This post by a couple visiting a Baptist church in New Zealand refers to the worship leadership there as "curating" the worship.
The wikipedia entry for curator says that it "means manager, overseer." I've always understood a curator as someone who preserves.
Is worship something to be curated?
well if you are the curator of a museum, i guess you oversee the different aspects, relics, milestones, that are important to history, art, science, etc. and make them available for people to see, touch, experience in order to encourage people to become interested, understand, learn about those things . . . so a curator of worship - wow - not a word I would have associated with worship but really encompasses the definition of what the article was talking about and the pictures, the many different aspects of worship, old and new.
Hey Patrick! Thanks for the link. Mark Pierson (who organised the weekend) starts explaining a bit about what he means by 'curating worship' (I believe he came up with the idea) here.
Think less a curator of a museum and more about a shepherd or a kindergarten teacher. A congregation is placed in the care of its ministers.
I highly recommend reading Mark Pierson's new book "The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader". It will explain all of this well.
And I live in Nashville and do a lot of worship curating for some LifeWay events...
I'm also a close friend of Mark's.
I would love to go to coffee and discuss this more if you are up for it.
and to answer your blog's question... YES...Worship events can and should be curated! Most of us are already doing it to some degree, and his book explains it and provides a new language for what most of us are already doing. It's a beautiful thing!