#4 We Need to Reimagine Modern Worship - Reed Spencer
Episode 4 | 37 Minutes | Dec 12, 2024
Do you ever find yourself struggling to connect to God in worship? Many of us crave a deeper experience in worship—something that goes beyond performance and truly connects us to God and each other.
In this episode of the Innovate for Good podcast, we speak with Dr. Reed Spencer, professor of music and director of worship arts at Taylor University, about how transformative worship is for building community, teaching theology, and learning about the character of God. Reed shares his journey from aspiring worship leader to choral conductor, his vision for expanding worship practices, and how music connects us to one another and to God in profound ways. Whether you’re a church leader, artist, or simply curious about the intersection of art and faith, this conversation will challenge you to reimagine how worship can truly transform lives.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
The role of wonder and imagination in worship and faith
How choral music fosters community and personal growth
Expanding worship practices to include diverse forms of artistic expression
The spiritual and emotional impact of beauty in worship
Practical ideas for incorporating creativity into church services
Stories of how choral music has brought healing and unity in prisons and refugee communities
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Dr. Reed Spencer is a professor of music and director of choral activities and worship arts at Taylor University. With a doctorate from Boston University, Reed has spent his career exploring the intersection of music, worship, and community. His work focuses on creating spaces where individuals can encounter the transformative power of beauty and the divine through choral artistry. From leading ensembles at Taylor to organizing performances in prisons and refugee communities, Reed’s passion is using music to foster connection, healing, and faith.
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Today we're interviewing Dr. Reed Spencer, who is actually a college friend of mine from back in the day at Taylor university and, the early two thousands.
I'm used to being called Dr. Spencer, but it's weird to hear you say Dr. Spencer. My students call me that all the time, but it's weird when you do. So
Reid Spencer is a professor of music and director of both choral activities and the worship arts major at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. So Reid, thank you so much for joining us today in this conversation.
Thanks for asking me to be part of it.
Reid, can you tell us a little bit about your background and like music, like the role that's played in your life,
yeah, I grew up as a pastor's kid doing music at church.
Okay.
so in a little church, you end up in front of people when you're pretty young. And I think that developed into, the classic combination of a love for music and a love for being celebrated and affirmed for being good at music.
And, that's been a fun journey for me to grow out of and into new things. I, Decided to go into music in college, I think, with a desire to be a performer and with a call, a sort of ambiguous call in my life to be some sort of worship leader. And so I had a strong idea of what that might be, when I was 18 years old, which was probably to go lead with a guitar in a great big church.
And, God has led me on a different journey to where I am now, where I think I'm a worship leader and a teacher and a performer of a really different kind than I would have imagined. And I'm really thankful for that journey and I think I've learned so much about myself and about the power of music and the power of community through that journey.
So I came to Taylor, as a vocal performance 📍 📍 📍 major and then ultimately got really drawn into the community of the corral here at Taylor and the Taylor sounds, the ensemble of 18 or so, and, that became really compelling to me and I decided that it was something that I really deeply loved.
So I went on in that and here I am leading the ensemble that really made me fall in love with choral music. And I'm grateful to be here.
What were the doors that opened that actually brought you back to Taylor? Cause I know you taught at some other places first before returning to Taylor.
To be fair, I always loved the corral, but it wasn't like, something that I thought would happen. It wasn't like a dream that I couldn't let go of or something like that. But I did a doctorate at Boston University and so my wife and I had our first son there. I'm going to
in Boston and we loved the city and we got to experience really cool music. And my first job was actually at Wabash college, which was a college for men. And it was in Indiana. So I was suddenly pretty close to Taylor again and got to reconnect with, our teacher, Dr. Joanne Rettiger here and to stay in touch.
And as she retired, it just seemed like it might be a good opportunity to apply. And It was good timing for us.
You say there was a specific person in your life, you know, maybe it was Dr. Rettiger or maybe somebody else, that kind of had a, a real influence on you to pursue music and maybe even music instruction as a career?
Yeah, I can point to music teachers and I think that most people who are music teachers point to their music teachers
Hmm.
Often people find a place of belonging in ensembles. I think that's my favorite part of leading a choir is that while on the surface we're just a choir and we just sing music together, I know from the lives of the students I interact with that we're more than that.
And some of them, become lifetime friends. And the, some of them have nowhere else to belong here on campus. And I think it was always a place for me to belong to. And so I was drawn into that, inspired by the excellence of Dr. Rediger and the, the standard that was set. I also fell in love with the music and the way that the art helped me to see God in a new way.
As I came into Taylor thinking I was going to go play guitar and sing at a church for the rest of my life. And I appreciate those who do that. I started falling in love with this new form of art and thinking, Oh, I feel. The presence of God in a different way than I have before I see God's manifestation in those around me in a different way and my vision of worship and community, all of those things expanded in my experience in the ensemble. And they have experienced more and more as I've gotten to lead and. So I think I fell in love with the music too.
Tell us some of the ways that Curl music you, that you've seen it minister to people, either to your students or to your audience? Like how does that impact people, in their relationship with God or with un understanding the spiritual world?
I look at my primary role as a mentor to the people in the ensemble. So we learn about things like, Singing in tune and singing with support and cutting off at the right time and, having vowels that are just like everyone else's vowels and all of this sort of mundane musical stuff that makes us sound great. all of that, I think we learn about, selflessness and Working hard for the sake of something bigger than yourself. Learn about creating something, but not being the one in the spotlight. We learn about seeing God in a chord and tunes perfectly. That is so beautiful that it moves our like whole body and soul.
All of those things I think are primarily experienced by those who I get to work with every day. When we tear apart a poem and sometimes like difficult poetry, we will talk about where do we see God in this tragedy or in this person's perspective that is not like our perspective. So I think that's where I first see the passion that I bring to the table is really for the students, but we are a performing ensemble and a performance is a big part of what makes us. Motivated and the ministry we do is really profound and I've been trying to think about how to articulate that I think the word wonder is probably the closest I can come Sometimes we go and present the gospel most often we go and present something that's really beautiful that talks a little bit about Jesus and talks a little bit about the world and hopefully Is able to open someone's heart the feeling joy and beauty and move them a little bit closer to truth and goodness.
And, I think that's how we minister on the average performance day. I'm always looking at our community here at Taylor and thinking, what do we need to talk about as a community? People have a pretty narrow understanding of what choral music can do. And I do too. And I'm always trying to expand that. And actually this is really strange to say from an artistic standpoint, COVID was a gift to us when I took the job, I inherited a bunch of traditions that I loved, and I did, and I wanted to carry on. And then, Of course, COVID came and put a terrible wrench in all of that. We couldn't do any of them and singing looked completely different. And I had to approach a year and think, what can the corral, like, how can I sustain the life of the corral over my first year and without just completely dying and that major constraint out of that was born. ability for the boundaries to drop in my mind and then the need to fulfill the expectation of my predecessor. Could I couldn't, right? Like we couldn't, we had this thing in masks and distance and outside all of these things. And so it helps me to really think creatively about what our community needed.
And that was 2020. And there was a lot of conversation on. race and about, recognizing black voices in our community and in our world. And I knew that conversation in a place like Taylor would be sensitive. It is sensitive everywhere that it's polarizing. And so that's first. 2020, 2020 in the fall, we did an outdoor concert for our community and everyone filled the yard and we sang distanced in masks with lights.
And we did a concert called I've Got a Sound and it was to elevate the black voices and artists and dancers of our community. And we did a lot of music from the gospel tradition and from the spirituals and black composers. And it was really successful. And in the way that. I measured that success was not like, Oh, everyone came and loved it, but that I was able to have conversations with our black students on campus and they felt like they were given a voice that they hadn't been given before.
And that was really transformative for me as a leader to say, okay, like this corral has done a lot of things in its existence, but there are new things to be done. And. We can. So the next year we did a focus on mental health stories on our campus and we, I had people submit anonymous stories and poems and we sang a bunch of songs that were about depression and anxiety like weird Songs that you wouldn't think are written for choir, but they are and they're beautiful and then talked about like, how do you as a Christian navigate your relationship with God in the middle of that it was called in the middle There was dance and art and I am I moved by the creativity of our students and I've learned to just get out of the way a little bit and let us make Really cool, conversations that our community can be a part of.
So we've done a bunch of that and that's another way that I think both our students in the corral, but also our larger community can be invited into the transformative power of God showing up in art.
That is so inspiring and very personal, right? You're speaking to and about, people who. Have these really hard stories and you're singing about them. That's touching people in your community, but without putting a spotlight on them personally, they don't, they're not being like revealed in any way, but that I want to go back to your comment about music being corral music, you said something about the, use the word wonder. I remember when I visited your class, your rehearsal read, I sat and observed for, I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes before I got up for my three minutes of fame on stage. And that was great. That was great. But I remember, I got up on stage and I was, Actually a little speechless Because the music had moved me in ways that I couldn't really Explain, but I knew I felt there was something divine in it and a sense of wonder
it's magic. Choral music is magic. I really think so. I think everyone loves choral music. They just don't know it yet.
Yeah
let alone to let the overwhelming nature of the beauty of the voices flood your senses.
And then combine that with some text that actually speaks to your heart. Like it's everything lining up for an artistic manner to like really move our hearts. And I think so often we associate choir with a high school choir program where you barely learn the words and you get up and everyone's Oh, my son and daughter.
And that's great because we need music education so badly in order to have We need that in order to be able to create really high level art at the college level. But I always tell the chorale like if people walk away and their takeaway was, wow, that was a great choir. Their voices were really great.
That is, We have not accomplished our purpose. It is for them to walk away thinking, Oh, wow. Like I think maybe God is good and there's something true that I've just experienced. And I had a teacher in my master's program at IU, who was a very cynical, skeptic, not a believer. I one time watched him conduct Bach's St.
John Passion, and which is a moving work, sharing, exploring the gospel and the death of Christ, and, Afterward, I talked to him and he had tears in his eyes and he said, in this moment, I believe, and I've never forgotten that because he is not a believer, but the, that beauty, the beauty of that art and it's profound meaning opened up his belief for that moment.
And I think that happens for people I can't explain wonder, but I do think it's a gift. And when it comes, we get to receive it.
It softens the heart towards God in a way that, maybe other things don't. And so it's like God uses this beautiful thing that he's given his creation to, reveal himself,
To us. and connect us in a way that, we wouldn't otherwise maybe be connected. But it, yeah, allows people to experience him.
So
it's so cool.
I think in the West, I shared this in a couple of classes this week, I think in the West, the Western church, we try to figure things out too much and there's this other thing over here where, Christians are in a relationship with someone who is invisible. And so there's mystery like built in automatically from the beginning.
And so wonder. Isn't in the category of trying to figure things out. It's over here and I just love that.
Our whole faith is built on imagination. When you do things like take communion or engage with the Eucharist, like that is, a deep act of imagination and you're imagining God all the time and so the development of our imaginations is crucial for actual good theology and often I think students come to Taylor thinking like my faith is actually quite rational and scientific no it's not It can be And I'm thankful for those who have made a strong case for Christianity.
But if you don't have an imagination, you cannot believe. And to open up those channels of imagination through art is like really to let yourself have the possibility of belief in God.
YEah,
at Taylor. What does it mean to prepare students for like a career and a life of worship?
I don't know. I am learning that I. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to lead the worship arts program. I have such a unique story that I've shared part of, to have entered Taylor thinking like, that's my path is I'm going to go do this worship leading thing. And now, like I said before, I think I'm doing that, but in a way that is so much different than I expected.
And I think so much of my life has been a broadening of my idea of what worship is. And so I. I teach four or five worship arts classes throughout, a major church. progression here. And so much of that is less about teaching skills, though we do teach skills and more about, having a really strong understanding of what it means to habitually form your heart toward God over time through art. And I think that, Many people, I've heard many people say that, like, why would you get a degree in worship arts? Like you could do, most people could do that already. I'd say a good majority of churches would not expect a person that they hire as a worship leader to have a degree in worship. A lot of times people get hired right out of high school.
And I think that there's not a lot of expectation for training. Also, I think most of the students here at Taylor. Whether they would say it out loud or not would think that they're experts in worship because they've been doing it We don't
Mm hmm. have any actual framework for conversation about it Mm. have these different ideas about what it is and what it means And so as I think about like how to form a person through a degree I want them to be able to go out and articulate that they are forming You Congregations, they're forming hearts with a primary practiced theology that is not the same as a sermon, but it's actually probably more emotionally deep than a sermon. And it's something that's, carried further and longer and more, embodied than just sitting and listening. And we would never say that about a preacher, that a preacher needs no training, right? We Would expect that, but yet this person who's responsible for forming our liturgies that like are the things that actually go deep within us that we carry and practice, we have no expectation for at all. And, that's become more and more amazing to me, particularly in evangelicalism, because of the nature of how we've viewed worship in a very consumeristic way. Way. And when that all worship is, you don't really need the theological training, but when you think of worship as actually formative in our lives and forming our primary theology, of course, we need training.
And I don't know, that's a sort of long winded answer to your question, but, I've become more and more convinced that the church needs people who understand the theology of worship and that can lead us well. and formatively and not just who can go up and play the song.
Yeah, it sounds like a really holistic view of worship rather than the narrow view of worship that we're so used to when we think about worship music or conventional worship music, played in many of our churches. Because if look up on Spotify worship music, it is like generally just one type of music.
And it's not really the whole picture.
No. And I try not to bring a great degree of cynicism into the classroom because I believe that God is alive and at work through contemporary worship music. And I like a lot of contemporary worship songs and I'm really thankful for the way that has brought to life a lot of people's hearts and drawn them toward God.
The problem is that. And this is cynical probably, but so much of contemporary Christianity has sold their soul to consumerism because it. works. It works. And I can say in the West in particular, people come, people are satisfied and it feels relevant and it's not super relevant. Like it doesn't speak to the reality of our lives all the time.
It's just one narrow way of connecting with God. And we miss out on so much theologically, artistically, communally, we think of worship, we think of Hillsong and Elevation and Upper Room and all these people who have created music that's really good and has good theology for the most part.
But that is. Made our experience in worship, just like an me and God in a dark room with loud music. It's completely disregarded the congregational voice the communal experience of Doing the work of the people together and I don't disregard it, but I challenge students to go beyond it I think it's been successful, but it's not super flashy.
Like it's hard to advertise my program. It's not like something that looks good on a website. Like we're going to deconstruct your view of worship and
Yeah.
I'm here and you won't think of your church in the same way anymore.
Yeah. So I, in my church, I was at a worship meeting. It was like a worship night and up front, they had, an artist, a painter with an easel and painting, this thing from scratch. And that was to go along with the music. And that got me thinking,
wow. Okay. There's music, maybe some painting. Do you have an example or two of what it might look like for there to be a larger broader corporate worship experience Inside or outside of a building or church, whatever what could that look like?
Earlier I was talking about how COVID totally transformed my view of the corral. And I think that sometimes we need to let go of our expectations or be forced out of the box that we think we're supposed to live into from a structural or even artistic standpoint in order to actually look right in front of us, to see who we are.
And that's, I think what happened for me as the corral leader is like, Oh, I actually have been thinking about how to continue what my predecessor gave to me rather than looking at the people in front of me and what we all need and have to bring to the table. And suddenly like my role was transformed.
And it actually was more honoring to her. Because I let her do her thing. And I'm doing mine in a way that is like honoring to the way, to the work that God has put in front of us. And I think that churches can do that too. I don't have a prescription per se, but I think that most churches are filled with people with really good ideas and they can look around and say, this would mean something to our community.
And again, to go back to the consumerism model. Like we are basically fed new worship music from four or five main sources, and we take it and we use it and then we wait for the next thing. And it's all coming from somewhere else. And that somewhere else is actually making a lot of money. On our spiritual behalf. Great. Like we'll celebrate that, but in front of you are all these people who could make something really beautiful, whether it's art or whether it's some sort of creative communal activity, or whether it's a song, That's maybe that someone wants to sing a special music, which we've rejected because it was awkward, right?
There are so many ways that we have tried to make our churches fit into the megachurch model When every church is a megachurch and we've lost the sense of just looking in front of us like right now we're doing the thing on scripture presentation. How we honor scripture and it's reading out loud and bring it to life in the church.
And so I gave them a few examples of, something that my church has done where they move around during the scripture. And it's not an acting out. It's not really drama, but it's. I did a livening of the scriptural text and I said, this is just an idea. So every we have class twice a week. So every class, someone's in charge of a scripture presentation and sometimes they bring friends and sometimes they use class members, but it's interactive and it's casting light on.
What we're doing as we interpret scripture out loud, and that's been an artistic process, and some of them are dumb and don't work, and some of them are really profound. And I love that exploration process as we Kind of figure it out together.
So Reed, I think you probably know one collective, we focus on working a lot with people, demographics, people who are often oppressed in different ways. And so that could look like refugees who have really hard trauma stories or, disabled youth who have been abandoned by their families.
Just a variety of people in those contexts. Do you see ways that music in the arts can provide a redemptive dynamic for those people who have really hard life context and situations?
I try to program the corral in places that I think really need to experience beauty or maybe in places where there isn't a lot of beauty. And in a month or so, we're going to the Pendleton Penitentiary, The maximum security prison um, near Indianapolis. And we go through the security and we wear our tuxes and our dresses and we go and give a performance.
And, we've done this several times and it's really profound for us, but I know we can see in their face. Faces and bodies and voices that, this is a, an experience that's really special for them because what we do takes a lot of work. It's not something that we just go throw together. It's something that we've practiced for hours and hours.
And it's a good gift. It's a good gift to give. And so to be able to say, you are the people that we want to give
Yeah.
now I think is humanizing, it is, dignifying, it brings something really profoundly beautiful into a space with not a lot of beauty.
I try to find those spaces because, while I love singing in beautiful cathedrals and.
Spaces that make us sound fantastic, and we do that, I think that the most transformative moments for us as well, or when we get to take that ministry and give that gift in a way that are in a place where it's, Not often received. The world really needs beautiful things, not surface level, beautiful things, but like deeply beautiful. things to the transcendental beauty of God, I think in those spaces, bringing beauty in any form. Is dignifying and humanizing
Yeah.
Music in particular is universal.
And so people can all connect to it in some way. And most people can participate it in a, in some way. And I think that I'm clearly biased toward choir. I love choir. I think that if everyone's saying in a choir, the world would, problems would probably be all solved like that. I don't know if you remember Renee Timby, Carly, did you cross paths with Renee at Taylor? I didn't, but I've since met her and she does work with refugees in Greece and has forms them into a choir. And that is. A transformative act of service for her.
In fact, she got her doctorate in choral conducting just like me and felt that call to that work overseas to use her, talent and ability and gifting. And also the pedigree that she was able to learn in order to open doors and form, a profound missional. community with Syrian refugees in particular.
So I think there are lots of examples of people who give that gift of beauty in those spaces. I often thought of missions as like you go and you build or you take medicine somewhere and I've come to believe that like when the corral travels overseas to do what we would call a mission trip, I used to feel sort of embarrassed about that. But now I see that like. We've developed a gift that we can give to someone.
We're not going and providing them sustenance of the body, but we are providing them wonder for the soul. And sometimes that's the thing that people need.
Yeah, people really need to be ministered to their whole self. So whether that's meeting a physical need, emotional need, spiritual need, they're all valid. And, that's the way that we try to do ministry with one collective in the communities where we work too. And we've also seen arts and music give people a way to process.
Their grief and trauma and express their feelings that maybe they haven't even acknowledged or accepted like feelings that they have, but they can express it through art. And like you said, it crosses cultural boundaries, language boundaries, allows people to connect together. So it's really important in seeing like holistic community transformation is incorporating arts in that process. Reed, I want to quote something that you've said, 📍 📍 📍 you said , Creating art and community has transformative power to unite, teach, and help us engage meaningfully with the mysteries of God and one another. And I think that's something I believe so strongly. I think, we all feel that way. What do you think is so important about the community aspect?
Like not just doing it individually, but doing it together.
Yeah. When I hear the word artist, I usually think Beethoven or Van Gogh or some sort of tortured loner figure from the romantic period, or, or even today you think of, Swift or whatever, like artists who do things on their own. We most often recognize artists who are individuals and have their own brand.
And as I every day get to look at a bunch of artists who choose to do that with one another instead, there's such a deep active like commitment to the place and to the people. There's a giving of the self that's more selfless. I think the result is more profound because just takes so much, effort and concentration and listening and Giving and vulnerability and all those things that form not only our aesthetic sensibility, but also our spiritual sensibilities that like form us into virtuous people, not just good artists. That's the community that I hope to build. Not every artistic community ends up that way. And in fact, some can be quite toxic. My comments about everyone being in a choir and fixing the world's problems. Probably isn't actually true, but I do think it's a profound way to experience one another.
Because you're creating together. There's nothing like a community that comes together to make something and to do it well is just really deeply bonding.
What's something we can take away? I mean, there's a lot of things that I think we've covered today, but what's something that anybody listening could take away from this, how could we kind of apply these ideas to our own worship practices and our own lives?
Mm
God is big and mysterious. I think we can all agree on that. God is bigger than our understanding of God. And we can get to know that more in worship. So whatever your worship practices, expand it, learn something new, find a new liturgy that can move your heart in a different way, listen to someone else who worships differently than you, go to an Orthodox church and smell the incense and think about why that is, has moved people's hearts for generations.
Let art be connected to your worship practice.
Because in so doing that, I think we get a fuller picture of who God is.
I think for those people listening who are feeling that call to ministry and to doing the good work of building up communities and people like don't, just think about what programs you can bring to them. But look at the things and the people in front of you and let people create because people have something to say and allowing people to create together and facilitating and leading that creation is the most profound worship leading I've ever done. I so often think about. Churches doing programming in order to draw people in when really it's look at the people and let them create and help facilitate that creation. And I don't know what that has to look different for different types of people with different passions.
I think people who are not just artists can do that
I love that. In our teams around the world, Reed, they all do discipleship, but almost none of them have discipleship programs. We do it in the context of what the people are like that we are with and we're seeing God move.
And I love what you have brought us today, Reed, and, it's been expanding, expansive for our thinking, my thinking, and I appreciate the time and the thoughts that you've shared here with us today. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you for having me on and for being interested in the things that I care about. I appreciate it.
I'm just like looking at Carly, who I haven't seen in years, and really great to see you. And as I look at you, I remember the songs that we sang together and the places we went, right?
That is the thing that we shared together. And after all this time, like I feel such warmth and like joy and able being able to talk to you because I know you get the things that I'm saying on a heart level because we experienced them together in that community is really great to rekindle.
So thanks for thinking of me and for inviting me on.
Yeah. I agree. Wholeheartedly. Those were some of the highlights of my life, honestly,
Yeah.
it really does stick with you.
Yeah,
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