The Art of Curating Worship

A book that has me absolutely brimming with ideas is Mark Pierson’s The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader. This book speaks directly to how worship can be a means of discipleship for a community and the needs of artists within their faith communities to grow and thrive.

It’s not often I feel like I read a book that confirms my dreams like this one does. When people have asked me how I envision a future role in full-time ministry I tell them I want to be a worship pastor. This is often met with puzzled looks.

I don’t play guitar.

I don’t sing melody.

How could I be a worship pastor?

To me, the point of being a worship pastor is to shepherd (pastor) people in worship, in a holistic sense. Just like preachers don’t accomplish their whole job in a half hour on a Sunday morning, why is it expected that a worship pastor’s sole focus is a four song music set on Sunday morning. Quite frankly, why do churches have full-time job roles for that? A worship pastor should lead and disciple people in worship.

To me, that means helping people in prayer, Scripture reading, music, serving others, discipling others, cooking, cleaning, painting, writing, etc. If we want to take seriously that all work should be worship, then the worship pastor should be uniting people’s vocation with their spiritual disciplines to bring glory to God in all we do.

This book speaks to that sentiment. Focused on doing stations based worship on Sunday mornings along with “guerilla worship” (doing worship events in the larger community, like art installations), this book shows that the role of the worship leader is to facilitate the  faith community’s participation in worship by utilizing individual talents to create art and bring glory to God. In its pages you will find dozens of examples, mostly in Australia and New Zealand, of how worship leaders are curating worship installations that allow God to speak to people through all of their senses. It is a view of worship as immersion—a setting aside of time to be immersed in the depth of the human condition and how God speaks to this depth.

I know I am not alone. I had a good friend lament to me a couple of months ago about how she set up an art event at her church and only one person showed up. This book is for people like us, who struggle with how to lead worship in a holistic way that connects with your diverse faith community and disciples people in their strengths and vocations.

The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader
Mark Pierson
Sparkhouse Press
$15.92  (Amazon)