How to prepare for a big performance

This weekend, we’re putting on a big show. I know there’s a lot of folks who will shudder at the use of such crass terms. However, I want to be clear that musicians have to prepare for a worship service in the same way that we do a recital or a concert. We have to strengthen our voices, to train our hands, to focus our minds. Artists are given special gifts by God to do amazing things, but those gifts manifest themselves in ways that look just like learning to read, write or speak. We have to discipline our minds and bodies to produce skilled music expression. So for the musicians who lead God’s people in worship, the first and most important preparation for worship is to actually practice your part. Maybe that seems un-spiritual. The truth is that music is work and work takes…work. You have to invest time and energy in order to do it well. If you opt to spend your Friday night in prayer and fasting, you will have a mind focused on God’s wonderful grace and power, but it will not make you play the guitar better on Saturday. For worship musicians, practicing your instrument must become a spiritual act of service and devotion.

Here’s another way to think about it: loving your neighbor is expressed in action not in “spiritual” thoughts. If you see a neighbor in need and you don’t take action to help them, then you are not loving them. Faith and love are nothing if they are not expressed. Practice and preparation for worship is an act of love and faith. It’s love because you are putting the needs of your neighbor ahead of your own. Your preparations are not for your benefit but for the benefit of your neighbor who needs you to lead. If you are ready to go, then by all means sit down and rest, but if you know that you have work to do, then get in the wood shed and practice – out of love. Practice is an act of faith because you are acknowledging that your work is not in vain. Investing time in the work of worship is expressing faith that the kingdom of God is real and that Jesus is Lord. We can give our lives away as living sacrifices because we know that our lives have been redeemed for the purposes of the kingdom.

But…

The battle is not ours to fight. Well executed music does not change hearts from self-worship to God-worship. My pastor has been sharing with us about the book of Joshua and it’s got me thinking about our job as worship musicians. Joshua is a book about the conquest of Canaan. In most historical writings, a book of conquest would include battle strategy. Reading the Iliad, you get lots of descriptions of people’s heads getting split open and the glorious power of the warrior. In Joshua, you read about the glorious power of Jehovah being demonstrated. The battle strategy of Joshua is stuff like, march around for seven days and then blow a trumpet or make the sun stand still in the sky. Joshua’s army had to be ready to fight with training and equipment, but they were God’s instruments being used to win God’s victory. After you are practiced and prepared for battle, be ready to see the glory of God demonstrated in ways you can’t even imagine or prepare for.  God’s called you into this act of service, but the movement of his kingdom is one that will proceed whether you are ready or not. It’s a miraculous demonstration of power that envious, self-obsessed, vain, fearful, cynical, melancholic, and boastful musicians can be redeemed for the purpose of serving at the front lines of the Lord’s army.

Black History Celebration this weekend

This weekend we have our annual Black History Celebration. Last weekend, I was sick as a dog with a cold that is currently laying waste to the entire population of St Louis. Apparently they had a fun and productive final rehearsal without me. It’s nice to know that the world goes on without me so that I can rest and recoup when necessary.

Here’s the details on the event if you would like to come (graphic design by Carrie Jones):

The event is at our church New City Fellowship – 1483 82nd Blvd St Louis MO 63132

Here’s a stag plot that I’ve created to be ready for the enormous band that we’ll be rocking with. Notice that I’m not playing any guitar this year. If you have a problem with that, then talk to the men in our church about joining the choir so that I can leave the tenor section.

I’ve also created some schedules for the busy day. Somehow, every time I try to communicate information to people, it doesn’t seem to be received. Part of the problem is that people process information in different ways. To compensate for that, I’ve created two versions of the same schedule, one for Left-brained people and one for Right-brained people.

Schedule – Left Brains

Schedule -Right Brains

 

 

Christ died to defeat sin – for the sinner and the sinned against

Harvie Conn taught that everyone is both a sinner and the sinned against. If we preach the gospel to sinners and leave out the sinned against, then we are only speaking to half of the problem. Christ died to save me from my sin, but he also died to save me from being sinned against.

I asked the question of my pastor, how do we bring this element back into worship services which have become so individualistic. My colleague, Anthony Johnson, spoke up and reminded me that gospel music is full of the response of the sinned against to the power of the gospel. (I was a little embarrassed that I missed that.)

What does “Kumbaya” mean and why should we care?

Race, culture, humor, politics, stereotypes, class, language – a few topics that come up around the song “Kumbaya”.

Kumbaya is pigeon English of the phrase “Come By Here”.  I came across an excellent arrangement of “Come By Here” in the GIA African American Church Music Series. It was done by Uzee Brown Jr.  As I meditated on the meaning of the song, I was struck by the cry of the oppressed for the Lord to hear and respond. It’s a lament and a statement of faith in a God who does see and hear and is able to intercede and deliver. However, it’s a song that is plagued by an unfair stereotype as a symbol of irrelevant and meaningless expressions of pseudo-unity.

Wikipedia led me to this excellent 2006 article by Jeffrey Weiss published in the Dallas Morning News. Here’s a few select quotes:

Sometime between 1922 and 1931, members of an organization called the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals collected a song from the South Carolina coast. “Come By Yuh,” as they called it, was sung in Gullah, the Creole dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the Sea Islands. [...]

Jump forward to the mid-1950s and the Cooperative Recreation Service, an Ohio-based publisher of songbooks for camps and scouts. Joe Hickerson, a folksinger and former director of acquisitions for the American Folklife Center, credits Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of Cooperative Recreation, with getting “Kumbaya” to the masses. If a camp wanted a music book with, say, 40 songs, Ms. Rohrbough would offer 30 from her stock inventory and add 10 new ones, Mr. Hickerson said. ”Kum By Yah” – described only as an “African” song – was part of the Rohrbough inventory by 1956. As a result, it showed up in countless books of camp songs used by the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and others. ”The camp counselors who played guitar liked it because it only has three chords,” Mr. Hickerson said. [...]

For the next 25 years, it was just one folksong among many. But in the early 1980s, something happened. “Kumbaya” became the English-speaking world’s favorite folksong to ridicule, the musical metaphor for corny camaraderie. How? Someone’s wondering, Lord. An extensive (and we do mean extensive) search of databases of newspapers, magazines and other sources turned up what may be the first ironic reference to “Kumbaya” in print, from Aug. 16, 1985. The line is from a Washington Post review by Rita Kempley of the comedy movie Volunteers: “Tom Hanks and John Candy make war on the Peace Corps inVolunteers, a belated lampoon of ’60s altruism and the idealistic young Kumbayahoos who went off to save the Third World.”

Read the article to get the whole story.

Anyhow, the whole topic seems to be a mixed bag of cultural misappropriation, political rhetoric, Baby-boomer nostalgia, commercialization of racial stereotypes, the American-style cross-pollination of  black and white music, to name a few. I’m not sure what to make of it all except to take the song for what it is, cultural baggage and all. In a lot of ways, this song tells a lot more about Black History than if a hypothetical slave-composed spiritual was unearthed by archaeologists in it’s original 19th century form. It tells a more complicated story that goes deeper than face value. Much of African American cultural has been either repackaged in a derogatory form for mass consumption (as in the Minstrel Shows) or (despite good intentions) has been dissected and sterilized by academic study. Kumbaya is an excellent example of a song that was made internationally available but in the process it was robbed of it’s meaning. What would the song have meant if it was left as the local prayer a few saints on the coast of South Carolina?

This makes my day

Help me reach 1000 blog comments

Currently, I only need 87 more comments in order to reach 1,000 comments on my blog. I started this blog shortly after I got married, moved to St Louis and started my job at New City Fellowship. I’ve moved host sites a couple of times before settling on WordPress, but all the comments from the past sites still remain. Here are a few of my favorite comment discussions from the past:

3D Music

The 150% person

This Song is Officially Retired

How Does It Feel To Be Black In America?

Fear and Loathing in Clayton

Here’s my first comment-fishing question: What kind of worship leading conversations need to be featured on this blog?

I’m not motivated.

In the bleak midwinter…I’m back in the office without an once of motivation to get to work. I have a virtual stack of emails to sort through, read and respond. I have 2 months of Sundays to create assignments. I have a couple of Sundays to plan worship services for. I have a new choir season to plan and purchase resources for. We are hosting the Reconciliation and Justice Conference here in 4 weeks. I have a 3 foot high stack of Christmas music that needs to be sorted and filed. Basically I have lots to do and no motivation to do it. 

On the up side, I got a new guitar  this morning. Someone donated it to Steve St Pierre and he passed it on to me. Apparently, it was found in the dumpster behind a Toys R Us. It doesn’t play at all, but check out the paint job – pink with flames! 

My 2012 goals.

I’m celebrating the New Year by eating glazed ham and asparagus. I hope to accomplish at least one of the following in 2012: adopt, go to Africa (probably Kinshasa, DRC) and spend less time complaining. 

What I know will happen this year: the kingdom will advance and the promises of God will remain.

Why were there no angels in the stable?

Something occurred to me this weekend for the first time about the Nativity. There’s no angel at the stable. The angels, God’s appointed messengers or “heralds” of his kingdom breaking out were not at the stable, but out in the fields. I’ve never thought about it. Sunday, Tony Myles sermon brought up the fact that as the shepherds came to the stable bringing news of their run-in with a heavenly host, Mary pondered and treasured this message in her heart.

The angel, Gabriel, was there 9 months earlier to announce to Mary God’s plan. However, at the moment when Mary was going into labor and there was no home or inn available, God’s messengers were absent. If you were Mary and Joseph, wouldn’t it have been nice to get a little update from God, to touch base with the leadership, to make sure that this apparent set-back was not going to be a problem. Instead, Mary and Joseph had to trust in the messages they had previously received that despite the circumstances, they were still walking in the way of the kingdom.

How many times have I been super-excited about God’s kingdom, a feeling of direct confirmation from the Holy Spirit that I know what to do and where to be, and then 9 months later (or 9 minutes) I’m feeling lost and confused? I’d love to get a message from Gabriel right about then, “Yes, Jesus is on the throne, and you are in the right place!” Instead, I cry out for confirmation and the I’m met with “Sorry, there’s no room in the inn, but we’ve got a stable where you can have that baby.”

Still,  despite the absence of angels at the stable, God did deliver a message of confirmation to Mary and Joseph through the shepherds. They come to the stable looking for the sign of a baby lying in a manger. Upon finding the sign, the share with the new parents the announcement of the angels – a second hand confirmation of the kingdom. Often, the Lord uses a second hand confirmation through a fellow member of the kingdom who can see what you are doing and who shares with you their honest appreciation for how the kingdom is expressed in your life. I can often disregard these encouragements as platitudes or flattery. “If you could see things from my perspective, then you would know that this is not as ‘righteous’ as it looks” I think to myself.

The point is, I’m encourage to think of Mary and Joseph in a place of crisis in their “ministry” where they can’t see God’s kingdom at all. Then God sends encouragement in the form of fellow believers. So, maybe I need to look for more opportunities to encourage my friends with how clearly I can see the kingdom being expressed in them.

Tomorrow @6:30p – NCF Advent Concert

Rejoice!

a concert for Advent season

TOMORROW NIGHT! 6:30p @ New City Fellowship in University City 1483 82nd Boulevard, St Louis MO 63132

Featuring music by the New City Fellowship Choir, Special Ensembles, The Freedom School Choir, and more.

Psalm 24

Of David. A psalm.

¹ The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, 
   the world, and all who live in it; 
² for he founded it on the seas 
   and established it on the waters.

³ Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD? 
   Who may stand in his holy place? 
⁴ The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, 
   who does not trust in an idol 
   or swear by a false god.

⁵ They will receive blessing from the LORD 
   and vindication from God their Savior. 
⁶ Such is the generation of those who seek him, 
   who seek your face, God of Jacob.

⁷ Lift up your heads, you gates; 
   be lifted up, you ancient doors, 
   that the King of glory may come in. 
⁸ Who is this King of glory? 
   The LORD strong and mighty, 
   the LORD mighty in battle. 
⁹ Lift up your heads, you gates; 
   lift them up, you ancient doors, 
   that the King of glory may come in. 
¹⁰ Who is he, this King of glory? 
   The LORD Almighty— 
   he is the King of glory.