ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the work of the many people whose decisions shape the musical life of River West – the worship team, worship leader and sound person key among them. River West Christian Church presents a picture of the networks, and accompanying strengths and tensions, that come with Canadian Christian engagement with evangelicalism. The work congregational leaders and members pursued towards engaging River West directly with 'the culture' suggests broader United States American notions of diversity, perhaps more than it recalls post-1960s Canadian multiculturalism. Praise and worship music is a generic term associated with the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s; the newest wave of this music, and the preferred generic term at River West, is 'contemporary worship music'. This music includes, among other repertoires, songs from the Vineyard repertoire and from the set of British worship leaders comprising the 'British invasion'.