Talk:Contemporary worship
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[edit] May 2008
Well, I've been bold and given this article a major edit (accidentally flagged as minor) to reflect what is generally referred to by the term "contemporary worship". It's by no means perfect and there's lots more that can be done, but I hope this will be a good basis for futher work.
I changed the name of the article as this is the most common term used and has been mentioned in many books, including some of the references I've given. Currently "contemporary christian worship" redirects here. Maybe there is some room for a separate article here with wider scope. I have recreated the "worship presentation program" article as I felt it didn't really fit in the main article. I've also done some work on related stuff - moved "praise song" to "contemporary worship music" etc.
I hope people will feel that what I've done is an improvement.
Sidefall (talk) 14:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Update - I've changed Contemporary Christian worship to a disambig that links to both this page and Contemporary worship music. I think that's clearer and distinguishes between the musical genre and the style of church service. The two are sufficiently different IMO to warrant separate articles. Sidefall (talk) 15:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Post-merger help required
Article has been merged as per discussion on Talk:Christian worship. However, several things need to be fixed now:
- Merging of related articles on other language Wikipedias:
- Worship leader:
- Worship music:
- Cleanup of the resultant article, re-writing it so that the entire article is cohesive
- Alignment of images
I will be working on the cleanup and alignment of images, as much as time allows. But as always, any help is welcome. Thanks! aJCfreak yAk 11:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Confusion: What is this article?
This article "Contemporary Christian worship" seems at best confused and at worst biased.
The title could mean a wide variety of different things, such as: Catholic worship since Vatican 2, "Contemporary Christian Music" (CCM) as a recorded home-listening aid to private worship, corporate church worship with a "worship song" slant, Taize reflective prayers, Iona Community Christian social activism, and so on and so on...
The opening paragraph seems to be setting the scene across a worldwide range of Christian worship practice; indeed the first sentence takes us across "Eastern Orthodox", "Catholic" and "Western Church". But then a quick glance through the contents and skim-read across the text shows a very strong bias towards the CCM and "worship song" aspects, to the exclusion of almost everything else (both worship and non-Western-church).
This article starts off saying one thing ("We're going to cover everything contemporary") but then covers only one single, small aspect (CCM/worship-song music strand).
In fact, is it not thus quite misleading and biased?
A more subtle, but equally serious, flaw is that the title is "...worship" but the content is almost exclusively "music". Many of us with a foot (or more) in "worship-song"-related traditions tend to think "music" and "worship" are almost the same. (As soon as we read such a sentence we immediately protest!)
I would suggest the need to address the following points:
- A clear decision: Is this about "music"? Or about "worship" (including music, liturgical practice, etc.)?
- That decision, once made, should remain conscious throughout the subsequent revision and writing.
- An overview article: a "whistle-stop tour" across the field (whether that be "worship" or "music").
- That there should definitely be some music articles, but that each retain a clear focus on what it is, and what it is not, and how they relate to each other.
- A set of music-related articles cover all contemporary music fields, some of which would be: CCM (e.g. Jars of Clay), worship song (e.g. Kendrick, Redman), Taize, Iona, Anglican liturgical music, Catholic meditative (Messiaen, Hakim), Catholic post-Vatican-2, recent Japanese hymnody, etc.
The present situation has (as St. Paul might say) fallen short. But with some work, this set of articles could be a really useful, coherent, cross-referenced resource here in wikipedia.
Hope that helps.
Feline Hymnic 22:03, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Now that a month has elapsed since the comments above, I have added a 'POV-check' to the main article.
Feline Hymnic (talk) 23:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I agree with you, FH, but I do not think the article is intentionally biased. It looks like several other article were taken and merged together, but no one spent the time to refine them to match the new subject and add coherence. The topic certainly needs to be expanded on and more views need to be given. Something also needs to be said about how singing in church is often mistakenly called worship, when it is only a part of worship. This probably sprouted from calling the music "worship music." I think I'm going to create a user sub-page to start working on this project. :) If anyone wants to help out feel free to contribute here: User:Merond e/Worship Project. --Merond e 06:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
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- Apologies. My phrase "In fact, is it not thus quite misleading and biased?" was too strong. I did not mean to suggest anything deliberate or intentional; I'm sure all was "in good faith". Rather (and simply) that we happen to have ended up with an article which sets out to cover a vast and varied field, and the contributions to it (for which we should, of course, be grateful) happen to have been mostly concentrated in just one part of it. My use of 'misleading' was poor; it was to convey that an outside user, finding an article that said it was covering the whole field could end up thinking that the CCM corner of field was representative of the whole field. Rather like if an article about "colours of the rainbow" talked only about red and perhaps a hint towards orange. (Or something like that!) Feline Hymnic (talk) 15:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Merge?
I have placed a mergeto tag on Alternative worship, suggesting that it be merged here. The two concepts seem to overlap quite a bit. Any thoughs? Pastordavid (talk) 19:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
- Generally, I disagree, although it depends on exactly how "contemporary worship" is defined. Alternative worship is completely different to the common understanding of contemporary worship, in fact I think it began as a response to perceived shortcomings of contemporary worship. I'd prefer it stays separate, but I have no objection to a brief section here with a link to the main article. Sidefall (talk) 22:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
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- Agree with Sidefall (so against merger). "Contemporary worship" can mean many different things to many different people. But the current Wikipedia Contemporary worship article is strongly slanted towards a definition allied with Contemporary Christian Music and Praise song music with strong evangelical and charismatic links (thus rather narrow, although I don't intend that remark as a criticism here). By contrast Alternative worship is (I understand) about breadth and exploration. Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
