In addition to A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship, notice especially the other books on Contemporary Praise and Worship:
- Flow: The Ancient Way to Do Contemporary Worship (I edited Flow, a practical how-to guide on strengthening contemporary services in mainline congregations who wish to find a way to do their official denominational order of worship in an authentically contemporary way. The practical chapters were written by Zachary Barnes (considering the importance of flow in the service), Adam Perez (rethinking what a Word and Table order of worship actually is), Jonathan Ottaway (musical flow in a contemporary service), Glenn Stallsmith (flow in the spoken elements), Drew Eastes (visual flow in the computer graphics), and Debbie Wong (a fully described service).
- Essays on the History of Contemporary Praise and Worship (I edited this book which is a series of scholarly essays on various aspects of the history of this liturgical phenomenon. I provided an opening historical overview as well as a concluding essay reflecting on methodological considerations for researching this way of worship.)
- Lovin’ On Jesus: A Concise History of Contemporary Worship (I co-authored this history book with Dr. Lim Swee Hong, a music professor at Emanuel College at the University of Toronto. The chapters are organized topically to show historical developments of time, space, music, prayer, the Bible and preaching, and explanations for how one experiences the presence of God in worship.
A full bibliography of my works, including articles, can be found on my CV.
Two of my earlier articles analyzing the theological content of contemporary worship songs can be found on the web:
- “How ‘Pop’ Are the New Worship Songs: Investigating the Level of Popular Cultural Influence on Contemporary Worship Music.” Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith 3, 1 (2015). A copy of the article is available here.
- “Some Similarities and Differences between Historic Evangelical Hymns and Contemporary Worship Songs.” The Artistic Theologian 3 (2015): 68-86. This article is my latest work assessing what the most republished antebellum hymns and the most used contemporary worship songs say. I analyze them on Trinitarian theology and their presentations on divine and human activity. A copy of the article is available here.
