A workshop for musicians, ministers, and anyone planning or leading Sunday worship services.

We’ll share best practices for introducing new music, song-leading, and integrating music seamlessly into worship. We’ll share practical tools for developing new musical elements that engage the congregation and deepen the worship experience and we’ll explore more deeply how music can set the context and tone for transformative worship.

Outline

• Introductions & welcome
• Reflecting on what we already know about making music in community
• State of the Art: Conversation questions to take home
• What are the current practices and role of music in our own congregations?
• New ways to do old hymns
• Introducing new music with confidence and connection
• Songleading specifics for vibrant and participatory worship
• Recipes for integrating the various worship elements; looking at flow, depth, cultural context, and meaning making through music.
• The importance of cultural context and how to do it well.
• Naming and re-imagining our worship culture
• What Makes for Transformative Worship -handout and activity
• Resource list to take home
• Closing words & Singing

Training Facilitator: Matt Meyer

Matt Meyer is musician, worship leader, and a lifelong Unitarian Universalist. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2004, where he studied hand drumming and world music. Since then, Matt has led music and worship for hundreds of services in congregations all over the country. He’s been a keynote speaker and worship arts educator for UU conferences and gatherings all over the US and Canada, including the JPD worship arts festival, Eliot Institute, Ohio Summer Institute, Allies for Racial Equity national conference, and the annual meeting of the Canadian Unitarian Council. He has also led music for nearly all of the last eighteen General Assemblies of the UUA.

Matt is a founding worship leader and current Director of Operations and Community Life for Sanctuary Boston, a contemporary worship community in Boston that meets on Wednesday evenings. He’s also a founding organizer of the UU Songleaders Convergence and currently serves on the board of the Association for UU Music Ministries.

www.RhythmRevelations.com