Worship leadership with a difference
Famous for his songs Jesus Shall Take the Highest Honour and Lamb of God, Chris Bowater runs the Worship Academy in Lincolnshire which celebrates its 10th anniversary in September. With centres in the UK as well as around the world, Slipstream spoke to Chris, an acclaimed songwriter, teacher and senior pastor about running worship leadership training courses with a difference….
Working with those who want to train in worship, the idea for the academy came about when Chris, dissatisfied with the way in which worship was being taught, put together a course with Andy Bromley, now worship pastor for a 7,000 strong church in Colorado Springs.
"11 years ago I got dissatisfied with the random nature of worship seminars and teaching on worship," he says. " I only felt like they were scratching the surface…random training means random worship. I took a step back and asked God - "is this the best we can do?"
The course took shape and Chris and Andy started running sessions for 40-50 people at a time. "We didn't run big conferences," says Chris. "We wanted to highlight that worship was an encounter not an event, and to journey with people in an informal mentoring style."
Running through a modular approach, the training at the academy has always been about training people based on why they worship, not necessarily how they do it, according to Chris:
"It is more about building people than building ministries, with the training focus more about why we do worship, not how we do it. We have often become fixated with how it sounds - worship should be something we do 24/7. The 'how' means we get locked into how it sounds and in my opinion that just puts you into a cul-de-sac."
Started in 2001, the academy sees people coming from all over the country to Cliff College in Derbyshire, where weekends with tutors such as Graham Kendrick, Richard Lewis and Dr Stewart Burns teach. There are also other academies run in Romania, Singapore, Texas and South Africa.
Backed and supported by Matt Redman, Tim Hughes and RT Kendall who is also one of the academy's advisers, the approach of training leaders in this style has seen a lot of recognition. Says Chris:
"As a result of the Academy a lot of people have been taken on staff as worship leaders - and that's a real recognition of the value of what we do. Worship training has often been for specialists - worship is for all of us - on the Academy it's not just for practitioners, it's for congregation members."
Many going through the academy have seen great success with Sandra Godley winning the Gospel Entertainment 
award for best female newcomer in 2005 as well as a whole host of people being worship leaders at churches, including Berni McAvoy, now also academy Ireland leader and Danny Oates, academy leader in the UK.
For more information visit www.worship-academy.com. Watch the video below for the story of the journey of Worship Academy.
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