Citation: Ottaway, Jonathan M. 2023. “I’ll Bring You More Than a Song”: Toward a Reassessment of Methodology in the Study of Contemporary Praise and Worship. Religions 14: 680. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel14050680 Academic Editor: Daniel Thornton Received: 14 March 2023 Revised: 15 May 2023 Accepted: 15 May 2023 Published: 19 May 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article “I’ll Bring You More Than a Song”: Toward a Reassessment of Methodology in the Study of Contemporary Praise and Worship Jonathan M. Ottaway School of Divinity, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; jonathan.ottaway@duke.edu Abstract: In the recent study of Contemporary Praise and Worship (CPW), many studies have focused on musical repertory, including its text, music, and performance, as the foundational text(s) for theoretical analysis. In particular, scholars have relied on lists of the most popular songs that have been reported to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). This essay points out several critical weaknesses in the current overreliance on this methodology and instead contends for two underutilized methodologies—liturgical ethnography and liturgical history—that need to be developed in the scholarship. The essay argues that such a cultivation of methodology will enable the burgeoning scholarship on CPW to gain richer insight into the range of theological meaning expressed in CPW contexts. Keywords: Contemporary Praise and Worship; CCLI; Pentecostal; Evangelical; Free Church; worship; liturgy; liturgical ethnography; liturgical history At the turn of the new millennium, a debate was emerging between liturgical scholars about the study of new forms of worship that were becoming prominent in Free Church 1 contexts. The framing of this debate, particularly in the questions that it raised about methodology and the study of Evangelical and Pentecostal worship, will help to illuminate a prominent methodological trend in recent studies of Contemporary Praise and Worship (CPW), 2 particularly those produced by congregational song scholars. Many of these studies have focused on the text and performance of a pre-defined musical repertory as the foundation of their analysis of the wider phenomenon of CPW. This essay cautions that such a methodology only reveals a small part of the theological framework present in CPW contexts. In response, I argue that new methodologies of liturgical ethnography and liturgical history need to be cultivated in the study of CPW to supplement these studies of musical repertory. 1. Structuralism versus Hermeneutics In 1998, Gordon Lathrop published an essay in the liturgical journal, Worship, called “New Pentecost or Joseph’s Britches? Reflections on the History and Meaning of the Worship Ordo in the Megachurches.” This essay analyzed the worship structure (ordo) of megachurch worship. 3 For Lathrop, this ordo of megachurch worship was a continuing embodiment of the “revivalist” ordo that had become widespread in the nineteenth-century camp meetings on the American frontier (Lathrop 1998, p. 527). The essence of this ordo was (and has remained) a threefold structure of song service (preliminaries), sermon, and “a ‘harvest’ of the converts” (Lathrop 1998, p. 531). 4 For Lathrop, the ongoing practice and popular acclaim of such an ordo was a challenge to the very conceptualization of the Christian church. As Lathrop asked, “is the church centered on individuals and their processes of decision-making”, as megachurch worship is, or should it be rooted in the “concrete and communal means which God has given [i.e., the sacraments], which bear witness to and give the grace of God, and in which God is present?” (Lathrop 1998, p. 533). With the issue thus framed, Lathrop urged the rejection of this megachurch ordo in favor of Religions 2023, 14, 680. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050680 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions