A Private Preview for Liberty University
Welcome & Purpose
Thank you for taking time to review this private preview of the NLW Formation Lab.
This page was created to give you a simple, curated look at the heart of the Lab before our conversation. Rather than asking you to read every page of every resource right away, we wanted to provide a clear overview, selected written samples, and audio previews so you can quickly experience the tone, structure, and purpose of the materials.
As Liberty prepares to pilot the Lab this Fall, our desire is to serve you well and to make the pilot as clear, meaningful, and useful as possible for both students and facilitators.
The NLW Formation Lab is designed to help students understand worship as more than music, more than public leadership, and more than a weekly church experience. Our desire is to help them cultivate a daily life of worship that is rooted in communion with God, expressed through obedience, and carried into the world through love, leadership, and influence.
This preview is not a final public release. It is a private, pre-release look at the materials for prayerful review, feedback, and pilot preparation. We are grateful for Liberty’s willingness to help us refine this formation journey before broader publication and expansion.
NOTE: This page is intended for private review by Liberty University worship leadership and is not a public launch page.
What the Lab Includes
The NLW Formation Lab is built around three connected resources that work together to guide students through a six-week journey of worship-centered formation.
Learning to Worship God
The core teaching book
This book provides the theological and formational foundation for the Lab. It helps students see worship as a whole-life response to God, not merely a song, service, or ministry role. Each chapter explains one major movement of the pathway and helps students understand how worship shapes the heart, transforms daily life, and overflows into influence.
The NLW Pathway Guide
The daily practice guide
The Pathway Guide helps students practice what they are learning. Each week includes a clear formation habit, daily Scripture reflection, simple prayer prompts, and guided opportunities to respond to God. It is designed to help students build consistent rhythms of personal worship in a way that is simple, practical, and spiritually meaningful.
The NLW Pathway Leader Guide
The facilitator and discussion resource
The Leader Guide helps professors, facilitators, and group leaders guide students through the Lab with clarity and confidence. It includes the purpose of the pilot, recommended weekly rhythms, discussion questions, session guides, feedback tools, and practical suggestions for encouraging student engagement without adding unnecessary complexity.
How the Lab Works
The NLW Formation Lab is designed as a simple six-week worship formation journey. It can be used in a class, cohort, worship team setting, chapel-related group, or smaller pilot environment.
Each week focuses on one core formation habit and one corresponding formation result. Students are not merely learning ideas about worship; they are practicing rhythms that help worship become woven into daily life.
The weekly rhythm is simple:
1. Students read one chapter of Learning to Worship God.
Each chapter provides the biblical, theological, and pastoral foundation for that week’s focus. The reading helps students understand why the habit matters and how it connects to whole-life worship.
2. Students practice daily reflection through The NLW Pathway Guide.
The Pathway Guide gives students short daily Scripture readings, reflection questions, prayer prompts, and simple practices. These are designed to take approximately 10–15 minutes per day and help students build consistency without overwhelming them.
3. Students gather weekly for guided discussion.
The weekly gathering gives students space to process what they are learning, share what they are noticing, ask honest questions, and connect the material to their own lives and leadership. The Leader Guide provides discussion questions, session structure, and facilitator notes so the gathering can remain focused, practical, and meaningful.
4. Students identify one next step.
Each week is intended to move toward response. The goal is not simply that students finish a chapter or complete a worksheet, but that they begin to recognize what God is forming in them and how they can respond with greater awareness, communion, obedience, everyday worship, and outward influence.
The Lab is intentionally simple. It does not require a heavy teaching load or a complicated program structure. The goal is to create a repeatable rhythm of reading, personal practice, guided discussion, and real-life application.
For the Liberty Fall pilot, the Lab will guide a group of students through a six-week formation journey. This will allow students to experience the materials, facilitators to observe how the pathway works in real time, and Liberty to provide helpful feedback before broader publication or expansion.
At its heart, the Lab is designed to help students grow in this direction:
See God clearly.
Respond honestly.
Live out worship.
The hope is that students would not only become stronger worship leaders, but deeper worshipers — people whose public leadership flows from a personal life of communion with God.
Student Keepsakes
To help students remember the journey, we are developing two optional keepsakes for the Fall pilot.
The Pathway Bookmark can be used throughout the Lab as a daily reminder of the five movements of the journey and a simple worship prayer.
The Pathway Completion Coin can be given at the end of the Lab as a tangible reminder that worship is not merely something students studied, but a way of life they are called to continue.
Together, these keepsakes are designed to make the experience more memorable, meaningful, and personal for students as they continue learning to love God fully.
Pathway Bookmark / Prayer Card
Pathway Completion Coin (front/back)
Audio Samples
These selected audio samples are provided so you can quickly experience the tone, flow, and heart of the materials without reading every section in full.
Learning to Worship God
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 4
Chapter 6
Pathway Guide
Overview
Week 1
Week 4
The Widening Circle
Leader Guide
Overview
Week 1
Week 4
Written Samples
Click the text links below to open a PDF of each sample.
*Optional T-shirt
Each lab student and leader gets a special discount when purchasing The Pathway t-shirt.
*T-shirt is not included with the lab package contents.
How Liberty Can Help Us Refine the Lab
As Liberty prepares to pilot the NLW Formation Lab this Fall, we are deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn from your students, faculty, and worship leadership context.
At this stage, our desire is not simply to place materials in students’ hands, but to walk through a thoughtful pilot process that helps us make the Lab stronger, clearer, and more useful before broader publication and expansion.
During the pilot, we would be grateful for Liberty’s help evaluating:
- whether the Lab helps students understand worship as a whole-life response to God,
- whether the weekly formation habits are clear, memorable, and practical,
- whether the daily practices in The NLW Pathway Guide are simple and sustainable,
- whether the weekly discussion structure works well in a university worship formation context,
- whether the materials strengthen the connection between personal worship and public worship leadership,
- and what adjustments would make the Lab more effective for future students, worship leaders, and churches.
The goal of this pilot is not perfection. The goal is learning, refinement, and faithful stewardship.
We believe Liberty is an ideal environment to help test and strengthen these materials because of your commitment to training worship leaders who are not only skilled musically, but deeply formed spiritually.
Our hope is that the Fall pilot will serve Liberty students well while also helping us identify what should be clarified, simplified, expanded, or adjusted before the Lab is made available more broadly.
Thank you for being willing to help us steward this formation journey with wisdom, care, and practical insight.
Next Steps
After you have had time to review the samples, we would be grateful for the opportunity to talk with you about how the NLW Formation Lab can best serve Liberty students during the Fall pilot.
As part of the pilot launch, our plan is for Dwayne to come to campus in September 2026 to lead an introductory workshop with worship leadership students and faculty. This workshop would introduce the heart of the NLW Pathway, help students understand the purpose and rhythm of the Lab, and provide a meaningful kickoff for the six-week formation journey.
We would love to hear your initial impressions, answer any questions, and discuss how we can make both the workshop and the pilot experience as clear, useful, and meaningful as possible for students, faculty, and facilitators.
As the pilot unfolds, we would also be grateful for your honest feedback. Your insight can help us strengthen the materials, clarify the process, and make the Lab even more effective before broader publication and expansion.
Thank you again for your willingness to help us steward this formation journey. Our hope is not simply to place another resource in students’ hands, but to help form worshipers who know God deeply, love Him fully, and carry His glory into the world.