DIU faculty member Dr. Beth Argot recently received her third Vital Worship Teacher/Scholar Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Beth serves as Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in World Arts, as well as its PhD Coordinator, Arts and Trauma Healing Coordinator, and Assistant Professor. Simultaneously, Beth is conducting groundbreaking cross-disciplinary research to explore practices engaging pilgrimage, movement, and the arts for trauma healing, to encourage more holistic worship practices using the arts in corporate worship. The Vital Worship Grant will allow her to continue this research.
Ever since Beth came to Dallas International University, the DIU community has had a front-row seat to the impact of her work. She used her first Vital Worship grant to implement a year-long program in DIU’s chapel exploring contextualized historical worship practices. Using the arts in worship, students, faculty, and staff learned how to approach God in ways they weren’t used to, such as contemplative practices. To this day, DIU incorporates a wider variety of arts and worship practices in its chapel program, Transform, than most churches or university chapels do. Our corporate worship is richer for it.
Beth’s first grant also provided for the DIU Prayer Path/Labyrinth behind the CEWA building, installed by the ILC landscaping team. Paved with carefully placed stones bordered by trees and plants, the prayer path allows community members to incorporate physical beauty and movement into their worship of our beautiful and active God. At the end of the prayer path is a circle of benches, which will one day bear a collaborative mosaic depicting a world map—then the project will truly be finished. In the meantime, the DIU community has already learned to love our unique prayer path.
With her second Vital Worship Teacher/Scholar Grant, Beth researched the parallels between historical worship practices and arts and trauma healing practices. She began writing a book about whole-brain worship, exploring how arts in corporate worship facilitate healing and well-being. Beth shares that the book has been tricky to write. While it draws on various technical disciplines such as neurobiology and psychology, its intended audience is church and worship leaders, so it must also be accessible outside academia. She hopes that, as a result of her research, churches will begin to order their corporate worship with healing in mind.
Beth’s most recent grant will allow her to put the finishing touches on the research for her book. She will be looking more specifically at the role of movement in worship, a component of practices such as pilgrimage, dance, and even raising one’s hands while singing. We at DIU look forward to hearing sneak peeks of her findings during chapel talks and class discussions, and we hope that you will read her exciting research as well once it is published.
Learn more about how you can use local arts to impact communities by earning a Graduate Certificate in World Arts, MA in World Arts, or a PhD in World Arts from Dallas International University.
