Purpose, Goal and Significance

Purpose

My purpose is to study how music can contribute to understanding the diversity within a community and working towards their transformation into a missional community.

Goal 


My missiological goal is to work with a diverse community and form them for mission.

Significance

This is a story of God valuing, drawing together, uniting and empowering diverse peoples to interact as the one body of Christ, through worship, in order to serve God’s mission in the world. The Apostle Paul describes our purpose as drinking of the one Spirit and sharing in the one baptism, yet retaining a membership of many (1 Corinthians 12:12–14). In developing local expressions of cross–cultural ministry and interaction, my aim was to respect the integrity of contributing cultures. This represented a move away from multiple monocultures towards a model of inter–relational communitas, valuing hyphenated identity and a ‘mixed economy’ of inherited and new forms of church (Williams, Mission, and Public Affairs 2005). 

Inspired by a vision “in which there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free...” (Galatians 3:28), I hear different melodies complementing each other at a holy banquet. As the community of faith discovers its own diversity, it embraces the task of reaching others, respecting difference and rejoicing in the unifying love of God. As identity is contextually reframed, support is needed to respect diversity. Varied worldviews create opportunities for intercultural conversations about hospitality and faith, mission and worship. An intercultural approach invites reflection about pluralistic and post–modern contextual community. This can lead to a new polydoxy, where the one God is understood and worshiped in many ways (Grau 2011, 217–237).

Exploring music–making in liturgy and hospitality, I describe sacred experiences crossing cultural divides. Encouraging groups to sing their own songs, I bear witness to them finding a voice to enter collective and collaborative relationships within a mixed congregation. Music is used as a mediating language to draw different cultures into conversation and a perichoretical dance with God (Mobsby 2008, 28–29).

Using ethnomusicology and anthropology to shape pastoral and liturgical practice, this study documents the journey of four groups as they explore eucharistic worship as an activity of and motivator for mission, challenging the Church to reflect upon itself and its core activities in a missiological mirror.