Zack: Today I am joined by Ryan Flanigan, worship director at All Saints Dallas, and co-founder of the music collective Liturgical Folk. To get to know you a bit, I was wondering if you could take us through your background in the Christian faith, and where music comes into the picture.

Ryan: Sure. I was born into the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, Irish Catholic family. But my parents left the Catholic Church and joined a Pentecostal church when I was three years old. So I was raised in this Pentecostal church, which was a very musical church. Our music minister was wonderful, and with him being Pentecostal, the emotive participation in music was of very high value. And Doug, the music minister, was with the times as far as the development of praise and worship music in the church coming out of Hosanna, Integrity and Vineyard music. So I grew up on those songs in a very expressive and charismatic environment. He sort of unintentionally taught me what church music was. Then, when I was a late teenager, I traveled with a singing group out of California called the Celebrant Singers. I spent about a year with the Celebrant Singers, and this was sort of my reintroduction to the liturgical world and to more refined music in the church. You might call it “sacred” music versus the “praise and worship” music that I grew up on. And I love that. I love particularly the visual aesthetic that aided us in our worship in the Roman Catholic Church. And when I finished with the Celebrant Singers, I moved back to Chicago and became the music minister of the church that I grew up in for a short time.

Zack: About how old were you when that happened?

Ryan: I was around 19, 20 years old. From there I moved to Dallas, Texas in 2000 to attend Christ for the Nations Institute, which is a very charismatic Bible college in Dallas. I'd say that developmentally in my own musical journey, my musical chops increased by tenfold. Just being around musicians, playing in the dorm rooms, in the hallway, the stairwells, leading worship every day, sometimes all night long—it was an incredible season of immersion in that kind of musical environment. From there I went to Dallas Baptist University to get my bachelor's degree, and that's when I really started enjoying the intellectual pursuit of the Lord. And so from there I went to seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. By this point, I'm 24 years old. I had been through the Roman Catholic Church, Pentecostal church, back in the Roman Catholic Church, back in the charismatic world. Then I went to a Baptist University while I attended a Presbyterian church, and then led worship at a nondenominational church. Then I went to an Evangelical Free seminary and attended a Vineyard church while I was there. So I experienced quite the spectrum of music and theology in the church. I'd say those were the most formative years.

Zack: Wow—did any one of those environments feel more at home to you than the others?

Ryan: No—there was very valuable pieces to each of those. Maybe when I was 30 years old, I started to think about and reflect on all the good that I experienced in each of those traditions. But what I was longing for was a church where I could be a “charismatic evangelical Catholic”. I couldn't find one until I got to study with Bob Webber, who coined the term “ancient future worship.” He was Episcopalian, and he described “Convergence Christianity”: evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and Catholicism all coming together. He thought that the Anglican world was perhaps the most generous pool to allow people like me to fully embrace the Holy Spirit, the holy Scriptures and the holy sacraments. That's how I ultimately ended up then in the Anglican world where I, for the first time in my life, do feel at home.

Zack: So you've been in the Anglican Church for about four years now?

Ryan: Four and a half years, yes.

Zack: So what has been unique about your musical experiences in the Anglican church so far?

Ryan: The biggest thing that I've learned and appreciated in this kind of church is that the music serves the liturgy. The music doesn't stand apart from the liturgy and serve as a liturgy, in and of itself. We're not trying to create a separate time in which, through music, we are leading people into an experience of God. Rather, the liturgy is. So we do 12 to 14 songs in a worship service, interspersed throughout the entire liturgy. We have a block of songs for worship, and just being in the presence of the Lord. Then we have offertory songs, eucharistic prayers, communion songs, dismissal songs—I am still pinching myself four and a half years later to be in this tradition where music is used in this way.

Zack: It sounds like within this tradition, rather than just having its eight minute chunks at the start and end of the service, the music not only is integrated through the whole worship service, but also serves a greater purpose of the liturgies themselves.

Ryan: Yeah, it is more than just preparing people for a sermon. That was my experience up to this point in the nondenominational world. Everything revolved around the sermon. In the Anglican world, it's very different.

Zack: How then has your experience in the Anglican church shaped the work that you're doing with Liturgical Folk?

Ryan: Well, a month into my job here at All Saints Dallas I met Father Nelson Koscheski, who was a retired priest. He reached out to me with a poem that he had written, and that sparked our collaboration. We then continued writing hymns together (and we’ll get into that project later). As a melodist myself, I have found amazing lyrical content in the ancient hymnals and prayer books of the Anglican church. People who were much closer to Jesus and smarter than me have written these words way better than I could. For the first three years here, I would set these beautiful prayers to music—prayers for the liturgy, for morning and evening—for my family. I found I was much more likely to pray with my children if we actually sang the prayers together. So I started writing very simple melodies for the historic prayers—the Lord's Prayer, the 10 Commandments, table graces. As we were entering into the Anglican tradition, it was so important for our spiritual formation as a family.

Zack: That's beautiful. As you enter into worship with not only your family but also with your church, how has your congregation received the new melodies you’ve written for these ancient texts?

Ryan: Really well. I tend in my own creativity towards contemplative, quiet music. And at times the things that I write are a bit too reflective, maybe “artistic” for congregational singing. Our congregation is beginning to participate a little bit more smoothly in the act of participation by listening, appreciating something that's beautiful, even if it means they don't necessarily sing along to it. Having 12 to 14 songs in a worship service gives us a little bit more freedom to experiment, to lean into the “artistic” side of things, if you will.

Zack: You were talking about making space within the service just for listening and for contemplation. There are times when I carry a grief or a burden into a worship service, and I don't necessarily want to get up and rejoice. I'm wondering what the fruits have been in inviting people to join in worship, but also giving them space to sit and just be.

Ryan: You're exactly right that not everybody comes into a worship service ready to just jump in and praise the Lord with all their heart. That's probably a pretty extreme minority of people who are ready to do that before you even get to the church. A friend of mine, David Fitch, says there’s three types of worship service. One is “worship as pep rally,” where you walk in, the band gets going, and it’s "All right everybody, let's get on our feet and praise the Lord!" That works for the Christian who has been kindling their romantic feelings for the Lord all week long. But that doesn't work for the person who's really suffering and struggling.

The next one is “worship as a lecture hall,” where everything revolves around the sermon. The extent to which you accumulate intellectual understanding of the Bible is the extent to which you have connected with God in worship.

The third is “worship as spiritual formation,” where the practices of worship train us to become people who do life with God and mission in the world. For example, confession—confessions of sin, of praise, of faith. These practices of worship actually train us to become the kinds of people who both proclaim the truth in our lives and recognize the truth when it is spoken in our lives.

In this kind of environment, music has a much more holistic role. If you're using music at a time of confession, you're not going to sing "Praise the Lord, hallelujah, glory to God in the highest!" You're going to use a psalm of lament, right? You're going to play something more reflective, maybe even in a minor key, to assist worshipers in getting in touch with what's deeper in their hearts.

Zack: Right—it also reassures the congregation that their feelings, their emotions, are okay. It’s okay to be sad, to suffer, because those emotions and experiences are welcome.

Ryan: Yup. It's normal. In certain churches you hear “Welcome to church! Leave your baggage at the door, and let's worship the Lord.” And it's like, "No, bring that to the altar." Bring it to the table of the Lord where God can meet you in the midst of your sadness, and fill your heart with hope. If you check your burdens at the door, it turns into despair when you pick it back up. You still may be dealing with it in your life, but isn't that the cruciform life? Isn't that what Jesus calls us into? It's exactly what Paul is trying to teach the Corinthians: joy in the midst of suffering.

Zack: Exactly. It almost seems like the worship service is there to be this illustration that we can enter into, which reassures us of the holy tension of joy and hardship we walk in our lives. As a worship director, what is your vision for congregational worship? Where do you feel like we currently are as a church, and what is your hope for where we could go?

Ryan: It occurred to me recently that there's sort of a fundamental difference between a Christian and a non-Christian—it's the physical embodiment of praise. What do you do with what's happening in your life? You either praise the Lord, or you don't. You either turn your heart to the Lord and acknowledge him, or you don't. I'm not talking about thanksgiving only, thanksgiving is easy for people to do. But with everything that happens in your life, is your inclination to turn to the Lord in praise?

And with that sort of basic approach to this question, that gives me a little bit more optimism towards the forms of worship that I don't necessarily “agree” with, especially that we see in America, this kind of consumer, pragmatic church world. There are thousands of people who have at least enough energy, vision, and trust to come into the house of God and to praise the Lord. I just want to look at that and say there is a big group of people who are praising the Lord. It makes me a little less critical of the particularities about how people are worshiping.

Zack: For musicians and worship leaders, how would you suggest we meet congregations where they are in their worship practices, while inviting them into new forms of worship?

Ryan: I think that there is a greater and increasing openness in the church towards beauty, and the rediscovery of what our bodies do in worship. The physical and the sensory are actually important. I'm also seeing much more thought and intentionality around the inclusion of the sacraments in worship, which I believe is the gateway to the reintegration of the engagement of the senses in worship. Sacraments are the “on-ramp” for the arts to come back into the church, because it involves all of the senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, hearing. It's God acting upon us in a way in which all of our senses are engaged. The reinclusion of the sacraments in our worship brings our bodies into our intellectual and emotional encounter with the Lord.

Zack: I know we haven't talked much yet about Liturgical Folk, but it does feel like this melding of rediscovering the past while looking forward in our worship is the work that Liturgical Fok is doing. The project not only celebrates these ancient texts, but is also a celebration of a diversity of musical stylings and artists. It’s exciting to arrive at Liturgical Folk through a sort of back-door of discussing your vision of worship.

Ryan: Yeah, you're exactly right. I would hope that in the conversation we've had up to this point, there would be a natural kind of understanding of why we are doing Liturgical Folk. It's because we are liturgical creatures. To quote James K. A. Smith, we are not primarily thinking creatures, we are primarily desiring creatures. We know that we are because we love. We direct our love towards things, and the liturgy intends to shape and change our desires, to direct our love towards Jesus. Music speaks to a much deeper level of our humanity than just our minds—it speaks to our liturgical nature. So our hope is that when people listen to the music of Liturgical Folk, they're going to have an unconscious kind of reception of it. Something's going to be happening much deeper within them than they are able to articulate with their mouths and brain. We call Liturgical Folk “the music in the bones.” It's the music that just comes up from the ground of a place, because the ground is the Lord's. When we put our ear to the ground and listen, we attempt to reflect that sound to other humans.

Zack: Wow—that vision is so beautiful. It's so exciting to hear it coming to life through the work that you all are doing. Could you tell us what's down the road for Liturgical Folk?

Ryan: Sure—we're going to record two more volumes of music this July, an Advent album, and a Psalms album. We're about halfway towards our $50,000 fundraising goal. I wrote a little waltz on the Advent album for Father Nelson Koscheski in memory of him because all of the songs are his text. Hopefully Advent will come out November 1st, and Psalms will come out January 31st. By then, we will have reached our goal of releasing six volumes of new liturgical music in three years. We'll see what happens after that.

Zack: Excellent. So one final question: if you had an encouragement or challenge for Christians in the arts, what would it be?

Ryan: The encouragement is that there was a time when the best art in the world was coming out of the church. The Christian story was the defining narrative for art, at least in the Western church and in the eastern Orthodox Church. When I first connected with Isaac Wardell, our producer, the first thing that we really connected on together was this vision to make sacred music good enough that non-Christians would want to listen to it. And I remain committed to that, and I encourage other artists to do the same.

To learn more about Liturgical Folk, visit LituricalFolk.com. You can also read their recent profile in Christianity Today.