Worship—Dr. Smith's Way
Randy Bonser
January 1, 1997
Imagine a world where the only music is rock 'n' roll, the only visual art found in sensational advertisements and greeting cards, the only sculpture on the hood ornaments of cars,
and the only universally appreciated writing in monosyllabic action films.
Then stop imagining and look around. Minus the church, this is America as we know it—where the only arts to thrive are those self-supported by commercialism. And maybe the conservative pundits are right and that's the way it should be. Maybe the world without the fine arts is a stronger, less welfare-minded world.
But there are some churches who disagree, and who are putting forth a valiant effort to save the "old-fashioned" arts of classical music, voice training, woodwinds, and string competency, painting for beauty's sake, and the dramatic arts. Dr. Jerry Smith, worship director at the five-thousand-member Ward Evangelical Presbyterian Church in suburban Detroit, is at the helm of one such church trying to take back God's gift of art from its erstwhile home in the secular world.
Ward Church's School of Sacred Arts is only a fledgling eight years old, but in that time close to a thousand students have taken advantage of very moderately priced individual instruction in musical and visual media that have been all but extinguished from public schools and popular venues.
As one grown tired of the artless monotony of the shallow worship choruses now becoming standard in my evangelical Protestant tradition, I value the training in choral music and general music theory I have received at the austere but loving hand of Dr. Smith. He has been music and worship director at Ward Church for thirty years, the last ten full-time, and he is one of the leading advocates of "blending" ...
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