Be Careful What You Curse

Ed Cash via WAY-FM on YouTube

Early last month I was watching a YouTube mini-concert where radio station WAY-FM invited the members of the band We The Kingdom into the studio for some music and light-hearted fun. (The series of musician visits is called “Songs from a Mug;” you can watch this one here. Jump to 14:00 for the story which follows.)

I didn’t realize that the band is fronted by Ed Cash. If you are a music publishing nerd likes me who reads the fine print credits on the worship slides at church, you’ll recognize his name on a number of popular songs, including co-writing some with Chris Tomlin. (You really should be focusing on the worship, though; not reading the copyrights!) The band also includes a number of his family members.

The subject came up about Tomlin and he told the story of being contacted by him the first time about doing some work — production or composing; I can’t remember — with him and Chris sent him a cassette. (I guess this was quite awhile ago!)

Cash was extremely disappointed as he listened. He wanted to get involved in the music scene in Nashville, but here he was listening to the simple, four-chord, repetitious type of songs that were everything he didn’t like about modern worship. He wanted to be involved in something more sophisticated. In fact, when he first heard, “How Great Is Our God” he laughed out loud.

And then it happened.

He says he really felt God speaking to him — in ways he’s never heard so audibly — these words: “How dare you curse what I have kissed.”

For some reason, I haven’t been able to get that phrase, as I remembered it after listening to the WAY-FM interview, “Do not curse what I have kissed” out of my mind. I think it applies to so many areas of Christian endeavor. How many things that we think are beneath us are things that God uses nonetheless?

Think about it.

A Lesson in Songwriting

Graham Kendrick

And a Lesson in Humility

A guy I don’t actually follow* got my attention on Twitter yesterday and I knew I had to share this today…

Learn more about Graham Kendrick at this link.

*click anywhere on the quotation to link to Tim Lucas

Creativity Block

One of the four summers I worked at a Christian summer camp there was a management team that was considered by many staff to be particularly oppressive. People coped with them in different ways, but generally there was much dissatisfaction and unrest.

When it came time to leave after ten weeks, I got in my car for the two hour drive home and instead of turning on the radio or CD player — back then it would have been a cassette deck — I started singing. Some of the songs that came were things I was making up on the spot, and by the time I arrived in Toronto two hours later, I had written and memorized three complete songs, which I quickly wrote down as soon as I could find pen and paper.

As I later explained this to a friend, he told me that all that creativity had been locked inside while working at the camp, and as soon as I was physically free of the place, the creative juices started flowing like a river…

…I mention all this because over the last few days I have felt a creative block where Thinking Out Loud is concerned, but I realized later that this is only because I have been trying to write more original articles at Christianity 201, instead of harvesting them from other sites.

You can only be creative on so many fronts at a time.

Thinking Out Loud started shortly after I finished a two-year stint of leading worship every Sunday — solo — in a local church. I worked hard on those weekly worship sets, including stringing together medleys of songs from a variety of musical influences in order to give worship opportunity to a broad mix of generations.  Some Sundays the song list incorporated fragments of up to 17 songs.

I could not have done that and done this at the same time. The creative energy to create Thinking Out Loud only happened when I stopped being creative on another front…

…Years ago I heard a story about a man who had never written an original song in his life, but then he became a regular on a Christian television show that was broadcast regionally in Canada. He discovered that while radio stations play royalty based on a partial sample of station playlists, television is (or was at the time) done so that royalties are based on a 100% audit of music used. The money turned out to be significant.

So he started writing songs. While I can’t applaud the motivation, and I doubt that any of those songs had the staying power to be used anywhere today, the point is that the creative resources were resident within him, but had been untapped.

So what’s your creative gift or talent that you’re not using to fullest? What abilities lie untapped for whatever reason? I encourage you to put yourself in a position to find out.

The Motions: How a Song is Changing the World

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”

I’ve been aware of this song for some time now, but it really hit home a few weeks ago when I attended the installation service for a local pastor and he asked his worship team to perform “The Motions” by Matthew West from the album Something To Say; also on the album WoW! Hits 2010. In an industry where songs come and go, it’s a song that’s gaining momentum week by week.

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”

The song has haunted me since that morning.   If that pastor means what that song says — he wants God’s all-consuming passion inside him — there is nothing that he and his church can’t accomplish in the years to come.

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”

What’s true for that pastor is true for all of us.   What might we feel at the end of the ride called life if and when we realize there’s so much more we could have done?   So much time that could have been better spent?   So many resources that could have been put to better use?

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”

Matthew West invited fans to comment on his website as to how the song has impacted them.   So far, over 2,870 comments!   On the HearItFirst.com website, you can select a video where Matthew tells the story of 18-year old Ryan from Oklahoma, a young man who posted the lyrics on his Facebook page and asked his friends to hold him accountable to that song; just before he was killed — the same day — in a car accident.   The song became the central theme for his funeral.

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”

Here are the lyrics:

This might hurt, it’s not safe
But I know that I’ve gotta make a change
I don’t care if I break,
At least I’ll be feeling something
‘Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of life

I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking,
“What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?”

No regrets, not this time
I’m gonna let my heart defeat my mind
Let Your love make me whole
I think I’m finally feeling something
‘Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of this life

‘Cause I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking,
“What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?”

Take me all the way (take me all the way)
Take me all the way (’cause I don’t wanna go through the motions)
Take me all the way (I know I’m finally feeling something real)
Take me all the way

Here’s the song on YouTube including clips from Matthew’s (ouch!) vocal surgery:

The Motions (Matthew West) video

Why did I write this post today?   Because…

“I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, ‘What if I had given everything?'”