For the past three years I’ve had the pleasure of working with Baylor University’s Dunn Center for Christian Music Studies on a grant entitled Shaping Young Worshipers through Transformative Music Ministry. This grant is within Lilly's Nurturing Children through Worship and Prayer initiative and explores children's spiritual formation through music.
This grant was started because researchers and practitioners recognized that while there is a great tradition of children’s music in the church, many churches in today’s Christian landscape were doing away with excellent children’s music programming. Our goal over these past three years was to figure out how to reimagine children’s music programming within our current landscape.
South Main is a bit of a musical “unicorn” in Baptist life. The way we have continued excellence in traditional music ministry from two-year-olds all the way to 92-year-olds is not the norm when we look across churches in the United States, especially in the graded children’s choir model. Within the grant, our church served as a positive control group, being that we have continued with a graded children’s choir program and continue to worship in a more traditional style as a church. In this grant work, I was joined by practitioners from a variety of church contexts, including churches of fifty people and mega-churches. Included in the grant are churches that worship with fog machines and guitars and Catholic parishes that have Latin mass. Some churches had continued excellence in children’s music like South Main, some had regrettably done away with children’s music programming, and some were looking to start for the first time.
Within our larger goal of reimagining children’s music programming, we had three core objectives:
- Connecting Practitioners with Scholars – This included regional learning communities (one of which was held at South Main) that gathered yearly to develop principles and practices, which other churches will be able to use either as a starting point or to revitalize their own ministry.
- Creating Resources for Practitioners and Scholars – Within the connection time, the grant leaders found themes that kept coming up and made a list of themes that would help us work toward “transformative music ministry.” In summer 2027 we will publish a book (in which I had the privilege of writing a chapter) focusing on these themes, aimed at both practitioners and the scholars that will teach the next generation of practitioners.
- Training Practitioners – We not only had regional gatherings but also had an “all-together” gathering at Baylor University’s Alleluia Conference. We had time to be together to continue grant work, but also time to attend sessions on children’s music at the larger conference. I am excited to be a children’s choir clinician at the Alleluia Conference next year to continue this training.
This grant work not only encouraged me in my calling for excellent music education in the church but also gave me a chance to connect with other music leaders throughout the state of Texas. I met people in very similar church contexts to South Main and got to hear about wonderful things happening in churches dramatically different from South Main. I am encouraged about the future of church music because of the work this grant is doing. I hope you’ll feel encouraged, too. You can find more information on this grant below.
