Random, and Taking Bets

OK, so I'm currently taking bets on how soon some trendy seeker-sensitive church will tweak the Pussycat Dolls' new single "Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)" and turn it into "Oh Lord! (You Are My Destiny)" It has SO much of that cheesy-romantic language common to CCM "Jesus is my boyfriend" pop worship music.

Over/under on two months?

I'm on Spring Break this week. It's awesome. I'm catching up on my sleep, getting some projects finished, tidying my house for my guests who will be here on April 1, working on grades (a little), hanging out with friends... pretty good week so far.

I've also updated my other blog, the foodie/frugality one with a post about homemade cleaners, a links roundup for some great thrifty recipes, and a step-by-step guide to making your own yogurt!

Sorry the posting here has been so scarce. I just haven't had the time to post on a lot of theology stuff, and I'm mostly theologied out because of a series of great conversations I've been having with a friend (you know who you are...). I hope to get some more consistency here -- or at least to write a bunch of stuff this week and schedule some future posts!

Thoughts on Congregational Church Music

If you haven't visited Sojourn's music blog, you need to do a couple things. First, repent. Second, get over there. And third, as penance, post a link on Facebook, email links to everyone you know who is even vaguely connected to music ministry in churches, and go back to the site every Wednesday for the next ten weeks.

Bobby Gilles, one of Sojourn's lyricists and the blog's moderator, is going to be posting a series of short videos every Wednesday -- videos of a round-table discussion with Mike Cosper, Sojourn's worship/arts pastor, Chip Stam, founder of the SBTS school of church music and worship, and Harold Best, a well-known author and the former dean of Wheaton college, best known for his books Unceasing Worship and Music Through the Eyes of Faith.

This week's video clip is all about congregational music -- ranging from style questions to thoughts on tradition. Check it out!

There is A Fountain

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

One of my favorite hymns -- this one almost always makes me cry. Little known fact: girls will undoubtedly remember in the movie version of Sense and Sensibility the scene where Marianne is brutally critiquing poor Edward Ferrars's reading of a poem. We catch the lines: "No voice divine the storm allayed/ no light propitious shone..." The author of that poem, William Cowper, is also the author of "There is a Fountain."

Cowper battled depression his whole life. I love the fact that, in the midst of his struggles, he wrote such a beautiful hymn that expresses not just his personal hope but the hope of "all the ransomed church of God."

A glimmer of hope on a dim horizon

Flame. LeCrae. Shai Linne.

If those names don't sound familiar to you, they should. They are men who preach the whole Gospel boldly, who aren't afraid to talk serious theology while dropping some serious beats and spitting some serious rhymes. It's crazy stuff, and y'all need to get all over it right now.

While you're waiting for your shiny new Shai Linne album to come in, hop on over to the man's blog and check out what he has to say about serving the Lord with fear and rejoicing.

Go on.

Seriously? (and a few random notes)

Whoa. I just scrolled down through this page and realized I've written almost nothing of theological significance in the last several weeks. Zoinks. It's probably one of two things: either I am a hopeless sinner blinded the trivialities of daily life, or I spend every day talking about God's precious word and his sovereignty in human history, teaching third, fourth, and eighth graders about this beautiful, broken world God will one day redeem, and by the time I get home, I'm all theologied out. Or maybe both.

So... there's a sizable kerfluffle in the blog world over the issue of whether or not Christians should celebrate a particular holiday with supposedly pagan roots. A holiday whose celebration, detractors claim, sends Christians inevitably down an idolatrous spiral of demon-worship. A holiday whose practices are outlawed by chapter and verse in Jeremiah. Pagan worship! Outright idolatry! Animism!

Well, good heavens, you might say! What is this pernicious, godless event that we've thoughtlessly allowed into our homes, welcoming with it the very blackest forms of paganism?

It's not Halloween. It's Christmas.

No, seriously.

Apparently, Jeremiah 10:2-4 condemns the practice of putting up and decorating Christmas trees. Leaving aside the kinda comical levels of anachronism we've got here, let's not be hasty. Judge for yourself:

Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

OK. So what we have here is... God telling the people not to put up Christmas trees? Huh. Weird.

Because it seems to me that what's actually happening is that Jeremiah the prophet is warning Judah that their sin is fixin' to bring down God's wrath and judgment, and this passage is part of God's case against them. It just so happens that last week's Bible lesson at school was "The Ministry of Jeremiah." So tell me, third and fourth graders, what was the main sin of Judah that caused God to send judgment on them?

Idolatry.

And why is idolatry not only sinful but also stupid? Because, as Isaiah says, idolaters take a log, carve half of it into a statue they bow down to, and throw the other half onto the fire to make their dinner. Because, Jeremiah reminds them, the idols are mute, they're nothing, they can't even move from place to place but have to be carried (10:5). Condemnation of Christmas trees? Ummmm... I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that that's NOT a responsible exegesis of this passage.

There are more legs to their argument (the only birthdays mentioned in the Scriptures are those of pagans whom God struck down so we have no business celebrating Jesus' birthday, Yule celebrates demonic pagan deities and harkens back to weird druidy times, etc.), and I could pick each one apart, but I just can't... be bothered. It's all so silly! Surely there are other things we could focus on, right?

(Incidentally, this is a great example of what one blog I recently read called "The Arithmetic Method" of theology. Thought-provoking article. Check it out.)

So, here are a couple things you could focus on if you felt like it:

1. Listen up, Church. (I'm about to get fired up here, so watch out!) Stop letting Joel and Victoria Osteen off the hook. Stop justifying their heresy. Stop nurturing the notion that they're merely addled -- like that sweet but dim-witted cousin everybody loves while being slightly embarassed about -- and get it in your head that they are preaching a different Gospel. Go read Galatians 1:8. (Go ahead, I'll wait...) The Osteens are inviting a curse on themselves. Stay far, far away from their "ministry" and, if you love your brothers and sisters in Christ, warn them about it too.

2. Open iTunes (or the legal online music acquisition apparatus of your choice) and download the following albums immediately: Shai Linne's Storiez, Flame's Our World Redeemed, and LeCrae's Rebel. Then revel and rejoice in the work God is doing through these warriors of the faith and their bold Gospel preaching.

The Best Christmas Anecdote Ever. EVER.

The Most Hilarious thing happened today. I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things to help with leftover management, and as I was walking in the doors, I heard this... weird music. Like an old electric organ.

Hmm. Electric organ piped through the sound system seemed like an odd choice for the inevitable Christmas music that will be playing for the next month. But, as it turned out, it wasn't exactly what I thought it was.

Organ? Yes. Sound system? NO! INSTEAD, IT WAS A DREAM COME TRUE: Old lady. Hammond B2. SERIOUSLY BAD Christmas music. No, no, no... I don't think you understand how bad it was. Shockingly bad. And every time she played, there was somehow a synth drum in the background. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." On an ORGAN. With a SYNTH DRUM accompaniment. I was waiting for Dom DeLuise to pop out from beyond the grave and tell everyone at Kroger that they were on Candid Camera.

People. This was EPIC.

Awesome Deal, People

Seriously, check this out. My church, Sojourn, is packed wall-to-wall with talented musicians, some of whom worked on last year's Christmas album, Advent Songs. It's a beautiful, unique album that normally sells for a very reasonable $10, but leading up to the advent season, it's being made available for download fo however much you want to pay for it. OR, if you tell five friends about it, you can get it for FREE. Crazy.

Check out the details HERE at SojournMusic's website.

Yes, But the Real Question is, Can She Survive The First Day?

7:30 - Doors open
8:00 - Recitation
8:20 - Planning time
9:00 - Bible
9:30 - History
10:00 - Recess
10:15 - Literature (third grade)
11:00 - Literature (fourth grade)
11:45 - Mid-Day Prayer
12:00 - Lunch
12:45 - Omnibus (eighth grade literature, theology, history)
1:45 - Latin I
2:30 - P.E. (Monday and Friday), Chorus (Tuesday and Thursday) or Study Hall (Wednesday)
3:00 - End of Day

Take a minute to read this great excerpt, written by Sojourn's worship pastor Mike Cosper, and then head over to Sojournmusic.com and read the rest, from a three-part installment on the climate of modern worship in churches.

This is the landscape others see from the outside looking in - musicians who almost barely know how to play their instruments, music without roots or traditions, songs without dynamics, services with rock star worship leaders wearing faux-hawks and designer jeans. They look great, they sound okay, but don’t ask them to change keys. Contrast this with the classical traditions of the church, where musicians spend 15-20 years, starting in early childhood, studying music, studying musical performance, working with choirs, orchestras, and various ensembles throughout their educations, and then often continuing through a seminary “church music” education.

Of course, much of this is a caricature. I know many worship leaders and pastors in churches like this who have a deep knowledge of and love for music. I know many worship leaders whose humility guards them from the excesses of rock culture. I know many leaders who have a love of theology, hymnody, and scripture, and whose services reflect that love. But I also believe that this is the unfortunate exception and not the rule.

And the warning cries abound. It’s both redundant and fashionable to sit around and lament how devoid and barren our worship music is today. But what’s the way forward? Pastors have this dual responsibility in North America to be faithful and to be attractional (two forces that are often at odds with one another). And what attracts people to churches today more than the poppy music of contemporary worship?

As with so many places in our culture, we’ve severed the connections with traditions that can help inform, correct, and guard us from mistakes from great to small. While certainly, in the light of God’s sovereignty, we have to say that there is something good afoot in the radical shifts in worship culture in the US, there is also a road ahead so fraught with dangers that without some kind of roots, some kind of theological grounding, some kind of historical connectedness, we will SURELY lose our way.

What I want to ask is who will guide us? What will the reformation of church music education give birth to in twenty years? Will it look different, or will we simply look back in twenty years and laugh at our young foolishness? Worship leaders aren’t the only ones asking these kinds of questions.

Worship Music and the Church Calendar

In the last post, my dad lamented the dearth of modern Easter songs in the church. The same could be said of songs for the seasons of the Church in general. This is why my church has done two Advent albums, and why our Worship Arts pastor encourages folks to write music related to the church calendar -- songs for Pentecost, Lent, Advent, Good Friday, Easter, etc.

Our latest recording project, which they're working on right now, is a double album of Isaac Watts hymns with slightly updated lyrics and new music. The first album is congregationally-oriented, with songs suitable for singing in our gatherings; the second comprises contributions from some of our... um... edgier musicians, including one by my dear friends the O'Nans.

Check out the Advent albums and our other music here.

I Know I'm Late To This Party

It's a little pathetic that up until recently, I knew more about Amy Winehouse's personal struggles (Possibly abusive, certainly codependent jailbird husband! Tatty, ever-present ballet flats! Frequent bender-induced bruises! Mysteriously absent right incisor! Terrifying Morticia Addams beehive! Protruding clavicles!) than I did about her music. Well, the night of the (totally lame-o) Grammys, I kept hearing Amy Winehouse this and Amy Winehouse that, and then the next morning saw an article on Slate.com about why Amy isn't just a whacked-out pop star, but an actually talented, unique voice in popular music.

So I finally decided to give her Back to Black album a listen, and now, even though I'm extremely tardy in jumping on the old Wino bandwagon, I'm a pretty big fan. It's no coincidence that, in her (HUGE, ubiquitous) single, "Rehab," she name-drops Ray Charles, a well-known junkie, on an album that gives much more than a hat-tip to classic Motown R&B. Besides which, the very fact that a 24-year-old faintly chavvy Jewish Brit (like, l'chaim, innit?) can sing like a world-weary 60's Motown black woman is pretty remarkable. Ch-ch-check it out.

Yet Another Reason to Love Bob Kauflin

Most of us young reformed types are pretty familiar with Bob Kauflin, one of the worship leaders at Covenant Life Church, who now also heads up Worship Development for all the Sovereign Grace Churches. He's written a lot of helpful and insightful material over the years. Check out this snippet from a recent article on his website (ht:PureChurch), based on the command in Scripture to sing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to one another:

Practices that Hinder Horizontal Awareness in Worship

Over the years, most of us have developed a few practices that can hinder any benefit we might receive from addressing one another as we sing.

1. Singing songs that lack biblical substance or doctrinal depth. If the songs we’re singing are primarily subjective, and focused on how we feel, what we’re doing, or some other subjective element, we’re not going to have much to say to each other.

2. Thinking that “worship” means closing my eyes, raising my hands, and blocking out everyone else around me. I’ve had many profound moments like that, as I’ve focused in an undistracted way on the words I’m singing and the Savior I’m singing to. But being Spirit-filled should actually make us more aware of others, not less. Many of the songs we sing aren’t even directed towards God. Crown Him with Many Crowns, Before the Throne of God Above, and Amazing Grace, are a few that come to mind. So when I lead I probably have my eyes open more than half the time. I’m looking around, addressing others, celebrating the fact that we can glory in Jesus Christ together. I do that even when I’m not leading, sometimes turning to someone beside me to rejoice in God’s grace. I want to benefit from the fact that I’m with the people of God.

3. Singing alone. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with praising God on my own. But in the age of iPods, earphones, and Internet downloads, it’s easy to lose our appreciation for singing with the church. The Spirit intends us to join our hearts to each other as well as to Christ when we sing.

After I preached the message this past Sunday, I wanted to apply the message in a memorable way. So I had everyone stand up and told them we were going to sing Amazing Grace a cappella. Only I didn’t want anyone closing their eyes. I wanted people to look around the room as they sang, rejoicing at God’s mercy in each other’s lives. It was a little awkward at first, but eventually we were singing with all our hearts, unashamedly “addressing one another” in song, reminding ourselves of how amazing God’s grace truly is, to save wretches like us.

Theme: Crybaby / A Rantgent

There's a theme developing here: I am more sentimental than I would care to admit. Or, as I like to phrase it to make myself sound better, "tender-hearted." Anyway, semantics aside, I was flipping through the Baptist Hymnal. Wait.

Tangent/rant: who put that puppy together? There are some flat-out theologically bankrupt songs in the Baptist Hymnal. "Let Jesus Come Into Your Heart"? If there's a tempest your voice cannot still... Yeah, because salvation's really mostly about taking care of the issues you can't handle on your own. And that's not the only stinker, even in that section. God bless Ralph Carmichael, but "The Savior is Waiting"? Receive him, and all of your darkness shall end... blech. I want to know when this fixation on "receiving Jesus" and "asking Jesus into your heart" started. Mom or dad, any ideas why folks started using that particular phrasing and it stuck? And you know how people criticize "modern" worship music as being too me-focused? Or trite? How about "Here am I" or "I want to be a Christian" or "I want Jesus to Walk With Me" or, get this, a hymn called "Thanks-living"?

Anyway, rant/tangent (rantgent?) over. I was flipping through the Hymnal and plunking around on my keyboard when I came across these lyrics which brought tears to my eyes (the songs can't be all bad, statistically):

Unless Your grace had called me
And taught my opening mind,
The world would have enthralled me,
To heavenly glories blind.
My heart knows none above You;
For Your rich grace I thirst!
I know that, if I love You,
You must have loved me first.

Farewell (For Now)

I said farewell to Nickel Creek tonight. It was a bittersweet moment when, at the very end, they killed the mikes, unplugged their instruments, stepped downstage, and played "Why Should the Fire Die?" with just their voices. We all listened more carefully than before; I closed my eyes; the acoustics were so perfect that each note was crystal clear.

Surely the music of heaven will sound dull by comparison.

Real Quick

If you haven't heard of Vandaveer, check them out immediately. Mark and his "good sister Rose" and their sweet, funny guest drummer were a dose of black-daisy delight last night at the 930. I adore them completely. They may be my new favorite band. I even bought a t-shirt.

If you need a point of reference for their sound, I would call it the Goth-Dylan Partridge Family.

If You Haven't Seen These Videos Already...

Go immediately and check them out. Amazing.

Nickel Creek and Fiona Apple Live in Concert