Grant Awarded for Contemporary Worship Training

Dr. Shannan Baker has been awarded the Vital Worship Teacher-Scholar grant from the Calvin Institue for Christian Worship. The Calvin Institue for Christian Worship's Vital Worship grant program has helped enrich the worship of various communities for many years and is currently in its fifth year of awarding grants specifically to teacher-scholars who connect worship with other disciplines. With this grant, Dr. Baker will create a Contemporary Worship training program that will begin in January 2023 that is designed for Church Music students and other students interested in band-led worship. The workshops will address topics including music arrangement, theology, and technology of contemporary worship.  In addition to the training workshops, multiple outside speakers will provide important insights based on their experience working with popular contemporary worship artists and local churches.  This grant project works two-fold through training students and providing preliminary research for a book proposal.  The final product of this grant project is a proposal for a textbook on contemporary worship.  The grant is awarded in the sum of $20,000, which has been matched by an equipment proposal that was partially funded by a donor and approved by the Center for Christian Music Studies. With both proposals, this project will provide $42,000 in programming and equipment.  Additionally, Dr. Baker is a member of a collaborative project on contemporary worship and the music industry that also recently received a grant in the amount of $20,000.