Posts filed under ‘Blog’
March 5th, 2010 | Comments
I knew my love for Guinness was not misplaced! Great article by Stephen Mansfield at Relevant. The gospel gets hold of one successful businessman and his company blesses thousands of people across generations. What would happen if it got hold of five?
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: culture, found object, jesus
March 3rd, 2010 | Comments
I am continually amazed at how rich a tradition we have in the hymns of past song writers. Brian T Murphy over at Red Mountain Church in Birmingham pretty much exactly expresses my thoughts on the value of hymns in worship. Since becoming the music director at my church almost 6 years ago, I’ve been a big fan of hymns and re-introducing hymn texts through new music. And yes, I have been guilty on more than one occasion of grumbling about the lameness of more contemporary worship songwriters.
That being said, I really enjoyed Steve Holmes resetting my perspective by pointing out some really, really horrendous (and hilarious) hymns from some of my favorite hymn writers. Fact: The great Charles Wesley wrote over 6000 hymns, only about 20 of which we use today. Conclusion: 5960 of his songs suuuhhuck. Bravo, Steve. Bravo.
Oh, and by the way, “hymns are the dead wood of the service.” Who said that? C.S. Freaking Lewis, that’s who. Ouch.
As a bonus I include this link to the most awesomest worst hymn ever written.
March 1st, 2010 | Comments
A friend from my church started an organization dedicated to helping sexually trafficked women and children escape from forced sex work. Susan hatched this idea almost two years ago, but honestly up until yesterday I had my doubts about whether anything would ever come of it. But yesterday GenerateHope opened the doors to it’s first safe house here in San Diego, and two women moved in. I am utterly amazed and really stoked. Today Susan was interviewed on local public radio station KPBS.
In our North Park neighborhood prostitution is common as the day is long. The intensity on our corner fluctuates, I guess, as vice herds it east and west along El Cajon Blvd. But Mellie and I have had multiple run-ins, from flushing johns off our street, to finding out a woman had been working in the vacant apartment below us, to intervening when a girl was being bullied by her pimp. Parked in the alley, Mellie accidentally left her car unlocked one night and the next day we found, um, “evidence” in the front seat. My job that day was to get the interior detailed. Walking home late one night I passed a girl sobbing on the sidewalk. I stopped to help her and we ended up talking about her life over tacos at Taco Bell. She had been hassled by the cops and was afraid of getting arrested again. Nothing but spike heels, so I drove her the 15 blocks back to her place in City Heights. Her night was a bust so I gave her $20 as she got out of my car. What do you think that looked like to anyone watching? When I got home and crawled into bed I whispered to half-asleep Mellie, “Sorry I’m late, I was with a prostitute. G’night.”
Some girls are doing it by choice, obviously. But in my limited experience it seems like things get murky pretty quickly. The girl who lost her john when I told him I was calling the cops cussed me out and asked if I was going to come over and feed her 3 kids that night. The girl I met sobbing on the street was a freelancer, but had been beat up several times and was looking for a pimp that could protect her. On the phone to SDPD to report a dude I had just watched drop off one girl and who was now picking up another in my driveway, I was told that the police could only arrest the guy if an officer witnessed him exchanging money for sex, but if I gave a description of the girl they would send an officer right away to pick her up. What? That seems pretty messed up to me. Seems like there are a lot of factors that might push a woman into a bad situation, or contribute to making a bad situation worse.
Susan has some pretty crazy stats on the numbers of girls—some as young as 13, 14—who are coerced to hook or escort. They are actually enslaved—unable to leave their pimps either through force or intimidation. San Diego is one of the top US cities for sexual slavery. WTF. This is some messed up stuff. Check out the interview above and support GenerateHope if you can—donations are tax deductible.
February 26th, 2010 | Comments
Good insights on prayer from Brian that got me thinking…
What would God say to me?
How would God actually respond if He was walking beside me, here in my neighborhood, listening to my verbal vomit? How would He reply to my claims, my grievances, my confessions, my version of the story? What would He discern between the lines? What truths would He point out, and which ones would He leave for another time? What questions would He ask me? What council would He offer? What would He say?
In my neighborhood I live in constant danger of any moment finding myself sharing a curb, or a nearby cafe table, or a place in line which exposes me to a certain indigenous species of oral predator who, if offered even accidental eye contact, will seize me in conversation and proceed to vomit forth an unceasing monologue, a narrative of complaint following some gnostic logic known only to themselves, which will, if I can contrive no escape, consume my entire afternoon. I feel an excruciating angst when cornered like this. I’m pinned between the agony of being bludgeoned by unceasing sentences and a desire to not be rude. I choose one of two responses. The first is when their narrative almost, but not quite, makes sense. In this case I find myself engaging the conversation against my better judgment, their half-logic like a will-o-wisp tempting me ever deeper into the woods. When I realize to my dismay that I am lost in the forest, hemmed in by an impenetrable thicket, I shrink into a pathetic ball of mm’s and huh’s, while anxiously scanning the horizon for some pause, some nano-second sliver of daylight in the monolithic tirade, my chance to make a break for it. The second option is to be rude right off the bat, to clearly and unmistakably abort the conversation. I am always surprised, when I opt for the latter response, at how well my assailant takes it. No reproach, no attack. Their fixation on me simply ceases, and they move on, presumably to find other prey. The disconnect is actually unnerving, it’s so complete.
I read the Bible, and in it I find an image of God. I can discern something about His character—He is just, He is truthful, He is wise, He is merciful, He is faithful, He is patient. I can learn something about His attitude towards believers who cry out to Him—that He hears, that He understands, that He cares, that He loves, forgives, disciplines. And I can know something about His plans for me—plans to prosper me, plans to complete His good work in me, plans to heal me, plans to bear much fruit in and through me. That’s an image of God for me to keep in mind, as I wonder what He would say to me, walking here beside me through my neighborhood, listening to me spill my guts.
Because left to myself I always imagine God in my own image. I see Him standing on the curb minding His own business when He accidentally meets my eye. Suddenly He is plunged beneath an outrageous cataract of unceasing, indecipherable and uninvited verbiage. I imagine Him forced to choose one of two responses—a half-hearted attempt to make sense of me while looking for an escape, or a curt and despising silence. And wouldn’t He be justified under the intolerable strafe of my monomaniacal tirade? And wouldn’t He feel the same chagrin at how quickly, how completely my attention drops from Him? Wouldn’t He be utterly bewildered and put off by this crazy person?
My understanding of You is so stunted by my own image. Please walk here beside me, and help me to see You as You are.
February 17th, 2010 | 1 comment
I think leaders for music worship have two roles that can often be in tension with one another. I’m calling the roles “worship leader” and “lead worshiper”, and I’ve written down some half-baked ideas about them. I’m sure others have already thought this through with much more wisdom and clarity.
My pastor Dick Kaufmann was the first person I heard use the term “lead worshiper”. I like the concept. The “lead worshiper” leads by example, showing people what worship looks like by actually worshiping. It brings to mind images of David going all Soul Train in his loin cloth before the Lord and not giving a rip about what anyone thought—his personal commitment to worshiping God an implicit invitation for others to join in. David was a great example of a lead worshiper in other ways, too—from ecstatic freak-outs, to brutally honest confession and repentance, to bold and reasoned proclamations of faith, to quavering pleas to a seemingly distant God. David led by example, and I think we should too. I also think we should lead by creating new expressions of worship. David’s Psalm 40 testimony that the Lord “put a new song in my mouth” suggests that God’s continuing work in our lives calls for our continuing response. We don’t thank a kind person once-and-for-all; we continue to thank him each time we receive his kindness. God’s new goodnesses engender new creative overflows in us. Since God’s mercies are inexhaustible, our source material for new expressions of worship is equally inexhaustible.
In this sense, new is good. Familiarity can breed contempt. Or at least when something becomes rote and expected it fails to captivate our hearts in the way it did when it was new. A true statement becomes cliché through repetition, and the truth gets obscured by the cliché. To me, this is reason enough to be cliché-o-clast, a cliché smasher. As worshipers, we should be on the lookout for the ways familiarity has dulled us to the incisive truths of the gospel. Where we discover dullness, we should set about finding fresh ways to rediscover the truth and craft new heartfelt responses to it. New songs should be written (or learned). New forms explored. Old songs should be reworked so their wonders shine bright again. I am not at all saying that old things should be done away with, but that the canon of God’s praise should be forever expanding. Not just on a cosmic level but on a local level, too. The congregation should be challenged to learn new songs, different songs. A lead worshiper leads by continually proclaiming God’s glory in new ways because he/she is continually experiencing God’s goodness in new ways. One of the awesomenesses of Pentecost was that God reversed the curse of Babel not by reinstating a single language, but by redeeming the variety. We have a God who pushes out into the frontiers. A lead worshiper gets to be part of that Pentecostal un-Babeling, leading the congregation to proclaim the gospel in new tongues. Because of this, I think a lead worshiper is right to lead in ways that are new, exploratory and challenging to the prevailing culture.
On the other hand, a worship leader (not a lead worshiper) has the responsibility to lead people in ways they can follow, in ways that enable them to participate. In this sense, the old—the familiar, the known—is good. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit moved the disciples to speak not in incomprehensible syllables, but in the languages intimately familiar to the people present. In the Psalms, Israel’s hymnbook, we find evidence that corporate worship should be orderly and the participants should know their parts. In contrast, if each week the worship leader strips to his underwear to sweatily dance unto the Lord, leaving me baffled and uncomfortable in the pew, I won’t attend that church for very long. No matter how earnest the leader, I need to be led somewhere I can follow.
This makes me think that old worn paths are sometimes the best. They are the way of measured, practiced, expected steps which if earnestly followed will lead us into a dance of worship. In a dance we learn all the steps in order to forget them. Once familiar, these steps free us to dance as David danced—sweeping us up into all the variety of his earnest worship. Order, liturgy, familiarity are means of grace, used by a wonderfully kind God who is willing to gently woo a bunch of shy wallflowers. He incorporates our hesitating need for familiar steps into His unexpected and graceful movements.
I strongly suspect my work as a worship leader is nothing mystical. I’m just a musician providing melody and tempo so the real work of worship can be conducted by the Dance Master. I see evidence of it every week. For example, at any given moment there is a very good chance that I am not the “lead worshiper” in the room. I am likely to be totally distracted by a cataract of unworshippy thoughts—”Am I going to hit this next chord?” “I’m irritated that half the band was late today” “Should we get an EQ and compressor for the monitors?” Or even, “Gosh my voice sounds really good today!” Or, “Cool! I wrote this song and now everyone is singing it!” Ugh. In those moments I am a terrible lead worshiper. But here’s the thing. In those moments I can look out at the congregation and see people worshiping. In spite of me, they have met God and He has swept them up into His dance. This constantly blows my mind, how God takes my moldy loaf and rotten little fish and turns them into a banquet.
God works in spite of me. From this I can glean two things. First, although it is very possible (and lamentable) that I am a poor lead worshiper, by the grace of God I’m doing okay as a worship leader. Simply by providing quality music for the dance that is going on, I am helping God’s people participate in worship. Praise God for that. Second, if the main point is to help the congregation dance, it’s okay to play the music that the congregation dances to best. A worship leader does everyone a disservice (including God) if in his eagerness to smash clichés he has no awareness of what will actually help the congregation worship. All evils of “church consumerism” aside, a congregation’s expectations, their culture, even their preference for certain songs and instrumentation, are the dance steps with which they respond to God’s call to worship. A worship leader should respect that.
So where does this leave me? I feel like I’m triangulating between two stars. As a leader in worship music, I think I should be continually creative, challenging myself and others to craft, seek out and embrace new ways to reflect and respond to God’s goodness. This is scary. I also think I should be humble and content to play the same old song for the millionth time if it helps one clumsy soul (maybe my own) get on the dance floor. In its own way this is also scary. Knowing how much to do one and how much to do the other is difficult. I need wisdom and discernment to be both a lead worshiper and a worship leader.
Thoughts?
February 4th, 2010 | Comments
Plus cupcakes!
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: community, culture, lost, nonsense
January 19th, 2010 | Comments
Joining a Sacred Harp singing is now on my short list of highly recommended, along with New Zealand and guacamole. The physical power of this strange, haunting, apocalyptic music is not captured at all by this video (sorry Richard). Mellie and I stumbled across Sacred Harp a few years ago through this great documentary. We’ve been waiting for the west coast convention to arrive in San Diego ever since. Very nice folks took us in and even let us lead a song or two.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: adventure, community, culture, mellie, music, sacred harp
November 17th, 2009 | Comments
A film by Mellie, about a dopey guy she knows.
Places featured in this vid: San Diego, Big Sur, Mt Whitney, New York City, Mt Shasta, New Zealand, Montreal, Alabama, Mt San Jacinto, camping in a Chic-Fil-A parking lot (for 1 year of free food!), Honopu Ridge in Kauai, and my parent’s house.
September 18th, 2009 | Comments
A cross section of my neighborhood’s visions of a perfected city, taken from the Harbor Art Show guestbook.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: art, community, culture, Harbor Art
August 17th, 2009 | Comments
Harbor Art: Visions From A Perfected City from Harbor Uptown on Vimeo.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: art, community, culture, Harbor Art, video
