An Interview with Rev. Chris Curvin and Worship Media Solutions
By Chris Curvin
Chris Curvin is Pastor for Evangelism at Church of the Palms in Sarasota, FL, USA. Chris leads a "growing" contemporary worship service and is Chair of the Evangelism and New Church Development Committee of Peace River Presbytery, (Southwest Florida). His Worship Team hosts an annual conference on "Inspiring Worship" and has assisted three congregations begin new worship services in 2003.

Janine: Chris, can you tell us about yourself, your family, and your position as a pastor? What is your denomination and/or faith tradition and with what church (and where) are you presently serving? What are some things about your church and your ministry there that would be of specific interest to us?

Chris: I’m the husband of a wonderful artist and mother, Joyce Kenfield, and we have two boys, Will (8), and Ben (5). We have a wonderful family that assists me in all that I try to do as a Christian Pastor.

At the present time I serve as the Pastor for Evangelism of a large 3,000-member Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Sarasota, Florida. I’ve been at Church of the Palms for five years but I’ve been ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for 18 years. I’ve served congregations as Pastor, Executive Pastor, Associate Pastor, Assistant Pastor, and as Youth Director in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I have also served other congregations in Florida, Alabama and in Edinburgh, Scotland. These congregations have varied in size from 150 to over 3000 members.

One interesting thing that may be of interest is that several times every week I talk to people in other churches who want to initiate a new contemporary worship service in a church somewhere. I had telephone calls this week from a lady in Virginia, someone in Indiana, and a man just 20 miles from us in Bradenton, Florida. Its interesting to me at least that it comes up in conversation so often.

I just returned from speaking to a conference gathering of leaders from fifty congregations in Mississippi that have only one church among fifty trying to start a contemporary service. There was only one pastor in my class but it was full of lay people who stayed for hours to talk about starting a contemporary service in their congregation. Probably 90% of these churches had not updated any sound or microphone equipment in 25 years – (more later on this). It is simply amazing to me how hungry people are and how willing lay people are to assist churches and have discussions about starting new worship services to reach people they currently are reaching.

I recently read of a study by Cokesbury that indicated 50% of clergy are dissatisfied with the variety in their worship services. 1 in 3 pastors, without regard to style, say they’d like to enhance worship with visuals. I believe worship is moving beyond the language of whether it’s ‘contemporary’ or ‘traditional’ in style. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has even recently begun holding conferences on ‘emerging worship’ to prove this point. I think this is a good conversation that’s going on and I want to encourage your readers to have this conversation if they aren’t already having it in their churches.

The most interesting thing people learn about me right away is that I grew up in a little town in Tennessee called Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee. The pastor of a Presbyterian Church there invited my family to attend worship during the time my Dad served as the construction superintendent of a new sanctuary for this church. I keep a Polaroid photo of my Dad and I ‘breaking ground’ for that new church.

This congregation, First Presbyterian, is the oldest Christian church in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. I began preaching in my home congregation when I was fifteen years of age. I’ve been preaching now for 28 years!

One morning, the pastor in that church, came to my family’s home and asked me to preach for him when he went on vacation. That moment was a pivotal event in my life. I’m a big believer in marker “pivotal” events in people’s lives as times to seek God’s will and intention for us. I believe that the people, events and places shape us as people of faith. No two people come the same way to Jesus Christ. Once we realize this we begin to be open to new experiences and seek to welcome others into our congregations, (and circle of friendships) whose experience is different from our own.

I believe in unity as a pastor, not uniformity. Think about it… If no two people come the same way to Jesus Christ, why would we offer only one form of worship on Sunday morning? Why not offer a variety of services? One form or style of worship only invites certain people. If my target audience is new people in my community I should then seek ways to welcome them. The worship service being planned should be tailored to my target audience. Many churches fail to identify their target audience in my opinion. Or, they are satisfied with planning and preparing worship for those who grew up ‘churched’. We don’t live in that kind of culture today. Some people still don’t realize how much change has taken place in the last forty years with technology. Some people don’t realize that you can’t make a telephone call from a rotary phone with a credit card any longer. The world has changed but the church hasn’t caught up in its worship of God.

In the beginning of this year I also began serving a new church development (some would name it a “mission church”)in a rapidly growing area known as Lakewood Ranch which is about 20 miles north of my current congregation. I see new worship services and new church developments as key ways of reaching people for Christ. I love the Presbyterian Church (USA) but I also see the need for us, as Presbyterians, to lift up worship that embraces the faith that is common to all people.

I believe with all my heart that the main purpose of the church is to focus on making disciples for Christ. A church that is alive must have a strong mission to obey Christ and return to the Great Commission – to preach, to teach, to baptize, to make disciples. And, I am interested in church growth, not in numerical growth, but in helping people make a connection to a faith community, a living God; to take that next step of faith in their Christian journey

I’ve been very fortunate. In the last ten years alone I’ve been part of two different Presbyterian churches that have welcomed and introduced over 2,000 members into their fellowship. We welcome approximately 250 new members a year into this congregation and about 1/5 of these now come from our contemporary service. There are other large congregations like us but I find Church of the Palms, my current congregation, especially is open to starting new projects and mission efforts.

A SECOND CONTEMPORARY SERVICE WITHIN FOUR YEARS

In two weeks we will start our second contemporary service on Sunday morning. We average over 250 each week now in our contemporary service and after four years and we find that people are looking for more and more for choices in worship. Most people reading this already know people church shop, and in our congregation they can attend two very different styles of worship. Our traditional services are for ‘believers’ and our contemporary service has different ‘target audiences’ in mind. We try to design a service that is ‘user friendly’ and somewhat free of church jargon. We don’t do a lot of announcements and we try to design the service to help those who are ‘unchurched’ (don’t attend at all), ‘under churched’ (those who don’t attend very often), and the ‘dechurched’, (those who have left churches angry or felt they weren’t needed). By the way, I don’t believe every church should offer a contemporary service but there are many who should be offering a second or third service as a mission of the congregation.

I also believe that at Church of the Palms, and every congregation I have ever served, have traditional services that are super, I loved them, but I also like using drama and movie clips, newer, contemporary music and using ‘corporate worship’ as a mission and outreach tool. Willow Creek actually designs worship for ‘seekers’ and ‘believers’. I think Willow Creek is doing something right and that we can learn from them. We aren’t trying in our contemporary worship service to be a ‘little willow creek’ but like ‘Willow’ we are putting lots of energy and creativity in planning and designing worship as a team.

I’ve also discovered in welcoming so many people into church membership that we simply don’t challenge people enough to be involved in mission. When a new member joins their interest is at a peak to be involved. They want more to do than serving as an usher on Sunday morning and attending a committee meeting once a month or arranging flowers or counting attendance!

People may be interested in reading more about Church of the Palms at this point. (They can visit us at www.ChurchofThePalms.org). It is a unique congregation in my opinion. Church of the Palms is a congregation which is ranked 10th in our denomination in terms of attendance to membership ratio. Church of the Palms was organized as a Mission Church 49 years ago and today has over 3000 members. It has enjoyed ten years of growth in membership, attendance, Sunday School enrollment, and giving. We are known as having vibrant worship including a contemporary worship service which includes drama, dancers, signers, keyboard, guitar, drums and multimedia presentations.

Last year we initiated a Contemporary Worship Conference. We had twenty-five congregations attend with almost no advertisement. What I think that we have discovered is that church people are desperate to learn what mainline churches are doing in worship. And, that not everyone is interested in just attending at Willow Creek. We took the attitude that we needed to offer such a workshop because of all the questions we had been getting from churches visiting us and asking us for resources to help them get started. We also felt we had made so many mistakes along the way that we could share ‘what not to do!”

We will host our second workshop in October of 2004 when we are more prepared and we grow and learn more from initiating this second contemporary service in a few weeks.

Janine: Outside of your particular congregation, with what other work or ministries are you involved? Tell us a little about those and how these have changed or influenced your life or your faith. What kind of vision do you have for the future with these ministries?

Chris: Outside my congregation I would have to say that serving as the Chair of our Presbytery’s Evangelism and New Church Development Committee has changed me and involved me a lot in other projects over the last couple of years especially.

When I started providing leadership with this committee it had failed in its goal of producing one new church a year in southwest Florida, which is a rapidly growing region from just South of St. Petersburg, from the Skyway Bridge to Naples. After two years of this committee’s hard work we now have four new church developments on the drawing board as well as one Hispanic NCD and one Brazilian NCD. It has been so much fun to be involved in these efforts. By the way, my bias is that church involvement should be enjoyable for people as should worship. I believe new church development revitalizes existing congregations and helps them ask the question, “What about us?” “Shouldn’t we be growing and reaching out?” “How can we help?”

If we can get excited about building Habitat for Humanity houses in our neighborhoods, why can’t we get excited and building “houses of worship?” People seem to ‘get it’ when I say it this way.

My vision is for the future would involve congregations starting new worship services and building partnerships with one another to start new congregations in this growing area of Florida. These new services and congregations utilize the most effective multi-media and visuals/projection possible… and include the arts! Just imagine that a recent poll suggests that 25% of the American population said that they would attend worship somewhere if invited by a friend. This means that statistically 65 million people are one invitation away from attending a local congregation on a given Sunday. When all these people show up I have a vision that they participate in worship and go “Wow, I can’t believe what I’ve been missing!”

Janine: Chris, since you have encouraged the development of Worship Media Solutions what do some of these leaders have to say about their particular ministry? How has this affected them and their life-in-faith? Where do they see this taking them?

Chris: Worship Media Solutions is a special company that emerged from two members on our worship team trying to respond to multiple requests for help in getting new services started and dealing with existing churches that had outdated multi-media equipment. Okay, let’s be real honest and really basic… Most churches have speakers and microphones that are terribly inadequate and outdated. Even if churches are starting a new worship service they have “dead spots” in their current sanctuary and many churches I’ve visited have speakers that are sometimes twenty to thirty years old.

Steve Lenz and Rick Furrow, two of our worship team members developed this company and are assisting multiple congregations at present.

Steve and Rick also had the benefit of listening to my frustrations as a pastor trying to re-fit an existing church fellowship hall into a worship space. It was terribly frustrating doing this with companies that couldn’t tell me what kind of projection screen or projector they had ordered. The first contractor the church hired to install this kind of equipment was fired. Most proposals from companies were trying to sell equipment to us that we didn’t need and they didn’t understand our goals. They hadn’t been to Willow Creek nor did they understand our overall needs for utilizing wireless microphones and projection monitors for our vocalists. You don’t have to go to Willow Creek but I find it was helpful for me. I go every year to their Arts conference, because it allows our team to observe a congregation that is doing something right in worship and embracing the arts and multimedia. With Rick and Steve we bought the right equipment, keyboard, projector, microphones, sound system the first time and this helped us not to waste time and frustrate our volunteer worship team.

As you know Janine, multi-media equipment is expensive and, if most churches are like mine, we can only afford as good stewards to spend our dollars once on the right equipment that fits our needs. This is what I’ve found in Rick and Steve’s company. Worship is very personal to them and their company has met our needs time and time again in very specific and personal ways. They simply understand the worship needs of congregations. That’s why I encouraged them to have two ads on your website, in the Ecu-minimarket and the classifieds.

Steve Lenz, a WMS representative speaks below and several members of our worship team also wanted to comment to about the growth and enjoyment of our contemporary service at Church of the Palms. Here they are…

Worship Team of WMS

Steve Lenz: This has been an amazing adventure with Worship Media Solutions. Congregations are hungry for enhancing the worship experience for their parishioners. This has been such a rewarding vocation as we have helped congregations obtain the correct equipment for their particular circumstance and at reasonable prices. On March 14, the second church this year will initiate a contemporary worship service. We have worked with them from idea origination to fruition. This is truly exciting ministry. What is equally impressive is that this is definitely a multi-denominational ministry. When you walk into a church and someone on the phone says, “Can you wait a few minutes?” and they tell you they were on the phone talking to a friend about how they might get a video network for their sanctuary, you know this is more than a job, it is a calling.

Leslie Rudden: Hi Janine! My name is Leslie Rudden, and I am the Contemporary Worship Leader for “The Garden” at Church of the Palms. I’ve been here “from the beginning” and may I say it’s been a heck of a ride! As our service enters its fourth year, I look back at what God has done and it blows me away.

When I was hired in early 2000, I was a part of a very contemporary Christian church and was very happy and comfortable there. I had no plans to change that arrangement. However, God had other plans. As a “recovering Catholic,” I was convinced that “traditional religion” was not for me and, frankly, I wondered what I was in for as a Contemporary Worship Leader in a very traditional, very structured Presbyterian church. It was a bit challenging at first, since many of our parishioners were hesitate to “engage” in worship. I still remember, however, the morning we introduced a new song, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, complete with clapping and various arm movements. This audience participation song type of song was the icebreaker for us and, from that moment on, the service began to evolve and grow. I discovered that, if we took our worshipers out of their comfort zone in “baby steps,” they would grow and become more comfortable with a contemporary style without even realizing it. It wasn’t magic…it was God.

I learned and grew as well. I became grateful for my structured and traditional upbringing because, in many ways, it helped me understand where the congregation was coming from, and it has made me a more effective Worship Leader. What a blessing!

Our vocal team has grown from two to more than ten vocalists, and our congregation has continued to grow to the point where we will begin a second service in April. Our “coffee house” atmosphere is very relaxing and, I believe, is a very significant part of this service’s success. The best part, however, is that our congregation is now “fully engaged” and is always willing to experience something new and spontaneous. We continue to grow and stretch ourselves as a team, and I believe our congregation recognizes this and is more open to new and more contemporary experiences. They trust in God, and they trust in us and, in my opinion, it doesn’t get any better than that!

Vicky Mauck: Hello, Janine. I'm a lay leader for the contemporary service. I sometimes do the scripture reading and prayers. I particularly love the spontaneity of our worship team that definitely makes the worship fresh & meaningful. For example, one Sunday Chris asked the congregation (that sounds like a stodgy, traditional word, but I wasn't sure what else to call us!!) to give God a round of applause if we were thankful for what He was doing in our lives. Not only did God get a hearty round of applause, He got a standing ovation . . . rightly so! It's that kind of boldness that is driving me to be more bold for Jesus, to bring honor and glory to the One who is so deserving of all our praise.

Janine: Chris, since this issue is about Lent/Easter and Joy, what is the most meaningful thing that you can share about this season of the church year? Or, what Easter experience do you remember as having the most meaning for you?

Chris: It’s very busy! We have six Easter services on Sunday morning here at Church of the Palms. The most meaningful worship service for me is always the sunrise service on the beautiful beach here in Sarasota. Every year approximately 2000 people gather to proclaim, “Christ is risen”. It’s an awesome experience to have a sunrise service on the beach with so many people coming from all different faith traditions. We just always pray for good weather and no ‘red tide’.

Janine: How do you connect Joy with Easter? How do you connect Joy with your “calling,” your particular ministry?

Chris: I remember a prayer/phrase I learned from Ken Callahan’s book, "Dynamic Worship", that I recall almost every Sunday before leading worship. It goes, “Be at peace… Live in Christ… Have fun!” That’s how I connect joy with my calling to ministry and everything flows from that!

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