Lifeway now not plans to shut its on-line music ministry useful resource lifewayworship.com .
In July 2023, the corporate introduced its plans to retire the platform—a “digital hymnal” that gives customers with chord charts, vocal preparations, and orchestrations—then paused these plans every week later after sturdy backlash from prospects. After a yr of reevaluation and interviews with worship leaders from the Southern Baptist Conference (SBC) who use the positioning, Lifeway has modified course and determined to proceed sustaining and updating the useful resource.
“LifeWay is a curriculum group,” says LifeWay Worship Director Brian Brown. “These worship leaders remind us that music is their curriculum. It serves the entire physique.”
LifeWay hosted panel discussions with over 200 worship leaders between July 2023 and Could 2024. The ministry was shocked to be taught what number of of those leaders — who served church buildings of varied sizes and a variety of musical types — relied on way of life worship. com .
“We underestimated a few of the distinctive issues we needed to provide, and we did not see how a lot we have been supporting these church buildings. Much more than we realized,” Brown stated.
Will Bishop, affiliate professor of church music and worship at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stated that when LifeWay introduced the tip of lifewayworship.com a yr in the past, he did not suppose it might be controversial.
“I used to be type of pondering, Who’s ever going to overlook this?” she stated.
However six months in the past, the bishop started worshiping at a small SBC church in Louisville, Kentucky, and says the expertise utterly modified his thoughts; Assets are invaluable to his ministry.
“I spent a few years in massive ministries with massive budgets, however now I lead a church with a choir of about 18 individuals, a piano, organ, flute, violin and trombone. I’ll completely miss it.”
Bishop says lifewayworship.com is exclusive as a result of he can discover high quality packages à la carte As a substitute of shopping for an entire orchestration of a hymn for $70, he should buy particular person elements for his musicians for a complete of $8. And for small and medium-sized church buildings on restricted budgets, it makes an enormous distinction.
“Most Southern Baptist church buildings are small ministries with 15 individuals within the choir and 3-4 instrumentalists,” the bishop stated.
Providers like MultiTracks, PraiseCharts, and SongSelect provide instruments that enable giant church buildings to transcribe recorded variations of recent worship songs. Bishop stated that for bigger church buildings with groups and budgets, these sources are superb. However this isn’t what the smallest church wants.
“LifeWay would not need to be all the pieces. One software cannot be everybody’s software. Specializing in small and medium-sized church buildings is a good factor.”
Brown says that along with listening to from customers that lifewayworship.com gives a singular set of musical instruments, his crew has discovered that many worship leaders look to Lifeway not just for sources, but additionally for theological steerage — one thing they can not get from different non-SBC sources.
“One among their predominant issues was to do a theological examination of the lyrics,” Brown stated. “They wished to ensure the songs have been theologically vetted from a Southern Baptist perspective.”
Lifewayworship.com was initially conceived as a digital SBC hymnal. Launched in 2008 below the route of Mike Harland, the positioning began with 674 songs. Baptist Hymns and has regularly expanded its choices over time. However it was not designed to be a breakthrough expertise useful resource; It was designed to make it simpler for congregations to entry new, accepted music.
“We have been a music firm first, we weren’t a pc firm,” Harland advised Citi final yr. “After all there have been different firms that had extra user-friendly platforms, however we wished our content material to be the perfect.”
SBC congregations are usually not required to make use of music accepted by LifeWay, however some church musicians say they’re overwhelmed by the quantity of recent worship music they’ve to select from, based on Brown. For them, devoted curation is welcome.
“In the end, worship leaders and senior pastors are going to make selections about music of their native context. However these leaders rely upon us so as to add some rails,” Brown stated.
Lifewayworship.com additionally gives orchestrations with simplified, readable rhythms and an emphasis on congregation-friendly preparations and key picks. These providers are important for time-strapped worship leaders or these with restricted formal musical coaching. Some worship leaders advised the ministry they did not really feel outfitted to rearrange songs or select songs price singing.
Transferring ahead, lifewayworship.com will proceed to curate new music but additionally attempt to supply route and construct group amongst worship leaders all through the group.
“We wish this to be the start of extra common communication with our church buildings, and we need to speak extra deliberately and extra commonly with our worship leaders,” Brown stated. “That is simply a place to begin for us.
