MBU News

A Day of Worship

October 4, 2007

By Jacob Wilkins

This past Saturday MBU held a free worship arts seminar, which doubled as the launch of the Worship Arts program. The seminar was a huge success; while the hope had been for 40 attendees, there ended up being well over 70. The day was capped by a concert from Shaun Groves, who had also been one of the speakers.

According to Brad Andrews, the worship arts coordinator at MBU, the seminar was intended to be an example both to MBU and to the larger community of what the new program would be like.

The Worship Arts program is offered by the Fine Arts division and actually accepted its first students last fall. However, there had been no one specifically in charge of the program.

“Since coming in July, it made sense to unofficially ‘relaunch’ the major to the greater community—even though in reality, it had been launched a year ago—and we thought what better way than through this seminar.”

Andrews said he accepted the position because he felt called to train young worship leaders. “My hope for this new program is that we are truly preparing—theologically, philosophically, and practically—young worship leaders for the types of contexts they will minister in in the future,” he commented.

The opportunity to pair the seminar with a Shaun Groves concert was an unexpected blessing. According to Andrews, while Groves had been considered in the planning, because of his tour schedule he had not been pursued. The arrangement fell into place after Compassion International sent an email saying that Groves was trying to fill Sept. 29, which happened to be the date of the seminar.

According to Andrews, the blessing was more than having a talented musician perform. “Further, bringing in Shaun and partnering with Compassion International helped us end the day by putting much of what he had been talking about in action: our worship.”

#   #   #