Harold Best on the Church and Culture

I almost shouted out loud when I read the following final paragraph in the chapter titled "Worship and Witness" in Harold Best's Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts. He said some things earlier in the chapter that center to the core of some of the root issues in our divisions over worship style and the worship wars ... but this paints a clear picture of how the solution looks. I couldn't wait to cogitate on in more. I had to share it (with the few, the proud, the Momo's Musings blog readers). Read Best's words ... comment if you like:

Serving Christ while participating in culture in an elegant and reforming way can mean a thousand things in as many places. It can mean shoveling muck and bringing clean water to a barrio. It can mean writing a new praise chorus for a storefront congregation. It can mean translating the Scripture one more time for one more faraway tribe. It can mean taking old hymns and old ways and breathing new life into them. It can mean preaching simply yet eloquently, fearinly yet sweetly. It can mean praise songs cavorting with hymns, and drums conversing with organ sounds. It can mean complete freedom in the Lord and stupendous discipline finding common ground. It can mean Bach, blues, Monet, street art, child dance and ballet, homiletics and storytelling, barn raisings and homeless shelters, all found within the normal conversation of the believing church. Elegance, for the Christian, is simply a thousand actions washed in the blood and carrying the sweet savor of Jesus' love. It is, above all, the seamless garment of worship and witness.

Oh, for God to turn our hearts toward engaging in culture like that! Our silly arguments over worship style (by which we mainly mean musical style) -- whether it's edgy enough or traditional enough or this enough or that enough or too much one thing or another -- are just silly babble. And the world outside looks at it, recognizes it as such, and decides that it doesn't want to have a thing to do with Jesus Christ. Truth be known, the worship wars are just the result of us trading narrow-mindedness about one style of worship for narrow-mindedness about another style of worship.

That's enough to think about for now.

Steeple Song

This morning I had listened again to Reggie McNeill's farewell address to the crowd at Shepherding the Staff 2007 where he was talking about how we think all we have to do to experience kingdom growth is to get the building right, get our marketing right, get us a "sexy sax player" (Reggie's words, not mine ... in other words, get our worship style right), get a new pastor (or other staff member) ... or get rid of the one we've got, etc. There were a couple of songs from my teen years that came to mind, and I thought how things are so very different from the way they were 30 years ago ... and how gifted prophetic voices still echo with God's truth. As I listened to Reggie, Ken Medema's "Kingdom in the Streets" came to mind. The text of this beautiful, yet difficult song can be read in this story. Medema was saying some things 30 years ago that we're just now coming to grips with.

I was thinking about Reggie's stuff (which is very similar to the Kingdom in the Streets concept) this afternoon when I happened upon a list of 10 ways to grow your church without God at MondayMorningInsight. As I read that list, another relic of my youthful spiritual journey came to mind in Don Francisco's "Steeple Song" ... which I located in a youtube video of a 2004 performance. I found it interesting that Francisco (whose father was noted Baptist preaching professor Clyde Francisco) doesn't appear to have aged one whit in the last 30 years. Everything he talks about was state of the art in the 1960s and 1970s. It would be interesting to hear a 21st century update of the song.



Just some more stuff to think about. It all seemed so simple 30 years ago. I'm coming to learn that it's far simpler AND far more complex than any of us can fathom.

Harold Best on "Satan and His Double Lie"

I sometimes fancy myself a deep thinker, then I run into someone like Harold Best. It's like thinking the ocean is deep while looking at the ocean floor on the continental shelf, then discovering what deep really looks like. I'm slowly working my way through Best's book "Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts" ... I say slowly because I can only wrap my brain around a couple of pages at a time. It's extraoridinarily deep stuff. A couple of days ago I read the following in the chapter titled Worship and Witness. It's under the heading: Satan and His Double Lie. It's the second of three issues relating to what Best calls the thinning out of the gospel. You see, with Best it's layer upon layer upon layer, and to understand some of the things he says, you have to read several other things, each of which is intertwined with several other things ... that's why it takes me so long. I'll not go into the other issues. This one just hit me where I could understand it and I thought it needed to be shared. There are at least three regular readers of my blog who will likely resonate with it.

The second issue relates to the work of Satan. We all know too well that he is incapable of telling the truth. This is eternally impossible. He can use truth upside down and is enormously skilled in making wrong appear to be right and right, wrong. Whatever he does is a lie and whatever he says is a lie, from beginning to end. But when it comes to his dealing with the church and the world, I believe he can lie in two opposing directions at once. Here is what he, coming as an angel of light, may say to the church: "The average human being is fairly slow, culturally encrusted. People like things that are palatable and light. So be palatable and light. And for goodness' sake, don't go into the primitive stuff -- the blood of Christ or the realities of lostness throughout eternity." Here's what he says to the unconverted: "You're too smart for the gospel. Look at how so many of its trappings are second-rate knockoffs of the real stuff you can find around you in the theater, in deeply thought-through books, in higher education. Notice how much more of your mind is demanded even in your daily work than at church. You're ahead the way you are."

So between those two lies he goes about his business. The church buys into the simple-minded, smoothed-over approach; the world continues its assumption that there is, after all, a certain thinness to Christianity. In the middle of this gulf there stands the Savior, asking both the church and the world for entrance and holding out only one truth to each. Nearby is the Holy Spirit in his tenderness, on a holding pattern, with nowhere to alight, while we parade our artificial paracletes: methods, style, surveys, misinformed sensitivity and soft talk.

Harold Best, Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), pp. 89-90.

That's more than enough to think about for now.

Christmas Together

Sunday night was our "big music presentation" for Advent/Christmas. Although it waited until the very last minute to come together, I was very pleased (aka relieved) that our people found it to be balanced and worshipful. When you serve a church with more than one worship "personality", it becomes more of a challenge (in my experience, at least) to craft a seasonal worship event that meets the "tastes" of the whole. This year, because I searched and searched and could find nothing published that "did it" for what I percieved to be the needs of my congregation. So I chose to use the framework of the 9 lessons and carols to organize an experience that involved the Sanctuary Choir (11:00 ... traditional); First Light (8:30 ... contemporary); and Youth Choir (bridges the gap ... loves both traditional stuff and contemporary as well), along with a string quartet plus a double bass.

Our material came from old musicals (only a couple of pieces ... maybe just one), praisecharts.com (First Light and congregational), and anthem literature (Sanctuary Choir and Youth Choir). Some of the praisecharts.com pieces had string parts published with it. At least one of those pieces required me to convert jazz-type brass charts to string stuff (don't laugh .. it worked fairly well). I wrote string parts for some of the pieces, and bought orchestration for at least one of the anthems.

Here's what the congregation had to look at while we led through the experience:

Christmas Together. In the early 20th century, King’s College, Cambridge, began the tradition of Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve. Since then, services of Lessons and Carols have become common throughout the world. The scripture lessons remind us of our need for a Savior, and of the redemptive grace of God in sending Jesus Christ to restore us unto Himself. This evening the Sanctuary Choir (from the 11:00 service), First Light (from the 8:30 service), and the Youth Choir combine to set the table for a unified expression of joy in Christ. We are delighted that you are here to celebrate with us!

FIRST LESSON -- God tells sinful Adam that he has lost the life of Paradise and that his seed will bruise the serpent’s head. (Genesis 3:8-15, 17-19)

O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Latin plainsong hymn, arr. John Wasson
Congregation (led by the voices of First Light)

SECOND LESSON -- God promises to faithful Abraham that in his seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 22:15-18)

I Wonder As I Wander
Appalachian Folk Hymn, arr. John Jacob Niles
Solo Bob Thomason

God So Loved the World
Words and Music by Dan Goeller
Sanctuary Choir and Youth Choir

THIRD LESSON -- The prophet foretells the coming of the Saviour. (Isaiah 9:2, 6-7)

For Unto Us
Words and Music by Mark Cole
First Light

FOURTH LESSON -- The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown. (Isaiah 11:1-4a, 6-9)

Creation Will Be at Peace
Words by J. Paul Williams, Music by Anna Laura Page
Sanctuary Choir

All Is Well
by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Michael W. Smith, arr. Ron Huff
Youth Choir, Laura Thorp, solo

FIFTH LESSON -- The angel Gabriel salutes the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Luke 1:26-35, 38)

Mary, Did You Know?
Words by Mark Lowry, Music by Buddy Greene, arr. Jack Schrader
Sanctuary Choir

SIXTH LESSON -- Luke tells of the birth of Jesus. (Luke 2:1, 3-7)

The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy
Traditional, arr. Camp Kirkland and Tom Fettke
Youth Choir guys

Offering
Words and Music by Paul Baloche, arr. David Shipps
First Light

SEVENTH LESSON -- The shepherds go to the manger. (Luke 2:8-16)

Ding, Dong Merrily on High
Austrian Carol, arr. Smith
Sanctuary Choir with handbells

O Little Town of Bethlehem
Words by P. P. Brooks, Music by Lewis H. Redner, arr. John Wasson
Congregation (led by the voices of First Light)

EIGHTH LESSON -- The wise men are led by the star to Jesus. (Matthew 2:1-11)

Still, Still, Still
Austrian Carol, arr. Norman Luboff
Sanctuary Choir

Adoration

Words and Music by Tom Fettke
Sanctuary Choir

NINTH LESSON -- John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation (John 1:1-14)

O Come, All Ye Faithful
by John Francis Wade, arr. David Shipps
Congregation