Worship and Mission for the Global Church

• The voices I treasure resonate in this book. Chanting and memorization, trauma healing, how hymnbooks stimulate literacy, how to commission artistic works—with 148 chapters the scope is mind blowing, yet the material remains highly accessible and applicable. This book would appear to be the definitive work.

  — Miriam Adeney, PhD , teaching fellow, Regent College associate professor of World Christian Studies, Seattle Pacific University

• As a worship director and pastor I have longed for a resource that could help me train worship leaders. In the past I had to piecemeal various chapters from books or journal articles from different voices. Now, however, I have many of these very expert voices in one timely resource.

  — Sandra Van Opstal, MDiv , worship director of Urbana 12 Missions Conference, author of The Mission of Worship

• Wow! What a great gift to the global church! This book and the accompanying resources can only enhance the ministry of worship and evangelism for those who give time to studying and applying its lessons. Well researched, creative, stimulating, and biblically rooted, this is a highly significant resource for all those who have a vision to see the church planted and growing amongst all the peoples of the world.

  — Lindsay Brown, DD , international director, The Lausanne Movement

• It is not that those who lead worship around the world are not connected; we share the deepest connection by way of the Spirit of Jesus. It is only that we hunger for integration with fellow sisters and brothers and long for a means to share with one another. James Krabill and his team of contributors have provided all we need to nurture that kind of integration, to share our stories, our creative seed with the family of faith around the world.

  — Michael Card , Bible teacher, songwriter

• With over one hundred writers from more than twenty countries, this is a work that lives up to its name: Worship and Mission for the Global Church. Drawing on theological, historical, and contextual perspectives on worship and the arts, the handbook pursues new and significant territory for the life of the church. Holding worship and mission together is a much-needed emphasis for our times.

  — Dennis P. Hollinger, PhD , president and Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

• The world’s leading ethnodoxologists have assembled an impressive array of contributions from every part of the world to present us with a snapshot of what global Christianity is all about. It is a picture of unity in diversity—Christians from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds worshiping the same Lord in innumerable tongues.

  — Todd M. Johnson, PhD, associate professor of Global Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Editors

• James R. Krabill
  James R. Krabill

  James R. Krabill is senior executive for Global Ministries at Mennonite Mission Network in Elkhart, Indiana. For fourteen years he served in West Africa, primarily the Ivory Coast, as a Bible and church history teacher among African Initiated Churches (AICs) in various village settings, Bible institutes and theological faculties. For eight of those years he lived and worked with members of the Harrist Church among Ivory Coast’s Dida people— collecting, recording, transcribing, and publishing over 500 original Harrist hymns for use in literacy and music training. Many of these hymns appeared in his published PhD thesis, The Hymnody of the Harrist Church (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995). James is a frequent speaker in various church and academic settings across the United States and has lectured or taught courses in over a dozen countries. He holds memberships in the African Studies Association, the Association of Anabaptist Missiologists, the International Council of Ethnodoxologists (board of trustees), the Association of Mission Professors (president, 2009–10), and the American Society of Missiology (current chair of Scholarly Monograph Series). Krabill is the editor of Missio Dei (a quarterly missiological journal) and has authored or edited numerous other books and articles, including, “Scripture Use in AIC Hymnody,” in Afro-Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa (1991), 293-331; Nos racines racontées (1996); Anabaptism and Mission: A Bibliography, 1859-2000, with Chad MulletBauman (2002); “Eine Theologie der Mission für heute,” in Mission im Zeichen des Friedens (2003), 183–95; Anabaptists Meeting Muslims, with David Shenk and Linford Stutzman (2005); Is It Insensitive to Share Your Faith? (2005); Evangelical, Ecumenical and Anabaptist Missiologies in Conversation, with Walter Sawatsky and Charles van Engen (2006); Even the Demons Submit: Continuing Jesus’ Ministry of Deliverance, with Loren Johns (2006); Music in the Life of the African Church with Roberta King (lead author), Jean Kidula and Thomas Oduro (2008); Jesus Matters: Good News for the 21st Century, with David W. Shenk (2009); Mission from the Margins (2010); and Forming Christian Habits in Post-Christendom, with Stuart Murray Williams (2011). Krabill is a member of Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, IN. He and his wife, Jeanette, have three adult children and two grandchildren.

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• Frank Fortunato
  Frank Fortunato

  Frank Fortunato has served in music ministry his entire life. After several years of teaching music courses in colleges in the Midwest, he began his ministry with Operation Mobilization, where he served as a music missionary for many years with OM’s mission ships. Following his time on board, Frank completed his master’s studies in ethnomusicology, to which he has more recently added a doctorate in biblical worship. Currently, Frank serves as OM’s International Music Consultant and the vice president for the International Council of Ethnodoxologists (ICE). He is the co-founder of OM’s Heart Sounds International (HSI), a ministry which sends out teams to promote indigenous worship and the arts through seminars, songwriting events, and audio and video recordings of non-Western worship, mostly in restricted parts of the world. HSI teams have released more than fifty audio and video recordings from five continents. Over the years Frank has helped international ministries and networks begin task forces focused on using music and the arts in evangelism and church planting, and has served as a music leader at various global missions gatherings. Based at OM’s USA headquarters in Atlanta, Frank has also done adjunct college teaching on global music, piano, and improvisation. He leads worship at a local church and conducts worship seminars annually with OM India. His publications include All the World is Singing—Glorifying God through the Worship Music of the Nations. He has compiled and edited multilingual songbooks for OM international gatherings. His articles have been published in Christian magazines, missions journals, and electronic music periodicals. Frank’s wife Berit is from Sweden and teaches elementary grades. They have two grown children, one granddaughter, and have adopted two children from India.

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• Robin P. Harris
• Brian Schrag
  Brian Schrag

  Brian Schrag is a Senior Arts Consultant with SIL International. He was SIL's ethnomusicology and arts coordinator from 2006-2019, and founded the Center for Excellence in World Arts at Dallas International University, where he serves as adjunct professor. 
  Brian has worked as a linguist, Bible translator, ethnomusicologist and community arts consultant in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, and holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology (University of California, Los Angeles), an MA in Intercultural Studies (Wheaton College), and a BS in Cognitive Science (Brown University). Brian was vice president of Training and Education on the board of the International Council of Ethnodoxologists (ICE) from 2006-2019, and has been an active member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the International Council of Traditional Music (ICTM) for many years. He writes and presents on such topics as ethnoarts endangerment and revitalization, music criticism, applied ethnomusicology, Central African music, intersections of faith and scholarship, communication theory, and research as love. Brian has performed and recorded albums with Malian artist Cheick Tidiane Seck, Malawian musician Donald Kachamba, and Christian world music band Izibongo. Brian’s life purpose is to enact truth through music, words, and human organization in ways that open profound conversations with God, and to help others do the same. He encourages more people to create more things for more purposes in their communities, and tries to model this in his own life. He thus composes and performs songs for his family, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, and romantic and bluesy occasions. 
  Brian is active in the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, drawing on the arts’ power to spark hope and healing by connecting artists and sufferers of this illness. Brian also integrates off-kilter wit into many of his activities. He loves his wife, Barb, and children Mindy, Austin, and Lydia. 
  

  Visit Global Ethnodoxology Network HERE!

  
  

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