CCUC Worship Arts

The Story Up to Now
Starting in late May and early June 2009, there was a gradual realization that a substantial number of people within the Chinese Christian Union Church’s English congregation are gifted in creative arts. These people may be serving on the worship team, may have found outlets in the recent videos and other elements shown during Sunday services, or even may not have been discovered yet.

Realizing that, as a church, we have not been encouraging and growing the artists that are among us, the English leadership team has proposed starting a new ministry that focuses on the interaction between worship and arts, named “Worship Arts Ministry”.

Simultaneously the English worship team, dealing primarily with the use of music in worship, were discovering the importance of feedback in the encouragement and growth of members in both their artistic gifts and their leading ability. Up until this point, feedback was only exchanged between leaders, and from leaders to team members. We were overlooking the encouragement and constructive criticism that could come from so many other viewpoints, e.g. worship team members who participated in the worship service as an attendee and may not have been on stage. Additionally, wisdom could be gained just from hearing ourselves via a recording.

Why and How?
Artists grow the most when feedback, comments, and constructive criticism can be given to and received from other artists, so this was definitely something we wanted to have across all arts. We thought hard about the best way to facilitate this while ensuring that the culture we are establishing will be loving, kind, and encouraging, in order to propel the people involved to greater and better things for the glory of God.

The evolving and growing community of the CCUC Worship Arts Ministry would be nothing without the inspiration, passion, and participation of its members. After meeting with the worship leaders and planners, a website seemed to be a useful tool in which encouragement and feedback can be exchanged. The website is only one tool among many other aspects that will help us appreciate each other, grow with each other, and spur each other on as brothers and sisters in Christ and as artists. The website will serve as a centralized location for a group as diverse as ours.

However, concerns were raised that dealt with comment moderation, site access, and the learning curve of how to offer appropriate feedback in a way that is useful and helpful, but not hurtful. As these concerns were discussed, other possibilities for the website emerged, including: resources, articles, devotionals focused more on the arts, commentaries, training materials, etc. We would like this website to be a community where even though we are involved in so many other CCUC activities, we can get encouragement, resources, feedback, and comments from all CCUC artists.

In short, we wish to be accountable to the congregation and to each other, and also disciplined in our practice.

We Invite You
We invite you to use this site for encouraging others and growing yourself. We also covet your participation, input, and suggestions for making the site better.

Your participation is crucial
***We encourage everyone with thoughts or feedback for past Sundays to please post it as soon as possible so you don’t forget the details.

***Please experiment with posting comments, replying to comments, and exploring the site. It is already populated with some good content such as recordings from past Sunday worship services, commentaries on worship and the arts, and other community questions we would like to see everyone involved in. If you have something you want to contribute as an entry, by all means register on the website and ask the leaders for contribution rights.