The Homogenization of Ideas

Many years ago, when my life was more about music than about books, I met a girl — name truly forgotten — who had written a children’s musical that she hoped I could help her get published. Despite the fact that I worked in the broadest sectors of the Christian music industry, my interest lay more in breaking new territory for contemporary Christian music, not in the choral music product market.

But then I listened to the tape she gave me.

Without any formal musical training, this girl had conceived an entire cantata for children — theme unfortunately forgotten also — that was truly awesome.

I made an exception and got to work on collecting contact names for choral publishing companies I was already in working relationship with, and some expressed interest in pursuing this talented young woman further.

Provided she was willing to relocate to Nashville.

This is the part of the story that amazed me, and one which I fought tooth and nail at the time. “What good does it do,” I asked, “If everyone in the industry is waking up in the same town, driving on the same freeways, shopping at the same malls, walking in the same parks, going to the same churches, and dare I say listening to the same music? Isn’t this going to lead to music that all sounds the same?”

Nobody listened. In the end she decided it was too big a move that was not guaranteed to offer sure returns. Your loss. My loss. Kids who would have learned and performed her musical; their loss. Don’t know what happened to her.

The other night we were listening to overseas radio stations online. Norway. The Netherlands. England (but not the BBC which is geo-blocked in Canada). The one thing we noticed was the decisive absence of the telltale Nashville influence. The American guitar-based country sound — that permeates rock and other genres here whether we admit or not — was replaced by the Euro music sound of keyboards. It was a nice change.

The more southern U.S. the sound — apologies, Third Day — the less I like it. In a shrinking world, we still get to hear too little of what is a staple musical diet for audiences in Europe. Geo-blocking of internet radio and YouTube music videos is not helping. I’d like to know how much of that blocking is European-driven, and how much of it originates with the American offices of multi-national record companies.

The Christian internet of which I am a part is no different. Justin Taylor or Kevin DeYoung writes something and Tim Challies and Zach Nielsen link to it, and then all the Challies wannabes link to it on their blogs. Sixty gazillion Christian blogs all carrying the one story of the day and the same blog referrer advertisement for the $1.99 eBook download of the day.

Yes, people exist on the fringes, and bloggers like this one who try “marching to the beat of a different drummer,” but ultimately, we witness the homogenization of creativity and the homogenization of thought on a daily basis; people striving to carve out an individual  identity, but essentially all waking up in the same town, driving on the same roads, eating in the same restaurants, and playing the same four chords. So to speak.

Wednesday Link List

• Napkin Thelogy: If you can communicate it better with a quick drawing, why not?
• Just like universities agree to honor some of each others credit courses, four Reformed denominations and the Roman Catholic Church have agreed to honor each others infant baptisms. (For some this confirms that the CRC denomination is not evangelical.)
  
• Here’s how some churches look at the issue of copyrights involving music or materials. This example is not a good example, though. 
• Church planters sometimes are often guilty of reacting to existing trends or conversely, copying existing trends. There are three other factors that can motivate planters, and certain risks and dangers in all five types.
  
• When you release a dove ceremonially, it’s not supposed to be attacked by seagulls.
• Should communion (Eucharist, Lord’s Supper) be done with a common cup or several cups? Actually, that’s not the issue; the real reason I posted this is because it’s a great example of taking Bible study notes.
• Or this question: Should Churches shift weekend service times to accommodate the Super Bowl game? Perry Noble’s church did.
  
• Last week Rachel Held Evans linked to a trio of articles with the common theme, Do Christians idolize virginity? One of the recommended articles is being recommended here as well; the story of a girl who believed that, in her words, I am Damaged Goods.
  
• For my local readers who enjoy Robin Mark’s annual visits here each summer, here’s the best version of the John Wesley song I can find. (YouTube audio.) Watched it three times on Saturday.
• Michael Belote has a very lengthy, heartfelt article on dieting that he then uses as springboard for looking at our spiritual diet. There are some great principles here including this question: Am I using the right fuel in the right amounts? This is a five-star blog post!
• We’re a bit late arriving at this one, but this February list transcends time. Here are 28 ways to show gratitude that are good anytime. 
• Wanna start a church in Orange County, California? You’d be in good company, and there are currently 17 churches for sale.
  
• A New Jersey pilot credits her faith in God for her and her passenger surviving a crash in the Hudson River.
• When Michael Hyatt spoke to real estate professionals about social media, he discovered they didn’t know what to post to Twitter or Facebook. Here are his ten suggestions. 
• Canadian hockey player Mike Fisher, now with the Nashville Predators, made Brad Lomenick‘s young influencers list for January. Here’s his testimony and a link to his Zondervan-published biography.
  
• The Calvinists gotta hate this song; but probably the Arminians are glad they have enough free will to turn off bad church music. Click for The Free Will Song.
• For something more contemporary… I’ve never been to the blimeycow YouTube channel before, but this take on five-minute instant worship songs, is far too cynical.
  
• …Click the images for sourcing from Clark Bunch’s blog (top) and Close to Home (below)…Feel free to add your favorite recent Christian blog links this week in the comments…

Words on Worship

Faith Today, Canada’s national Evangelical magazine, has dedicated much of their November/December issue to, as they put it, Gospel Music. They don’t mean southern gospel. They don’t mean mass choirs. The very fact that they misname the genres they actually writing about scares me both as a writer and as a musician, but tucked away on page 41 is this great quotation by humorist Garrison Keillor:

“We should pity pastors and other worship leaders. Every Sunday morning they have to stand up in church and interrupt what people came there to do.”

Well, we rather liked that one, and thought we should see what else has been written on this topic, only to find that Matt Stone took care of this for us just a few weeks ago:

BEN PATTERSON

“Evangelism will end, and education, as will prophecy and social service. But worship is forever.”

SALLY MORGENTHALER

“Our worship must cost something, or else it is meaningless. True worship always involves sacrifice. Of course, Jesus is the only sacrifice for sin, once and for all. Yet the term ‘sacrifice’ is not just associated with redemption. The word literally means ‘the act of offering something meaningful and valuable.’”

F. SEIGLER

“It has been suggested that in worship man needs to intellectualize his emotions and emotionalize his intellect.”

CHARLES SWINDOLL

“We are often so caught up in our activities that we tend to worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”

MATT REDMAN

“In the end, worship can never be a performance, something you’re pretending or putting on. It’s got to be an overflow of your heart….. Worship is about getting personal with God, drawing close to God.”

JOHN WIMBER

“Our heart’s desire should be to worship God; we have been designed by God for this purpose. If we don’t worship God, we’ll worship something or someone else.”

THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM

“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

GRAHAM KENDRICK

“Worship in truth is worship that arises out of an actual encounter with God, a response to the experience of knowing God’s real presence and activity in our daily lives. This has nothing to do with sentiment, thinking religious thoughts or having aesthetic experiences in church buildings; any religion can give you that sort of thing.”

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About the image: We post a lot of cool worship team pictures here, but I thought to illustrate this one, I’d include something that may be more reflective of what life is like at your local congregation. It was sourced at PhotoBucket, but I couldn’t pinpoint the exact origin.

Wednesday Link List

Well they don’t build megachurches like this anymore… This is the First Church of Christ, Scientist (i.e. Christian Science) in Boston in a 1907 photo at Shorpy.com.

To begin this link list, you need a blank piece of paper.

• Let’s start out with something completely different. Without clicking through… One of the best selling Christian books of the past 20 years has been The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. Name the five languages without peeking.
• How about another top five list? Again, without clicking, what’s your guess as to the top five churches in the United States by attendance. It’s about 3/4 of the way down the page.
• Finally, before you click that link, what do you think are the top five Bible verses searched for at BibleGateway.com? Oh, and the one you think is number one, actually isn’t.  [More on that subject with our People's Bible page sample.]

The regular links

• If you lead a small group, here’s a YouTube channel you should know about while it lasts, because when it comes to small group discussion-starter videos, Zondervan is giving away the store.
• Is the window on religious freedom in Russia about to close? Some people feel Christians could be adversely affected by a new law.
• Borrowing material from the “public domain” Bible simply makes good economic sense for Hollywood.
  
• He was an Independent Fundamentalist Pastor and now he’s an atheist and humanist.The blog Galatians Four looks at what can happen when your church is filled with abuses.
• Russell D. Moore knows that the 2012 election has got more people talking to and about Mormonism. So he offers a few suggestions on confronting LDS theology.
• Stephen Colbert gets serious at a Catholic university to profess his love for his Roman Catholic faith.
• Being the worship leader in a church isn’t easy. That’s what Jonathan Sigmon’s pastor said one recent Sunday. But there are also some blessings that come with the job.
  
• Not everyone will agree with one of the points on corporal punishment, but the rest of these seven tips for Christian parents should meet with approval.
• For those of you who like to go deep, here’s an article about Augustine and the literal interpretation of Genesis 1.
  
• You know it’s a slow news day at Christianity Today when the Facebook page, Awkward Couples of Liberty gets its own article. (My wife points out that in this instance, the university is not aptly named…)
  
• Listen online to three sample songs from Matt Maher’s new album, The Love In Between.
• This will cause a few people to say ‘I told you so.’  Brian McLaren led a same-sex commitment service in Maryland; one of the grooms being his son Trevor. The story has attracted over 120 comments so far at the CT Live blog.
• Here are a dozen things that, thankfully, your pastor probably won’t hear in heaven.
  
• The Big Picture pics of North Korea are obviously propaganda, but it’s the unanimous response of reader comments that seal the deal. 
• Happy Birthday to the Compact Disc, which turns 30 this week.
  
• Meanwhile, over at the daily comic strip Retail by Norm Feuti, the “Christmas” versus “holiday” semantics debate has already begun:
  

Why I Thank God for Contemporary Christian Music

Last week I received some advertising for three books by Kimberly Smith in which she allegedly is able to make a case for intrinsic evil in contemporary music forms.

I had always thought that the music war had ended, but much like soldiers carrying on the fight in the jungle years after World War II ended, it seems that some people are still waging the battle.

I have a great admiration for people who have a certain position that is by their admission based on preference. By all means, listen to what you like, and include in your church services that which meets the needs of your congregation.  Furthermore, mix it up a bit. Blended worship is always going to be balanced worship.

But don’t start citing studies and Biblical principles to support what is ultimately your preference, and don’t you dare dictate your personal choices to others as being normative Christian behavior, when neither statistics nor the weight of good argument are on your side.

For example, take a blank piece of 8.5 x 11 paper.  (That’s A4 for our British readers, I think.) You can use that paper to paint a beautiful watercolor picture of a valley with a stream. You can use it to write a poem about a friend who has been a help and encouragement to you.  You can insert it in your computer printer and print out your September budget.  You can do all sorts of good things with it.

Or…

You can write a slanderous article about someone in your city. You can draw a charcoal picture of a fox devouring a songbird. You can put up a sign in your front window telling peddlers to stay away and children to keep off your lawn.

But don’t blame paper, or pens, or markers, or computer printers for things people do with them. The paper is morally neutral, and so are the writing and drawing implements.  That is what I have always believed, what I have taught others, and what I still hold to. Morality rests in the heart of man (mankind) who posses moral agency.

A piece of paper has no such agency. It can’t act. A deck of playing cards may be guilty-by-association, but even there, the morality of a deck of cards would be tough to argue among skilled debaters or scholars.

None of this would sway Kimberly Smith, however. With books published in 1997, 2001 and 2006, she has spent 15 years making the case against Christian contemporary music. That’s her target. Not Top 40 radio. Not MTV. Not your local record store.  True, she is probably not enamored with those, but her focus is against the music that, without which, I cannot presume to be where I am today with Christ and who I am today in Christ.

That’s right. At the end of the day, I’m not prepared to argue with her. I’d rather use this space — and invite you to join in the comments — to say that I am so very, very thankful for the early Jesus Music and CCM artists who took the time to compose, to record, to tour and to thereby encourage me so much in the formative years of my Christian journey.

Would I have been a Christ follower anyway? Perhaps. But not with the same passion. The scriptures I learned, the Biblical principles the songs taught, the examples of the performing artists and songwriters were so very much needed and appreciated.

Here’s an example of what readers can expect in the book Music and Morals.

Chapter One: By showing how music is used successfully by the film industry to create moods and convey morality, the fact is established that music is a powerful entity and should not be considered amoral by the Church.

So in other words, because it’s evocative it’s disqualified. What about “O Sacred Head Now Wounded;” or for that matter, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”  Sorry, Kimberly, that just doesn’t fly.  Then there’s

Chapter Seven: Shows how specific rock music techniques are purposely used to manipulate, and if we as Christians are imitating those same techniques, the intent of manipulation remains, no matter the lyrics.

So much for William Booth or Charles Wesley appropriating the music of the day and making lyrical alterations. The lyrics don’t have weight in this discussion.

Or this blurb for For Those Who Have Ears to Hear:

This book gives solid, biblical answers to refute fifty common defenses (excuses) by proponents of contemporary Christian music in the chapter, “What We Believe is Our Truth.” Some of the statements answered are: “People are saved at CCM concerts”; “The music makes me feel closer to God”; “Where in the Bible does it say a certain beat is wrong?”; “Psalm 33:3 says we’re to sing ‘a new song’ to the Lord”; “It’s all relative; everyone has his or her own tastes,” and many more.

That’s right. Kimberly is able to deflect fifty defenses of CCM without ever stopping to consider, ‘My goodness, there are fifty of them!’

A chapter in Oh Be Careful Little Ears is titled, “The Origins of Unnatural Rhythms.” Yes, they’re still playing that song. The market for this book is obviously the same people who are sucked into the King James Only argument. Or lack of argument. People who don’t want to actually think, but want to be told what to think.

I noticed that one of the largest online Christian book vendors doesn’t touch this title. Why should they? This is the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a fire. (This type of book is never released through major Christian publishers; and usually contains sections underlined, in capital letters and in bold print — the publishing equivalent of being yelled at.)

Again, I am so thankful for those who have followed the advice of Isaiah 42:10 to “create new songs of praise.” And songs of hope. And songs of testimony. And songs for justice and mercy.

And I am so very sad that perfectly good trees are being cut down to print books that in the very long scheme of things, will do more harm than good.

Manufacturing Worship

A guide for church musicians.

Method One

• Go for a full sound, lots of volume, lots of rhythm, full bass, crisp percussion; set it against a designed stage background with quality lighting, with lots of motion on stage by the singers and instrumentalists; choose favorite well-known songs; get the audience clapping and shouting and have the team leader constantly encouraging the audience to sing out loud.  Aim for excellence, energy, emotion.

Method Two

• With each singer and musician giving the best they can give, aim to create something that can only be called beautiful, because it is a foretaste of the worship that takes place in heaven now; worship which we will someday join in.  Aim for transcendence, for beauty, for richness, for adoration.

An Open Letter to the Worship Team

Yes, you’ve heard some of this before, but with the weekend approaching, there are some things that can’t be said enough. It’s just so easy to fall into certain routines and patterns. Your best option is to read the whole article in context at it source, the blog of James K. A. Smith, philosophy professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. (Now in his 8th year of blogging!)  But some of you won’t click so here’s the focal point of Smith’s open letter:

1. If we, the congregation, can’t hear ourselves, it’s not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular “form of performance”), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there’s nothing wrong with concerts! It’s just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice — and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of “performing” the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can’t hear ourselves sing — so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become “private,” passive worshipers.

 

2. If we, the congregation, can’t sing along, it’s not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and “be creative,” offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can’t sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And while you may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song.

 

3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it’s not worship. I know it’s generally not your fault that we’ve put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to model worship for us to imitate. But because we’ve encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we’ve also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity — even with the best of intentions — it’s difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as “offerings to God,” we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we’ve adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship.

…continue reading here…

Cat Organ

from SacredSandwich.com:

 

Church Piano on a Budget

Toy pianos have gone upscale.  Maybe the word ‘toy’ should not apply here.

After seeing three of these played simultaneously at Andy Stanley’s church a few weeks ago, my wife decided that these would actually be perfect for home church.  Or a church on a budget.  The ones pictured above are all under $140, with the red ones that North Point used coming in at $79.99. But for church use, it’s the top tier one, pictured at right that you really want.  Click the images to see the page at Schoenhut Piano.  We’ll continue this series as soon as we find a source for tiny little offering plates.

Unlike Keyboard, Piano Story Probably Not Black and White

I can already hear the cries of, “But, Paul; you don’t understand the big picture; there’s another side to this you have to consider.”

So let’s begin with the facts.  St. Andrew’s Church in downtown Toronto, Canada recently paid $100,000 for a Bosendorfer grand piano. 

Actually, that’s not fact, either.  The price of the piano was at least $100,000, but the exact amount is protected by a non-disclosure agreement by both the church and the vendor, Robert Lowry Piano Experts, also of Toronto. 

But can the church keep the secret?  By law, sometime in the spring the church has to have an annual meeting; copies of the budget need to be distributed and the purchase price of the piano should be there, in black and white for all to read.

Unless it’s buried in another budget item.  Last month, a Toronto Star piece on this musical spending spree noted that superior instruments of this caliber (or calibre as we spell it here) can go for up to $240,000. 

Some context:  St. Andrew’s is not a megachurch.  A survey of 1,000 churchgoers in the greater Toronto metropolitan area might, if we’re lucky, reveal 50 people who could place the church on a map or among a list of church images. 

Unless we asked a specifically downtown crowd.  The church is located in the heart of the financial district and also just a block from Toronto’s gallery of live theaters (or theatres, as we spell it here; noticing a trend?) on King Street West, not to mention across the road from Roy Thompson Hall.  Perhaps both arts-minded and wealthy business patrons require excellence in their musical instruments, and this church does host the occasional concert, and wanted a piano that any self-respecting pianist would desire to play.

However, walk a mile in almost any direction from this church or any other downtown church and you’ll find examples of poverty.  Two miles and you’ll find shelters and missions and soup kitchens.  The question is not, “How could the church spend $100,000 on a piano?”  There were after all donations as part of a two-year fundraising campaign.  The better question is, “How can a church justify having a $100,000 piano in the present economic climate?” 

It just seems a little out of touch with times we live in. But then this strikes at the heart of times we live in; where examples of grotesque wealth of the few exist side-by-side examples of gross poverty of the many. 

You’d think someone would see this and stage a protest or something.