CRN.Info and Analysis

A couple years ago, while I was teaching at an art & music camp on the Rez in North Dakota, several of the other volunteers and I (particularly the guy who hosts this website) decided to put together a music video in our spare time (primarily an evening break).

The song we chose was from a disc of songs submitted to Word Records by amateur acts (see this story for links to several of them) that never made it (if you listen to them, you’ll understand - particularly this one, whose chorus will put you in stitches).

Below is the result of our ‘hard work’:

While it contains a whole lot of ‘in-jokes’ from the week (which are never nearly as funny when explained), it served its purposes as some funny entertainment, and it also reminded us that sometimes we take ourselves way too seriously. (For anyone wondering, I’m the dude in the pool with a guitar)

As I get ready to head out to do another camp with this group of brothers and sisters - along with some more I’ve not met yet - and as I dust off the ‘demo album’, seeing the video was just another reminder of how sometimes it’s just good to take the time to laugh at yourself…

In a recent post over at Slice, Ingrid returns to a common theme - music. Her take is that certain styles of music are acceptable and certain styles are not - and this seems to apply to everyone. She offers a polemic by her husband to make her point.

The essay by Tom Schlueter reminded me of the comments by John MacArthur regarding the wearing of suits in church. On the one hand both the opinion of MacArthur and the opinion of Schlueter make sense… they even have some validity. Yet the shared flaw that renders their opinions incapable of being applied universally is their ethnocentric position.

In other words, their instructions may have value – in their narrow context. The problem is they both elevate their preferences to universal codes that all must follow.

For example: Tom Schlueter gives two examples of purely instrumental brass music – in the style of swing and fanfare, respectively. In the first “The trumpets led the brass in a clear call to listeners: get up and dance” the other calls the listeners to “Come and worship God.”

His conclusion: The [fanfare] brass in the second example tells us there is royalty present. The percussion at the end of the fanfare speaks not of dance and flesh, but of honor and respect and reverence. Different message entirely. And he is right – swing brass bids us come and dance, fanfare brass bids us recognize authority and honor.

But his application is flawed. He rightly differentiates the two biddings, but then sets up a false dichotomy – that honor and respect are valid modes of worship, but celebration and dance are of the flesh. His conclusion of swing, if used as a call to worship would be “Get up and dance… Women should start flaunting their stuff in front of men on the dance floor. This would not be worship at all, but rather a gross insult to the Almighty.”

I’ve been in worship services where people danced – I doubt God was insulted.

The problem is not one of style of music, but context and assumption. First the assumption, Schlueter first assumes dance is fleshly and swing calls women to flaunt their stuff – this I will summarily dismiss. The context is worthy of discussion.

Tom Schlueter uses a 9-11 memorial as an example of appropriate music – solemn music would be appropriate, a Broadway tune… not so. I agree. And if the point of worship is the “honor and respect and reverence” of God, then a fanfare might work. Where he fails is the recognition that maybe the point of worship is (at times) to dance and celebrate. And in this swing may work well.

If Schlueter had stuck to an argument that music should evoke appropriate responses given the situation of worship, then I could have agreed. But he could not, he had to insert his cultural version of what is appropriate in style and overlay those expectations on us all.

When I checked Slice this morning, I was stunned to hear that Granger Church had flipped the audience the bird during their easter service. This was something that I had to see for myself, so I checked out the video. I was a little disappointed, as I really was in need of some good drama to jump start my day.

The video in question was simply a new fad in YouTube videos, where lyrics to a song are drawn on fingers and then shown moving with the music. In this case, the word “make” was written on the middle finger, and was raised when the word was sung. This was not the performer “giving fellow Christians, and the Lord, the finger”, as Ingrid would suggest. It would be very hard to watch that video think that the intent was to flip the audience off.

Now, could Granger Church have used some tact in making this art piece? Certainly. At some point in rehearsals, someone should have said “hey, someone might get confused with the middle finger being held up alone.” But for Ingrid to say this is obscene, and assume that they were doing this to flip the audience off, is rediculous. I sometimes wonder how much time the ODMs spend poking around on the internet to find one headline that will make them the best Christian tabloid of the day. There is a big difference between having the spirit of discernment, and getting up in everyone’s business.

Oh, and she never mentioned the words of the pastor following the art piece… “I have good news, Jesus Christ is alive, now and forever more, the crucified on has risen from the grave, and he has ascended to the right hand of God, and he is the sovereign king and lord of all who live and all who have ever lived. He is worthy of our praise.” Funny thing… never heard about his extremely biblical sermon from that morning on Slice.

Last Sunday morning, one of my friends told me to look-up a video she’d seen on GodTube, which I got around to doing.

As an ex-theater major (turned chemical engineer - go figure), I have always been wary of the use of drama in corporate worship settings. In some ways, I think it has been the quality of thought, writing and production often absent - and the feeling of being ‘tacked on’ or ‘disconnected’ from the service, as a whole - that has led to this apprehension.

However, I found myself surprised and moved by this one:

As I hear more and more in my workplace about the power of images over words in current culture, I wonder if well-done elements like this one might have more of a place for effective outreach – when combined with sound teaching, of course – as we look to teach and evangelize, particularly youth…

The important thing, I think, though is to be wary of what we lose in visual presentation, aware of what we gain by it, and that we supplement the visual/experiential with, at least, the bare minimum of exposition to interpret the visual ‘narrative’…

In my time as a Training & Development professional, I learned that one of the ‘rules of thumb’ in the trade is called the “70-20-10 rule”. Teens and adults tend to learn and retain based upon: 70% experience, 20% relationships and 10% expositional/didactic teaching. So, the key to training people is to leverage the 90% that is not in the ‘classroom’ or reading - the use of music and art taps into the 70%…

When you look back at the church, prior to the invention of the printing press and prior to the ability to easily duplicate images, the use of imagery within the architecture and traditions of the church was much more prevalent than the past several hundred years. The use of illumination, as in the Book of Kells, and the use of iconography were ways in which the church used images to convey the truths of the Bible. Because most of the people could not read nor understand Latin, these methods of teaching, learning and experience were effective. However, when worshipers started behaving in ways that worshiped the icons and venerated the images, their usefulness was outstripped. The icons, in and of themselves, were not evil, but for some, they were being used in a way that was so.

In the same way, I see churches who use artistic expressions, displaying truths of Christ, as something that can be very helpful - particularly in light of the ways adults, especially, learn.

The danger lies in idolizing the methods and missing the message.

To demonize the method or to insist the message be expressed in a singular manner is not the proper response. Instead, it takes the involvement of the local shepherd to gauge the pulse of his sheep, and to make adjustments accordingly…

From Libertas (a conservative Showbiz blog my buddy John Kenneson introduced me to last year):

Though not a big fan of the fantasy genre, the first Narnia earned my eternal goodwill in a single scene. Any film that has Santa Claus handing out weapons to young children is a-okay by me.

Oh yeah - took my daughter to see Prince Caspian on Friday. It was an A+ in my book - especially so the next morning when E.T. was on TV - the stupid “enhanced” version that replaced all of the guns with walkie-talkies.

Several weeks ago, Shane Hipps spoke at Mars Hill Bible Church on the Spirituality of the Cellphone (link good for about 7 more weeks) a look at how human culture is, and has been, shaped by its media and the underlying technology for thousands of years. His message was so compelling, dovetailing with a professional project I’m working on, that I ordered his new book which greatly expands on the subject: The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture.

As a one-time ad-man for Porche, who left the world of marketing to become a pastor, Hipps does a remarkable job at examining how the media we use and choose, in and of itself, conveys certain messages, things what we need to be cognizant of as Christians in our culture. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you are interested in how to communicate Christ in an increasingly postmodern society. Continue Reading »

This is a bit of different topic than we usually talk about here, but I found this article by Charlie Peacock in CCM quite insightful about the current and future state of the Christian music industry.  Charlie Peacock is one of the Christian artists who doesn’t get enough recognition in my opinion, but his overall influence on the industry is hard to overstate.   He has worked with a diverse bunch of musicians including Al Green, CeCe Winans, and Switchfoot to name a few.  So, as the saying goes, when he talks, we should listen.

There are a lot of good quotes in the article, but here’s a few I really find hard-hitting:

The music business, Christian and otherwise, has been a wealth-creation mechanism for a small, elite group of executives, songwriters, producers and artists. Those days are over. Still, the old guard won’t go peaceably. They’ll fight for control to the end. When they finally exit, the new music business will be underway.

Christian music as a genre has always been a music you move on from. Young Christian baby-boomers and Gen-X once in love with the music abandoned it in adulthood and have not returned. As a result, legacy artist catalogs (ranging from Larry Norman to Amy Grant to dcTalk and beyond) do not and will not have the staying power of their mainstream counterparts such as The Beatles, The Eagles, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Celine Dion, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and U2. All these artists, and a hundred others, remain popular and economically viable today. Sadly, the pattern does not hold true for what was contemporary Christian music.

I can especially speak for the validity of the second paragraph.  I think I had close to 300 albums when I left for college, and the vast majority of them were “Christian”.  I look back on some of those groups like Audio Adrenaline, dc Talk, and the Newsboys with fond memories, but honestly I find a lot of it written for the 12-18 year-old demographic.

Working with college students, I find that many of them do not have the same type of devotion to Christian bands that students had even less than 10 years ago.  They have access to practically any song from an artist in any genre at any moment.  They no longer have to go to the shady record stores to get their music.  The ones that into more mainstream music no longer listen to the church-lady warnings about personal holiness.  I’m not saying whether this is good or bad, I’m stating what I see.  I think that in the future is going to get harder and harder for Christian publishing companies to survive.  Like Peacock says, the mainstream CCM industry will probably get distilled down to one big company.

Anyway, I found the article interesting, and I hope to hear people’s thoughts.  I think parallels can be drawn between the CCM industry and the church as a whole.  People are less willing to invest themselves in top-down, power-driven institutions, and I think the time is coming when these institutions will need to make some big changes to survive.

HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi

Since we seem to be on a musical theme, I thought I’d post this real quickly, before leaving to a conference for the week.

So, last year it was Paul Potts, who I thought was amazing (picking up the ref in a MHBC sermon):

This year, it seems to be a 13-year old kid that even has Simon Cowell being a nice guy! Quite an accomplishment!

HT:FARK

It is no secret that a certain Christian website has taken great pains to vilify teen star Miley Cyrus (of “Hannah Montana” fame), who frequently uses her public stage to reference her Christian faith. We’ve defended Ms. Cyrus, who attends Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, CA at least twice previously (along with a bit of tongue-in-cheek advice for her and other Christian artists). In one of the most read chapters of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, we read:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And so it is that we try to consider love, though we have a lot of room for improvement. In light of this, it seems that almost the OPPOSITE of love is displayed in this article (UPDATE: cached image), which gleefully ‘exposes’ Ms. Cyrus for having racy photos taken of her and posted on the internet:

My congenital detractors hooted and howled with laughter when I posted on Miley Cyrus, rock idol to millions of little girls around the world, and her claims that she is a Christian, doing everything she does for Jesus. Irate evangelical Hannah Montana fans indignantly defended the professing Christian rock star for her “squeaky clean” image and her image as a “good Christian role model” for their daughters. Yeah, yeah, right. The news headlines at AOL this morning:

Yet another batch of probably-meant-to-be-private photos of teen sensation Miley ‘Hannah Montana’ Cyrus have found their way on to the Internet, showing the 15-year-old starlet flashing a bra and laying across the lap of a male with her top pulled up. While certainly scandalous simply because of her age, this wouldn’t be the first time that mature photos of Cyrus have made their rounds. In the past, pictures of the singer-actress in underwear and bikinis also made headlines.

Noting that Ms. Cyrus thanked “my lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” when accepting a recent award, the author sneered:

Just leave my Saviour’s holy name out of it, Miley. (emphasis mine)

So what, exactly is the problem with this response to the news about Ms. Cyrus’ suggestive pictures? Well, maybe the fact that they weren’t pictures of her, and that the reporting standard was just shy of that of the National Enquirer? In this age of frequent “Photoshopped” scandals, it doesn’t make sense to be sensational with ‘breaking news’ - particularly when it is salacious - until enough time (typically one or two news cycles - 1-2 weekdays) has passed for the actual facts of a situation have been ascertained. As for the final comment about “my Saviour’s holy name”, the implication is clear that the author arrogantly believes that her Saviour and Ms. Cyrus’ Saviour are two different individuals. If they are two separate individuals, indeed, I think I will take the one publicly proclaimed by Ms. Cyrus over one that (by the author’s implication) would wholeheartedly endorse the gossip-mongering, externals-focused, deceitful, slander-filled rantings of her critic.

If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

I wonder if a retraction will be forthcoming, or if it will be an Obama-like “I’m sorry if people were hurt by the way I said things, but the underlying truth still exists” non-apology. I am truly hoping for the former. ***UPDATE (with thanks to Matt B)*** It seems that the original author deleted the article (I’ll rescue the original from my cache and link it tomorrow, if possible) and - rather than issue an apology - used her own error to compound her attack against the teenager in her crosshairs, by issuing an increasingly vitriolic non-apology. What is sad is that she links to a rather innocuous video of Ms. Cyrus performing at a charity event to raise money for the relief of human suffering. (See below)

Were we to be of the same, twisted mindset, we could write up a post comparing this author’s ideal of Christian dress with that of the FLDS Texas polygamy cult. Then, we could make suggestions that the two are somehow connected. (See below):

While we could do this, such a comparison would be just as much of an ad homenim attack as the string of anti-Christian attacks made by the author of the attack piece. Instead, we have an author who has had to issue multiple corrections in the past week, whether for being punk’d (along with several other media outlets) by a Yale student, for linking to gay porn, or - now - for posting false, salacious gossip that might be a stumbling block for Christians struggling with porn. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that this website claims to have the gift of discernment here:

That’s right the Lord gave everything he had for us, the least we can do is to return what we have — the gifts that he’s given us — to use them for his glory and to warn those in the church — as unpopular as it is — to be in the postition of watchman you take a bit of egg in the face from the kids standing down below.

Despite claiming such powers, its own powers of ‘discernment’ seem to be on par with the Weekly World News, and just as sinful. Certainly, God has called - and He wants His truth back…

It’s kind of rare that I find something in the “Christian” music market that I can recommend to people, but one exception throughout the years has been Justin McRoberts.  I don’t even know if it’s completely accurate to say he’s part of the Christian market, since he releases all of his music independently.  But He is a Christian, and he still writes a lot of his songs with a Christian audience in mind.

McRobert’s new album is entitled Deconstruction, and though the word has gotten a lot press recently, I find the lyrics to be quite poignant and challenging.  I find that God has gifted certain people to express things I would like to say better than I possibly could.

Deconstruction
© Justin McRoberts 2008 Five Foot Six and a Half Music (ASCAP)

I am comfortable with deconstruction
I am comfortable with doubt
It’s the assurance that I’m right about the mystery
The assurance that you’re wrong that I can do without

So everything I knew about you
Everything I thought I knew
I’d tear it down and I would leave it all in pieces
If finally what it means is that I’m left with only you

They say it’s not about religion
But then they tell you how to think
They say it’s all about the way you understand it
Then they tell you what it means that you’ve experienced these things

They say it’s not about performance
They say it’s all about the heart
But every critic with his pen or his computer
Talks about effectiveness and not about the art

If you’d like to hear the song, it should come up on the embedded player on McRobert’s website.  I highly recommend that you check him out if you haven’t before.