Putting Specifics to What One Believes-part 1

 

Putting Specifics to What One Believes-part 1

It is not considered politically correct to specify what and whom when it comes to sacred music and musicing.  So, Christian musicians tiptoe through the tulips so to speak when it comes to putting specifics to what one considers to be wrong with some religious music and musicing. The Matthew 7:1,statement, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” is often used as a prohibition of making any musical judgements that are specific even though these judgments have legitimate foundations that have a Bible and or a music basis. The Bible also states in John 7:24, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment”.  The Bible also states in Matthew 7:20, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them”.

The fabric of music and the landscape that surrounds it is “Christian” only when it is congruent with and has a footprint that is theologically accurate and has the propensity to accurately represent the moral nature of God.  Christians have the right and the responsibility to inspect the music’s “fruit”.  Let me  put it simply, for those who find it difficult to conceptualize my writings.  If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, swims like a duck, has a duck’s footprint, and associates itself with other ducks, one may safely make the judgment that it is indeed a duck.

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can Be Efficacious-part 3

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can  Be Efficacious-part 3

          Pastor’s should help the musicians select proper music for the service by first of all telling the musicians where the service is intended to go.  What are the immediate goals of the service?  What is the topic and text of the sermon?  Should the organist player not play during prayer?  What atmosphere and mood should be set by the instrumental prelude?  Should the choir sing before or after the message or both times?  Do you plan to invite people to pray at the altar after the message?  Will the call to prayer be aimed at saints or sinners?  Will the appeal be to sinners to come to repentance or to Christians to greater Christians commitment?  Do you have a particular song that you wish to be sung at the end of the service?  Do you want the minister of music to sing an invitation hymn?  Do you want the congregation to sing with the minister of music or stand quietly while he or she sings alone?  Would you prefer that the musicians play softly with no singing at all?

          The musicians including the song leader, minister of music, organist, pianist, praise team leader, keyboard player and perhaps some key instrumentalists should be called together with the pastor for a face to face meeting.  All of the key musical personnel need to know the pastor’s goals for the service in question.  The Holy Spirit should never be expected to do for us what we can do for ourselves.  It s the pastor’s responsibility to inform all who are involved in worship leadership what his goals are for the worship service.

Spirit Led Musicing Can Be Efficacious-part 2

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can  Be Efficacious-part 2

           The larger church has a regular music staff including a minister of music, pianist, organist, keyboards, and instrumentalists.  These professional musicians need mentoring and personal attention of the pastor.  The church musicians of a small congregation, who are most often volunteers, need even more pastoral attention.  They need musical and spiritual mentoring.  If a pastor is going to mentor these volunteer amateur church musicians, he is going to need to know more about music than the names of the lines and spaces.  Pastors of a small church will find that their two to four hours of music taken in Bible College or Seminary will grow thin under such conditions.

          A regular part of a pastors “lifelong learning” and continuing education should include continued training in music and music philosophy.  Understanding problems of developing and administering a Christocentric biblically based music philosophy must be a preferred claim of the pastor’s continuing education.  Churches should support Bible Colleges and Seminaries that provide an opportunity for continuing education in church music for their pastor.  Pastors must take a hands on approach to church music.  This does not mean destroying all initiative of the novice church musicians who give selflessly of their time and energies.  Many pastors who are strong leaders make the deadly mistake of choosing all the music for the worship and evangelistic services.  This is demeaning to a church musician.  Although it may be easier to pick all the selections and push the musicians around like they were pawns on a chessboard, it is the wrong decision to make.

          This style of leadership is not “pastoring” or “mentoring” but rather the work of dictator.  Pastors with strong personalities often treat professional church musicians the same way they do novices.  Rather than defining exact style and sequence of worship they desire they become silently frustrated with what is happening in the worship and evangelistic services and blame most of the problems on the musicians and the music.

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can Be Efficacious-part 1

 

Spirit Led Musicing Can  Be Efficacious-part 1

Is church music only a “getting started” task or a vehicle used to pick up the offering?  Does the effectual fervent musicing of a righteous man or woman avail much?  It is my belief that Spirit led musicing can and should be efficacious in the 21st century church.  Music ministry can be a very effective vehicle for the Word of God to ride into the hearts of the worshiping body.  Music can and should be a means of preparing people’s hearts in the worship or evangelistic service. 

          If music is going to accomplish the many purposes of public worship it will probably be accomplished not by accident but rather very much on purpose.  Applying the 20th century principles of chance music or indeterminacy to church music only creates an atmosphere of chaos in worship.  Many pastors are so busy making sure that public worship does not become formal that, in an attempt to be folksy and familiar, the worship service has little or no form or direction.  I believe that pastors who wait for something spontaneous to light a fire under a sleepy, dry, worship experience, normally get what they expected out of the worship service—little or nothing at all.

Ways of Thinking-part 3

 

Ways of Thinking-part 3

The conservative Christian has the tendency to conserve and preserve established institutions.  The thesis thinker must be careful to keep public worship from being morally damaged or destroyed.  Resist harmful change, not all change!  Resist worldliness and secularization of Christian music worship, not all change in musical worship style.

Postmodern means that which represents thinking that is a further development of the thinking of modern man.  The term “postmodern” when referring to time simply means postmodern times or after modern times.  Postmodernism refers to an ideology that is more advanced or liberal, if you will, than modernism.

Modernism is a worldview containing rationalism and humanism that disdained former orthodox ideologies.  For instance, modern man believes that there are aspects of Christianity that are not true, and that truth and morality are relative.  Now this modern thinking is thought to be old-fashioned since many postmodernists do not believe that we can “know” truth or reality.  Orthodox Christians and modernists “thought differently” about absolutes and truth.  Postmodernists have taken thought even farther by rejecting absolutes in music completely.  The fine arts are often a part of the Avant-guard.  Music and the fine arts in general often give us insight into where a particular culture is headed.

Ways of Thinking-part 2

Ways of Thinking-part 2

There is nothing inherently wrong with a new style or a new composition or a new way of musicing.  Those who are “antiquers” disdain anything past Watts and Wesley, Ira Sankey, and George Beverly Shea.  Never confuse an ancient landmark of musical worship with an old-fashioned way of musicing.  Musical worship is not all a matter of taste but there is room for personal taste in musical worship.  Not every style of music is appropriate for worship but there is room for more than one style of music in Christian worship.

There is no virtue in being out-of-date!  Resisting the use of percussion, guitars, or keyboards, or church orchestras is not in the slightest bit biblical.  A four hundred-thousand-dollar pipe organ does not bring the church closer to God.  The question is not to use or not to use, but rather HOW we use instruments in the church.  Praise teams are not worldly unless the praise team has conformed to the world’s mode of musicing.  There is no virtue in a massive solid oak lectern as opposed to a simple one made of plexiglass.

Ways of Thinking-part 1

 

 Ways of Thinking-part 1

Writers often refer to the terms modern, postmodern, and post-Christian and contemporary thinkers.  The term modern means that which exhibits the characteristics of present or recent times.  One who adheres to conforms to current tendencies at the exclusion of traditional ways of ministering through the art of music or builds a music philosophy based on modern standards of “correctness” and “knowing” is a “modern” music minister.  A distinction must be made between “modern” and “up-to-date”.  Modern connotes a new way of “thinking” or “knowing” about musicing.  Up to date connotes thinking new things about musicing.  Conservative traditional thesis thinkers* must not make the mistake of confusing the two.  If this mistake is made the conservative Christian will become an “antiquer” – one who reveres only old things.   *“Thesis thinking” means that one’s thinking process is based on a thesis (a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved). and recognizes that there is also an antithesis (a directly opposite belief or viewpoint).

 

Are They Musical Convictions or Preferences? Part 2

 

Are They Musical Convictions or Preferences? Part 2

 

 I am not saying that my philosophical preferences do not matter.  I am simply acknowledging that my relationship with other Christian musicians matters more than most of my musical preferences.  They matter enough for me to disagree agreeably with my Christian colleagues who are of a different opinion about music education and church music preferences. So, I must very carefully differentiate between my musical preferences and Bible principles of musicing which are not negotiable.

The Christian musician must remember that I\it is important to have a tender conscience.  When one believes that a certain type of music or musicing is destructive to that person’s spiritual life it is dangerous to ignore what one believes to be the checks of the Holy Spirit.  However, that musician should not demand that everyone refrain from musicing in a certain way if the  Bible is silent about a certain way of musicing.

 

 

Are They Musical Convictions or Preferences? Part 1

 

Are They Musical Convictions or Preferences? Part 1

 

What the music educator firmly believes about the nature and value of music at its deepest levels should exude from that musician’s musical convictions.  A musical conviction is the strong feeling of being sure that what that musician believes about music is true and therefore must be followed.   A musical preference is different in that it is a greater liking for one musical alternative over another.  As the reader can see there is a dramatic difference between the two terms.

I am not only passionate about my about my philosophic music convictions, I am also passionate about the philosophical preferences that I have which I earnestly believe are important to excellence in musicing. However, there is something that I have learned over the years that has helped me.  I have learned that some of my preferences do not matter enough to cause me to break fellowship with other musicians who disagree with me. In the light of what words spoken do to relationships, most musical preferences really do not matter as much as we think they do when the waves of adversity and disagreement are blowing.  At these times we all find that we need Christian musical friendship more than having our way musically.   What we need to do in these times is let the blessed Holy Spirit be our rudder to help us stay out of “foot in mouth disease” and remain on course musically.

Is All Scripture Inspired and Accurate? Part 3

Is All Scripture Inspired and Accurate?  Part 3

 

Remember it is not the responsibility of the conservative synthesis-thinking musician to change the thinking of modern and post-modern and post-postmodern man.  Our responsibility is to be Christ-like, kind and patient.  The most we can do is to present our beliefs, and help the synthesis thinker to explore his or her beliefs.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide Christian musicians into all truth. 

It is a basic presupposition of this book and all my writings that all musicing is based on some philosophy and that this philosophy is fundamentally based on some matrix.  Music philosophy is the basic foundation from which all musical actions exude.  A sound philosophy of music ministry is founded on principles much deeper than mere likes and dislikes since it is based on God’s matrix.

A word of caution is in order for those who are conservative in their philosophical positions concerning music.  It is arrogant for anyone to believe that he or she has a corner on truth as though no one else is capable of having knowledge of music’s nature and value.  There are areas where the Bible is silent about music and musicing and scientific method has produced no logical evidence to support a particular musical position.  In such cases, tolerance is in order.  The fact that the Holy Spirit has checked a Christian about something that he or she once did musically, is not concrete evidence that no other Christian musician should music in that way.  Christian musicians must always try to understand the difference between personal musical convictions and biblical principles of musicing that are not negotiable.