He saw many great-hearted worship leaders, songwriters, musicians, techs, artists and creative leaders in local churches around the world who were simply not getting the kind of deepening training that other kinds of church leaders were getting. At the same time, he saw the tremendous impact worship leaders, musicians, songwriters and artists were having both on the Church and the culture of the 21st century.

He felt the weight of our call to be a missional community in the world, worshiping passionately but also doing justice, loving mercy and standing up for the oppressed. He felt the burden to call fellow creative leaders, the artists of the Church, to live incarnationally – to live a sacramental life that expressed worship at every turn and deeply impacted the culture around them.

Empower the creative leaders.

“The creative leaders in the Church, and outside of the Church, have tremendous influence. If I’m going to participate in deepening the reflection of the worship leaders and songwriters of this generation, I have to get further study myself,” Dan decided.

Dan’s early faith and worship leadership was formed in United Methodist circles and then in multi-denominational student groups on university Campuses (such as Penn State University and Messiah College). After years of working in construction, teaching and leading worship in Youth With A Mission (The Academy Of Performing Arts), he became a worship pastor in the Vineyard Movement.

Afters 15 years of leading worship in the Vineyard movement, recording CDs (about 10 to date) and traveling as a conference speaker and communicator cross-denominationally on worship and creativity – but now he knew he had to push the pause button on his activities.

Taking time out to learn.

Originally from Pennsylvania, USA, but having lived and worked as a worship leader and pastor in Ontario for 15 years, Dan and his family set off for eastern Canada, to live in the Oceanside Atlantic province of New Brunswick. It was here that he attended, and connected deeply, with St. Stephen’s University (SSU), and the rich and vibrant Christian learning community that had risen there over decades.

At SSU, he continued to cultivate his love of worship, creativity and the friendships with influential voices that had flourished through the years, as he studied ancient Christian spirituality, spiritual theology, church history, spiritual formation and the nature of incarnational leadership.

Finishing his Masters, and after years of creating numerous training DVDs, audios and resources with Vineyard Music, editing Inside Worship magazine, and leading worship and speaking at literally hundreds of conferences, seminars and events in various streams of the Church, Dan decided that what worship influencers of today really needed were gathering points for laughter, co-creativity, interaction and shared learning.

Unique learning forums optimal for artists.

They needed, in his estimation, foundational theological, spiritual, creative and even historical development in understanding the nature of the called worship leader.

Ideas in creativity, anthropology, theology, Trinity, resurrection, New Creation, postmodernism, Ignatian spirituality, history, symbolic actions, art, justice, mission and more would need to find their way in to the average worship leader’s/artist’s consciousness – framing not only their view of God, but also of the people they were leading in gathered worship expressions.

Songwriters would need to begin to think well theologically, and church pastors of worship would need to be reflective in their language related to music, symbols, communion, architecture and more.

Connecting with performing artists as well, Dan began to coin the term “worship artisan,” speaking of the type of worship leader most desperately needed in a postmodern word – a leader who understood worship deeply, but also the arts, justice, mission, history and cultural interface.

To engage fully with the historic role of the worship leader and creative artist, they would need tools, resources, programs – all that were optimally designed for their unique learning style.

He saw the need to build online resources to give access to the most remote churches in all corners of the world. He saw the need to build online courses, bring live encouragement over the internet, and make inaccessible voices accessible.

He saw the need to create interactive online courses that could be taken as seminars, but also to build leaders all the way to a Master Of Ministry Degree if they wanted to drill down deeper into the heart of Worship and Spiritual Formation.

The birth of a worship learning community.

In other words, they needed an accessible learning community – one in which they could support one another, and connect with any worship leader in a local church, anywhere in the world. Dan saw a vision of youth worship leaders, small group worship leaders, main session worship leaders, recording artists, songwriters and pastoral influencers gathering in circles around the fires of worship.

Drawing on friendships, interviews and resources created over the past 20 years, Dan the partnered (and still does) with St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, Canada with his Worship And Arts Institute, offering roundtable, creative undergraduate and Masters programs optimally designed to nurture creative leaders in the Church. Presbyterians, Charismatics, Baptists, Vineyard, Pentecostals, Anglicans, Independents and more began to attend these courses as worship leaders with a view of the past, present and future.

With rich learning experiences among worship leaders of varied experience levels bubbling, a new experiment was then undertaken – could we take this interactive, roundtable, 3 Voice Learning Model (learn more about this here) online to reach worship leaders and worshipping communities around the world?

Could decades of hearing pastors and churches talk about the great need for accessible worship resourcing for their local worship leaders and teams actually have a resolve?

A friend and partner.

While teaching at the university, Dan began a dialogue with longtime friend Kim Gentes. Kim was a worship leader in Phoenix that was also a part of the Vineyard movement. He also happened to be the founder of WorshipMusic.com – the world’s largest online retailer of worship music, and WorshipTeam.com – Dan’s favorite online worship planner.

Kim’s expertise shined in the arena of worship leadership, technology, software development and business. Dan’s expertise shined in the arena of online and live worship training, and university level development for artistic leaders – and was now being invited to partner with in resourcing the worshiping Church of the 21st century.

After many conversations, it was clear to both of them that God was orchestrating a global reach for Dan’s work, the Institute’s mandate, and the new WorshipTraining.com. Dan and his family moved to Nashville, Tennessee in August of 2009.

WorshipTraining.com was born.

Essentials worship courses reach across the globe.

The world of the Essentials Seminars was born. The core modules, BLUE – Worship Theology with N.T. Wright, RED – Worship History with Robert Webber, and GREEN – Worship Values with Dan and others, were launched into the world.

Worship leaders and teams from around the world began to gather. Synergy was formed around vital content – BLUE and N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian lifted the language of heaven, resurrection, Trinity and salvation into a powerful, compelling story. RED and Webber’sAncient-Future Time invited worship leaders back into the timeless worship languages of holidays, worship spaces, symbols like communion and baptism, architecture and more. GREEN and its focus on Worship leadership values came into central focus again – transforming song leaders into called, spiritual disciple-makers.

The Essentials course, along with its vibrant international online learning community has now matured, and added many fresh resources to its training. We gather across many nations, denominations and traditions in worship for bi-weekly Spiritual Formation Devotionals, live guest Main Sessions and Breakouts, Musician’s Networks, a Creative Commons and in many other forums.

The incarnation of the WorshipTraining Campus and Cafe.

What began as a dream is now in its maturing state in the form of the brave new world of WorshipTraining.com. WorshipTraining.com is now a powerful online “Conference in the Cloud,” designed for churches to build their worship training around for all of their leaders and teams.

Partnering with influential Contributing Friends across the past 20 years of worship expression in the contemporary Church, working side by side with Kim Gentes of WorshipTeam.com in Nashville, TN, USA, WorshipTraining.com is uniquely poised to serve the online training and community needs of worship leaders and communities worldwide.

To date, thousands of worship leaders and worship influencers have been involved with our live calls and live events, and hundreds are directly connected with our WorshipTraining.com Learning Community.

Friends such as WorshipCentral, WorshipMusic.com, MediaShout.com, WorshipTeam.com, TheWorkOfThePeople.com, St. Stephen’s University, Duke University and others add richness to our mandate – to create powerful online training platforms for worship and creative leaders across the church.

We welcome you, now, to be a part our story at WorshipTraining.com.

The Conference is waiting for you. Register here today.

We are an international, interdenominational collective of lifelong learners focused on worship and creativity.

We’ve joined together to intentionally grow, learn and develop in the arena of creativity, theology, history, mission and spirituality. We are devoted to growing deep and wide as worshippers in this generation – and to prepare the way for the next centuries of worship leadership, creative influence and cultural impact.

We are made up of worship leaders (main session, youth, small group, children), worship musicians and tech leaders (drummers, keyboard players, bass players, media team leaders, etc.), songwriters (in all genres), worshipers (desiring spiritual formation), pastors (adult, youth, small group, children’s) and artists (performing artists of all genres) from over 30 countries and many denominations.

As a lifelong Learning Community, we quest to be a nexus where the past, present and future of worship, and the worshiping Church’s impact on culture, meet. We draw on the riches of worship past, the energies of worship present, and the possibilities of our worship future – in all of our learning.

We are equipped by Contributing Friends from all spectrums of the 21st century Church, including influential scholars, worship leaders, writers, spiritual directors and artists from many streams.

We are committed to walk and learn together, across a lifetime, for the sake of this generation of worshipers and the generations to come.

We are engaged in our primary Learning Community experience through online technologies. This enables us to reach deeply into almost any area of the world today, while at the same time experiencing both a sense of personal contribution to the learning community and receiving from the learning community.

We host live training forums that form artists, worship leaders and creative influencers for cultural impact, both within and outside of the Church. Our Master Of Ministry Degree, Certificate Program and other live events are optimally designed to develop the creative leader.

We are a Learning Community with a membership, for those who care deeply about worship – we are not primarily a product or event.

Our participants want to add value to one another’s leadership and worshiping community life. In that spirit, we will always seek to be generous toward one another and to share our insights with one another.

We want to highlight the “best of the best” insights into worship for 21st century faith communities. We will work diligently to maintain a broad voice – engaging with leaders and ideas from liturgical streams, contemporary streams, emerging streams and all corners of the Church. For that reason, the training we highlight will feature many types of voices from differing perspectives.

We will graciously learn together, both from those with whom we agree, and from those with whom we do not.

We will turn all of our learning into innovative and creative missional service toward the worshiping Church, the waiting culture, and the purposes of God in our generation.

We are the WorshipTraining.com Learning Community, and we welcome you to join us.

$50 off. The Conference is waiting for you. Register here today.