2024: A Year in Review

December 3, 2024

In this final feature of the year, we highlight the many successes of our faculty, students, and hosted programs. Join us as we look back on the work of the Dunn Center and Church Music program at Baylor.

Hearn Innovator Series

We had two wonderful residencies through the Hearn Innovators Series this year. In February, Laura Story spent two packed days on campus visiting with our students and presenting on her story and the songs she has written along the way. Then, in September, our international visiting scholars, Geraldine & Carey Luce, spent three days intentionally meeting with students. Their presentation, “Improvisation as Adoration,” was a beautiful demonstration of participatory music making.

Northcutt Lecture Series

Dr. Anton Armstrong presented the 2024 Northcutt lecture, “Music, Vocation, and Trans-formation,” which explored the importance of music in shaping individual vocational discernment as found in parochial higher education as well as in the setting of corporate worship. During his appearance, Dr. Armstrong visited church music classes and Baylor choirs, he also met with church music and choral faculty. After the lecture, church music doctoral students enjoyed dinner and discussion with him.

Children's Worship Initiative

We have made great progress in our work, and we are grateful for the enthusiastic affirmation our study consistently receives. Here are a few highlights: Over 200 churches have completed our “Children in Your Church” survey, helping us to map the landscape of children’s spiritual formation through music; More than 31 ministers, educators, and church musicians have participated in our Learning Community gatherings in Waco, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio; 15 Baylor students have volunteered as Baylor Buddies with Oso Musical, learning how to teach music to children with disabilities; In July, Learning Community members attended Children’s Day Intensive at Alleluia Conference; We have begun to identify contributors to two volumes to be published in 2026: one designed primarily for and by practitioners, and the other designed primarily for and by academics.

Alleluia Conference

We hosted the 23rd annual Alleluia Conference in July of this year. This event brought together leaders from 23 states and more than 173 churches. The event included an evening worship service led by Joseph Martin, a live full-orchestra choral reading session, and an evening concert with artist Ken Medema. The Dunn Center honored alumnus Dennis Worley with the 2024 Exemplary Leadership in Church Music Award for a lifetime of service and dedication to ministry. We invite you and your ministry teams to attend the event next summer!

Worship Lab Initiative

Our 10th anniversary of Worship Lab was our largest gathering of students. We had ten bands and over 110 students. These students received musical, theological, and practical training that they took back to their local youth bands. This summer, we also launched our new grant project: Worship Lab Initiative. In early 2024, we were awarded a renewal of our grant from the Lilly Endowment. Our project expands our previous work into the local church. Dr. Shannan Baker, Chason Disheroon, and two graduate students visited our church partners multiple times this semester. We are gaining tremendous insight into these local youth worship spaces and what works well. We are grateful for our church partners' collaboration and look forward to learning more as our project continues.

Sacred Harp Sing

Over 55 shape-note singers met for the 20th annual Baylor Sacred Harp sing on February 10, 2024 in the Truett Great Hall. Dr. Stuart Ivey, Assistant Director of Baylor Bands, led the singing school. Afterwards, Church Music students joined with Baylor faculty and singers of all ages from Texas and beyond.

Music and Missions

This past May, Dr. Bradley led a team of 31 people (students, faculty, and staff) on a Music & Missions trip to Malaysia and Indonesia. It was great to reconnect (or meet) with Au Sze and Karl Utz (Church Music alum), at Sabah Theological Seminary in Malaysia, where the team led workshops for people who traveled from all over the region to learn and grow their skills. We performed in concerts as a choir singing in a variety of languages and were blessed by the joyous reception of those listening to us sing some of their songs.

Through the connections with current students and recent alumni, we had the opportunity to add Indonesia to our itinerary. The team visited schools and had fun playing games and interacting with children from different backgrounds. We also had the opportunity to perform music composed by one of our doctoral students, Antonius Priyanto, during a Pentecost service in an impressive church building in Jakarta. Dr. Mike Quinlan (Baylor alum) facilitated an interfaith conversation between members of the Baylor team and students from the University where he teaches in Yogyakarta. Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and members of a local indigenous religion had the opportunity to ask honest questions about each other’s beliefs and practices.

What a blessing to enjoy amazing sights, sounds, and flavors, while learning from and making connections with people in beautiful Southeast Asia! View the blog from this trip.

Welcoming Visiting Scholars
Geraldine and Carey playing bongos

The Dunn Center for Christian Music Studies is delighted to welcome Geraldine Latty-Luce and Carey Luce as our inaugural International Visiting Scholars for the 2024-2025 academic year. In this role, they will collaborate with faculty and staff on a variety of exciting initiatives. With their extensive experience as musicians, teachers, and scholars, they bring a wealth of practical wisdom and diverse perspectives that will undoubtedly enrich our academic community. Geraldine and Carey moved in faith from their home in London to the US with a vision to share their gifts and mentor younger musicians to do the same. Before coming to the US, their mentors encouraged them to a new perspective beyond looking for the good soil (Matthew 13) to seeing themselves as the good soil. The key focus they carry now is "what's in our hearts," Carey says, "because then, wherever we are, we have a clean well." Their first post in the US was at Dordt University where they have spent the last year as Worship Arts Directors. While there, they formed a community gospel choir, taught classes, and mentored students in songwriting, singing, and other musical gifts. They bring that same vision now to Baylor, always looking for “experiences of the transcendence of God.” Geraldine phrases it this way: “How is it in songwriting [or singing or research] we can encourage students to make the synergy with who they are in Christ and their gifts, even if they feel particularly broken, and giving that away?”

Faculty & Staff Updates

Dr. Shannan Baker

Dr. Shannan Baker has been actively presenting and attending conferences this year, including the North American Academy of Liturgy and the Society for Christian Music Scholarship. She also sat on a panel at the Calvin Worship Symposium focused on the influence of the Big 4 (Bethel, Elevation, Hillsong, Passion) on worship in the church. In collaboration with her individual research, her work with Worship Leader Research has expanded and gotten more attention. One of WLR’s social media posts got nearly 600,000 views. Dr. Baker continues to study contemporary worship’s theology, music, and practice. In October, Dr. Baker was published in Spirit and Song with her chapter titled: “‘There is a Cloud’: The Holy Spirit in Contemporary Worship Songs,” which returns to her theology roots examining what pneumatology can be constructed from the songs of the Big 4.

Dr. Randall Bradley

Dr. Randall Bradley focused much of the spring semester on leading a music team to Malaysia for the first time since 2018 and planning for our first visit to Indonesia. While there he preached in two congregations, taught workshop sessions in Kota Kinabalu, and led a masterclass for college-level conductors in Jakarta. This year, he toured this with the Baylor Men’s Choir and works to keep up with their ever-expanding social media presence. In the summer, he led the opening worship for Alleluia, taught two classes, and conducted an interview with Ken Medema. During the fall semester, he has worked with a planning team to implement an anniversary celebration of the Baylor Men’s Choir’s last 25 years scheduled for March 1-2, 2025. He is also planning for a team of men and women to travel to Kenya in May of 2024.

Dr. Monique Ingalls

This year, several of Dr. Ingalls’ global research partnerships in the United Kingdom and West Africa have borne fruit. Dr. Ingalls, Dr. Dulcie Dixon McKenzie (UK), and Dr. Pauline Muir (UK) published the book Black British Gospel Music with Routledge Press, one of the first books to chronicle the birth and growth of gospel music in the British context. Dr. Ingalls, Dr. Ayobami Ayanyinka (Nigeria) and Ms. Emmanuella Chesirri (Cameroon), published a chapter in the book Hymns and Constructions of Race. Version 3.0 of the Nigerian Christian Songs website (est. 2021), was expanded by several Nigerian doctoral students and released in November. Finally, Dr. Ingalls, along with Dr. Shannan Baker and a team of Baylor graduate students, launched a new online academic resource, the Global Church Music Interactive Bibliography. This resource amplifies the research of church music scholars outside North America.

Dr. Matthew Laube

Since last Christmas, Matthew has been busy teaching and researching in the church music area. He presented his research in the UK in June 2024, and has submitted two grant proposals to American and German funding bodies to pursue research on music in Reformation Germany. Matthew has submitted two journal articles for review and is busy finishing his first book. He has also enjoyed his teaching at Baylor, which included graduate courses in church music philosophy and congregational song history in spring 2024. In fall 2024, he taught an undergraduate class on using a wide variety of instruments in the church and another class focusing on spiritual formation for church musicians. Dr. Laube is loving his time at Baylor. Outside of the university, he volunteers in a prison correspondence ministry and serves at his local church.

Dr. Maria Monteiro

2024 has been a fruitful year! In addition to her wide-ranging teaching responsibilities, she led the various activities related to the children’s Lilly grant “Shaping Young Worshipers through Transformative Music Ministry.” In May, she had the privilege of traveling to Malaysia and Indonesia, her first Baylor Music & Mission trip. In July, she presented her research at The Hymn Society Annual Conference, in Atlanta, and at the Alleluia Conference; and in August, she presented a paper at the Baptist Scholars International Roundtable meeting in Oxford, UK. Another enriching experience was to plan and lead a hymn festival at the church where she conducted ethnographic research a few years ago, Casa Amarela Evangelical Baptist Church, in Recife, Brazil. This was their very first hymn festival and it commemorated the church’s 60th anniversary. Finally, she continues to serve as music director of her congregation, First Mexican Baptist Church of San Antonio.

Dr. Stephen Newby

This Christmas season, Dr. Stephen Newby will be featured as a guest soloist in Duke Ellington's Sacred Service with the Seattle Jazz Orchestra. He has been editing his new book published by Oxford University Press on Andrae Crouch with co-author Robert F. Darden. He also has been consulting churches and other universities on “The Diversity of Black Worship.” He presented this June at Hampton University’s African American Pastors and Church Musicians Conference. He continues to lead worship all over the country and is preparing to lead worship for the 2025 CCCU President’s Conference in Washington D.C. Finally, Dr. Newby is orchestrating his Symphony No. 2, to be recorded in 2025 with the Prague Symphony.


To all our alumni and friends, we thank you for your support this year. We wish you many blessings this holiday season!