Crider equips students to allow Scripture to guide worship

When Trent Broussard, a Doctor of Philosophy student in the School of Church Music and Worship (SCMW) at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, approached Joseph Crider with his dissertation research topic, the dean of the SCMW encouraged him to pursue his topic of interest.

Broussard, who served as a worship pastor for 20 years before beginning as an assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at Williams Baptist University in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, wanted to research inclusion and accessibility in worship for people with autism. For Broussard, the topic is personal as his son, Andrew, who “has perfect pitch” and “a gorgeous tenor voice,” also has autism. Broussard said Crider could see “that it was something that I was very passionate about” and “something that really mattered to me and so it mattered to him.”

Since he began leading the SCMW in 2019, Crider has fostered a commitment to a “really strong biblical understanding of what worship is” while also recognizing that “transformational pedagogy comes with a commitment to relationships, and the development of relationships with our students is key for us in our success,” he said.

Joseph R. Crider has served as the dean of the School of Church Music and Worship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary since 2019.

For Crider, developing relationships with students takes place intentionally, as students gather in his office every Wednesday morning for donuts and prayer. He said students will share requests from friends who cannot join due to class or work. Crider said the faculty of the SCMW sees the care of the students as “stewardship to shepherd them and disciple them, and to care for them and to encourage them because what they get to do when they go out to the church or the mission field or the academy through worship” is “helping facilitate that divine dialogue between the Triune God of the universe and His redeemed people.”

Crider notes students in the SCMW are known by their professors not only because of classroom interaction, but also because of time spent outside of the classroom as students are active in the school’s ensembles, bands, and choirs where their instructors are also the directors. He explained, “The contact with our residential students lends itself to the discipling nature of what’s so vital for us in the culture of our school, in the way in which we lead worship and all those things.”

“Transformational pedagogy comes with a commitment to relationships, and the development of relationships with our students is key for us in our success,” Crider said of the SCMW faculty and students.

The attention given to students in the SCMW was a drawing point for Brock James, a Texas Baptist College student from Arlington, Texas, who is enrolled in the 5-year program, which allows him to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 5 years. James, who currently serves as the interim worship leader at Inglewood Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Texas, said he first met Crider when he was playing the keyboard for a church worship service that Crider was visiting.

Upon learning that James was called to ministry and looking for a place to pursue his education, Crider invited James to lunch and shared about the music program.

“I’d been looking for a degree that shows us how important good music is, and how integral musical theory is, but he focused mostly on the scriptural basis of worship,” James remembered, adding that the “support structure” of the school and that the professors are “incredibly personable” made him choose to study at the SCMW.

While relationships with students in and out of the classroom are important to Crider, so is the curriculum of the school’s degree programs.

When Crider was tapped as the new dean of the SCMW in the summer of 2019, from his then-Kentucky home, he sent an email to the school’s faculty expressing that the school would have “three pillars,” including faithfulness to the Scriptures, musical excellence, and be ministry driven. It was not until he arrived on the Fort Worth campus that Crider learned the three pillars he expressed in modern-day language were the same three foundations Isham E. Reynolds, who founded the music department in 1915, identified in a letter to then-Southwestern Seminary president L.R. Scarborough. Reynolds said the curriculum of the department, which was elevated to a school in 1921, would be based on “spiritual fervor, scholarly and efficient musicianship, and practicality and application” as he outlined.

When Crider was named dean in 2019, he outlined three key distinctions for the SCMW. He would not learn until he was on campus at Southwestern that his distinctions were the same I.E. Reynolds, founder and first dean of the SCMW, outlined in 1915.

Over a century later, Crider seeks to ensure those same foundations continue to guide the school because “the point of our spear, as a school of church music and worship, is to serve the local church,” he explained. Serving the local church includes ensuring students are equipped to serve in the 21^st century.

Cowden Hall, which has housed the School of Church Music and Worship since it was first opened in 1926, includes the original Cherry wooden doors and Victorian-style door locks of the time. However, rehearsal rooms in the building’s basement have been modernized for worship in 2023 to include walls of acoustic and electric guitars of varying sizes, because, as Crider explained, worship leaders may not know how to play an electric guitar, but they must have basic skills to be able to communicate with the electric guitarist. The rehearsal halls, in addition to video technology classes in the school’s programs, allow a worship leader to be equipped to lead worship in the modern era while still harkening to the school’s roots.

In 2021, Crider authored Scripture Guided Worship, a Seminary Hill Press publication that seeks to help worship leaders learn to let Scripture provide the basis for all aspects of the worship service. The lessons he communicates in the book are the same he is imparting in the classroom.

The scriptural basis of worship is important to Crider, who noted “as you follow the worship patterns of the Old Testament and the New Testament, as you follow worship throughout history, there’s just this ever-expanding vocabulary of praise to the Lord” and “the more we realize who He is biblically, the more we see who He has revealed Himself to be, the more worthy He is of our praise.” Crider said he seeks to help the students by “continually pointing them to Christ.”

Chloe Bonner-Ward, a Master of Music in Worship Leadership student from Cedar Hill, Texas, said Crider often asks, “What’s at stake on Sunday mornings?” as a reminder to his students of the importance of corporate worship time.

“Dr. Crider always tries to help us to focus on the centrality of Scripture in worship, and to not take for granted that we have a very limited amount of time with people on Sunday morning,” Bonner-Ward said, adding that Crider reminds the students of the necessity of making certain the lyrical content of the songs, the Scripture passages to be read, prayers, and “everything that’s a part of the liturgy of the service is shaped in a way that they will see the Gospel because that could be your evangelism opportunity.”

Faculty and students meet every Wednesday morning in Crider’s office in Cowden Hall for prayer.

She noted that Crider explains to his students the worship service is an opportunity to show believers “how to worship at home with their families, how to worship in their personal time with God, how to read the Scripture in a way that extracts praise and worship and viewing God rightly and then viewing yourself rightly.”

Crider’s approach has been transformative, even for veteran worship leaders like Broussard who served as a worship pastor for 20 years before he began serving as a university professor. Broussard, who holds a Doctor of Educational Ministry in Christian Worship from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, began studying under Crider at the Kentucky-based seminary in 2016. The Scripture-guided direction Crider taught in the classroom “transformed everything that I was doing,” Broussard said.

Broussard said the “driver” in a worship service “is what our people in our congregations are responding to” which he had not considered previously. He said as Crider “began teaching about worship being a cycle of revelation and response, and God reveals Himself to us in His Word, [and] therefore, the Word of God needs to be the primary driver of our worship gathering” his worship leading and planning was transformed “significantly.”

Making certain that all worship attendees—including those with disabilities—are given the opportunity to respond to God as He is revealed through His Word in worship is the core of Broussard’s dissertation research.

“We are here for the local church and the church is in a crisis right now with a lack of ministers of music,” Crider said, summarizing both the SCMW’s mission and value.

As Crider simultaneously models discipling students and showing them how to plan and lead people to worship God, it is with a forward-thinking mindset that prepares students for contemporary and traditional worship settings while making the Bible central to their leadership.