Book Review: The Art of Worship

July 13, 2007

Greg Scheer’s The Art of Worship is the kind of book that’s been a long time coming. While we’re slowly seeing more resources about worship leadership appear on shelves and online, the selections seem to skew towards two categories: books that speak to the character of the worshiping artist, and books that look forward to dream of the worship needs of emerging generations. While both those topics are very, very important, The Art of Worship belongs to a growing third category, alongside Kevin Navarro’s The Complete Worship Leader and to an extent the Urbana Worship Team’s Worship Team Handbook.TAoW is similar to the aforementioned works in that it is a practically-minded exploration of the various aspects of leading contemporary praise & worship music (Scheer’s wording– he does define these sometimes troublesome terms early in the book). If ever there was a text to guide a worship leader’s transition from traditional to contemporary music, this is it, as Scheer understands the various backgrounds converging in the modern (postmodern?) church:

“Two worlds collide in today’s worship: the world of the classically trained organist, choir director, or music minister, and the world of the play-by-ear, chord-chart-reading pop musician.”

Much of the book is written from this perspective, which isn’t a bad approach at all– very few of us today are in worship miniseries that could be described as pure traditional or cutting-edge postmodern. For those who are, some sections of TAoW may not apply; on the other hand, if you’ve ever used “contemporary” or “blended” to explain the worship atmosphere in your community, well, you need to go buy this book now. Still, I think any worship leader can find something useful here… my own experience has been primarily in new church work, and I certainly did.

The Art of Worship isn’t about style, though. Scheer has a fresh, honest approach to his topic and what is going to drive our worship towards excellence. He’s not afraid to question the worship “industry” or the massive number of vocalists often crowded on church stages. Of course, he’s not shy to point out their benefits, either. TAoW doesn’t judge– it investigates. While no book could completely cover the issues of leading a church’s corporate worship- it would rival a set of encyclopedias in size!- Scheer manages to cover many important (and some oft-forgotten) aspects of worship leading in a well-balanced book, just over 200 pages.

While the book isn’t perfect- some of the ways Scheer catorgorizes and defines his information seem a bit shallow. He also deals with Praise and Worship music as it is– the book does not question the fundamentals of the genre or compare it to our surrounding culture’s music. But these are minor (and personal) complaints, that are dwarfed by the excellent insights contained here. And, as mentioned before, there are already plenty of authors challenging the current state of worship. I frequently came across passages that helped me understand an area of leadership better, or had me agreeing (sometimes vocally) with a well-stated point. Here are some of the highlights worth noting:

• The entire chapter on building a church’s repertoire of music– especially the introduction, “repertoire as theology,” and the section on introducing new music.
• A brief but excellent passage on vocal harmony in chapter 5, “Making Music”– Scheer describes his approaches to building harmonies and illustrates with notated examples.
• Various sections that deal with the importance of planning in worship leadership, where Scheer makes statements like this:

“Worship is a unique art form combining music, theology, performance, history, Scripture, leadership, technology, architecture, art, and drama. It requires organizational, pastoral, and communication skills outside of the worship service as well. All these disciplines collide in the messy, beautiful world of music ministry. A musician, a pastor, or an artist may be able to do sufficient worship planning; excellent worship planning, however, requires a person who understands the intersection of all the disciplines that make up worship.”

I wholeheartedly recommend The Art of Worship. A worship leader from any background should find something useful here, and moreover it would be a great book to pass on to a worship leader-in-training. Combine it with a music theory book and Rory Noland’s The Heart of the Artist, and you’ve got the foundations covered. Hopefully we’ll see more authors writing about the practical/musical/theological facets of worship leading from their own perspectives soon.

If you’ve read The Art of Worship and found it useful (or not), please leave a comment below and let us know!

Posted in Reviews