Participant Feedback from Research Experiment Where Contemporary Sacred Choral Music was Introduced into a Charismatic Evangelical Worship Setting
Description
This research experiment aims to establish whether Contemporary Sacred Choral Music can benefit the believer’s engagement with God in Charismatic Evangelical worship. It was hypothesised that by introducing specifically composed choral music into a Charismatic Evangelical worship setting, the congregations’ worship would be enhanced. In order to investigate this, a control Charismatic Evangelical service with band-led worship at St Philips and St James Church was observed on 10th June 2018, and participant feedback was collected through participant response forms with a single task: 'describe how you engaged with God in the service and explain how music affected that engagement’. An experiment service, which followed typical Charismatic Evangelical liturgy, was also put on with worship music led by both a band and a choir, who sang specifically composed and arranged Contemporary Sacred Choral Music. The event took place at the London School of Theology’s chapel on 20th June 2018, and a substantial and target advertising campaign was undertaken to ensure that the event was attended by Charismatic Evangelical Christians. At this event, after the service, participant feedback was collected through one of three methods: a participant response form with a single task, ‘Describe how the choral elements of the service affected your engagement with God and explain how this differs from what you are used to’; an audio free space (a small room with a recorder where participants could verbalise their responses to the same task as the response form); and two semi-structured participant interviews with experts in the field, a pastor and a church's head of music. The findings of the experiment's response forms and audio free space produced similar results. When these two methods were analysed, they broadly suggest that choral music was beneficial. The reasons that participants gave for this benefit was then categorised as either being because it created space to engage with God, it enhanced the words and theology of the worship music, it enhanced a feeling of fellowship, or because of ‘transcendent beauty’. The final category incorporates comments relating to participants’ aesthetic appreciation and/or transcendental engagement. The participant interviews broadly supported these findings with in-depth examinations of ‘transcendent beauty’. Whilst the first three categories were also mentioned by participants in the control service, there was no mention of ‘transcendent beauty’. This suggests that, in the experiment service, the specifically composed Contemporary Sacred Choral Music uniquely benefitted the participants’ worship through ‘transcendent beauty’.