Customer Reviews

Designing Worship Teams

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book presents the argument that "the best way to achieve dynamic, authentic worship is to ... locate it with groups of people" (from the back cover). Townley advocates a "bottom-up" approach to designing worship, an approach originating from teams in close communion with one another and with God. The task of the worship designer is to tell the story of what God is doing in the world, and the best way to do this, according to the author, is to get creative and deeply spiritual people into teams.

The strength of this book is in casting a new vision for worship planning and for worship teams. Rather than seeing the team merely as a tool for implementing music or drama in worship, this book describes a model where collaboration grows out of shared experience of God's work in each team members' life. That becomes a basis for discovering and expressing what God is doing in the life of the congregation and in the world. And that, Townley, asserts, is what authentic, dynamic worship is.

Townley argues that since this new model of worship grows from the interaction of team members, there is no "formula" for structuring worship, or for structuring worship teams. Throughout most of the book, she urges worship designers to form their own identity and way of working together. One drawback of this position is that she is short on specifics. Contrary to what the back cover asserts, this book is not about "How to recruit the most creative members of the congregation and mold them into an effective team..." The book is more about WHY one should recruit the most creative members of the congregation and mold them into an effective team. Then the book describes some characteristics of good worship design teams, but without any clear directions for how to develop these characteristics.

The book's greatest weakness is its organization. Townley is a dramatist by background, and has chosen to structure this book like a play script. Each chapter has a "Cast of Characters," "Stage Directions," "Directors Notes" and "Asides." The analogy is clumsy, and none of these structural devices make the ideas clearer. Woven throughout the book is a series of dramatic monologues and scenes, all which have some familial connection with the topic, but don't, in my opinion, clarify or illuminate.

Townley is a United Methodist minister working in a Lutheran church, and it's clear that her context is American Mainline Protestantism. Churches of a more evangelical bent might not have the same objections or barriers that the author anticipates and tries to counter.

Despite the weaknesses, I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a new model for designing/constructing/structuring worship that starts with and in community.