor to keep this Gospel focus as we build on his legacy of work here at Southern.  He will be greatly missed.

At the memorial service for Chip this past Saturday we sang hymns, worship songs and anthems that Chip had selected a number of months before his death.  The choir for the service sang this anthem:  “Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care”  – a text by Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (1615-1691) and set to music by Carl Schalk.  This text fully embodies Chip’s testimony of these last months in his life:

Lord, it belongs not to my care, whether I die or live,

To love and serve Thee is my share, and this thy grace must give.

If life be long, I will be glad that I may long obey:

If short, yet why should I be sad to sore to endless day?

Christ leads us through no darker rooms than he went through before,

He that unto God's kingdom comes must enter by this door.

Come Lord, when grace has made me meet, thy blessed face to see;

For if thy work on earth be sweet, what will thy glory be!

My knowledge of that life is small, the eye of faith is dim;

But ‘tis enough that Christ knows all, and I shall be with him.

As we celebrate 150 years of ministry training at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary we also celebrate  a brand new school on the seminary campus this fall.  The seminary trustees voted last spring to merge the School of Christian Leadership with the School of Church Music and Worship making one new school:  The School of Church Ministries.  The new school will be housed in the School of Church Music building (Cooke Hall) with Dr. Randy Stinson as the Dean.

The merging of the schools was partially motivated by the economics of our time and the need to be as fiscally trim as possible in these days of downturn in the economy.  Along with the merging of the schools comes a number of new or revised ministry training degrees.

The School of Church Ministries will oversee all of the associate pastor type degrees such as youth and family ministry, children’s ministry, womens ministry, leadership and administration and church music and worship leadership.  There are several degrees that will allow students to do minors in a second area of interest.  Since many associate minister positions are focused on more than one area of ministry like music and youth or childrens and youth, students can now focus in more than one area.

For students planning to study church music and worship, we have fine tuned the degree offerings to better address current trends in our Southern Baptist churches.  The Master of Arts in Worship Leadership and Master of Church Music degrees now include more biblical and theological courses which helps our students to have a stronger theological foundation for ministry in the church.

I recently saw a mass email letter that was sent out to a large number of Southern Seminary music alumni that lamented the closing of “our beloved music school.”  The word on the street is that we are no longer doing music ministry training at Southern.   I would like to say that this is not true  – in fact we are striving to better equip ministers of the Gospel for music and worship leadership. 

Here is a link to more information on our current church music and worship degrees:  http://www.biblicalworship.com/?page_id=524.

Worship Leadership training is alive and well at Southern Seminary.  We want to prepare the next generation of ministers to meet the needs of our Southern Baptist churches.  Pastors, if you know of students called to worship leadership/music ministry, we would very much like to point them to our new School of  Church Ministries (http://www.sbts.edu/church-ministries/) and new ministry training degrees at Southern Seminary.

Greg Brewton

Associate Dean for Music and Worship Leadership