Bluefield College and the Baptist General Association of Virginia are partnering to meet the needs of churches and their congregations.
Bluefield and the BGAV are co-sponsoring a Church Music Certificate Program designed to train and better equip volunteer and bivocational music ministers through courses offered on site and via video teleconferencing in Bluefield and Roanoke.
The pilot project and cooperative effort between Bluefield College and the BGAV will feature four separate courses with the opportunity to earn four separate certificates in “Understanding and Energizing Worship,” “Reading Music: Translating What you See into Sound,” “Organizing for Music Ministry” and “Survey of Resources for the Church Musician.”
“The majority of musicians leading music ministries in our churches today are serving sacrificially as volunteers or as bivocational ministers,” said Bryant Moxley, an assistant professor of music at Bluefield College. “This Church Music Certificate Program is designed to help equip these music ministers—the volunteer choir leader or the bi-vocational music director—for the ministry God has called them to.”
Each of the four courses will run eight weeks with students meeting one night a week. All eight sessions within each course must be completed to earn an individual course certificate. However, completing all four courses is not a requirement to earn individual course certificates. In other words, a student may enter the Certificate Program at the beginning of any one of the four courses.
The first course, “Understanding and Energizing Worship,” will run Mondays for eight weeks, Jan. 22 through March 12, from 7 to 9 each night at class sites in Roanoke and Bluefield. This course will be taught by Jake and Kim Roudebush. He is minister of music at North Roanoke Baptist Church, and she is an adjunct instructor of music at Bluefield College. The text for this course will be The New Worship: Straight Talk on Music and the Church.
The second course, “Reading Music: Translating What You See into Sound,” will run Mondays for eight weeks, April 16 through June 11 (with the exception of Monday, May 28, Memorial Day), from 7 to 9 each night at class sites in Roanoke and Bluefield. This course will be taught by Susan Allen, instructor of music at Bluefield College and music minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Bluefield, W. Va.
Course three, “Organizing for Music Ministry,” will run Mondays for eight weeks, Sept. 17 through Nov. 5, from 7 to 9 each night at class sites in Roanoke and Bluefield. This course will be taught by Moxley and his wife, Lisa. She also is an instructor of music at BC. Together, they are co-ministers of music at First Baptist Church in Bluefield, W. Va.. The text for the third course will be Church Music in Today's World.
The final course offering, “Survey of Resources for the Church Musician,” will run Mondays for eight weeks from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the early part of 2008 with specific dates to be determined. The course instructor will also be announced at a later date.
Cost for each of the four eight-week courses is $100, but scholarship assistance is available, thanks to the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. Clergy and lay leaders who have a financial need and are endorsed by a BGAV church will be eligible for assistance.
“We want to help our music ministers proclaim the gospel and equip believers through music ministry in their local churches,” added Moxley, who is collaborating with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board's Tom Ingram to direct the program.
Participants must register for the first course no later than Jan. 18. For more information regarding courses or registration, contact Moxley at (276) 326-4248 or at bmoxley@bluefield.edu.