The public reading of Scripture

Good post by Josh Otte over at Eucatastrophe with some tips for scripture reading in corporate worship. (Thanks for the recommendation, JD.)

Though he does address it in point 4 when he talks about preparation, I would emphasize that your reading of the text (meaning out-loud) will depend heavily on your understanding of the author's argument. The way your voice inflects will change depending on how you understand what the author is saying. So I'd say it's important for those who read scripture to have a basic exegesis of the text in mind before they get up to read--perhaps the preacher could give this to the scripture-reader in a phone call during the week.

Regarding the monotone reading of God's word, I'd say a church needs to carefully choose who's reading publically just as they do with those who preach and sing. Some people read aloud well, and some don't. I guess erring on the other extreme would apply as well--you wouldn't want someone who's distractingly theatrical.

Avoiding the "wall of sound"

I'm fixing to get with the guitar players in my worship band and have a little heart-to-heart about playing less. The deal is that, in every song, from beat one until the end, both the electric player and the acoustic player play full chords in a steady strumming pattern. They're never not playing, and what they play is pretty much always full volume. (We also have a keyboard player who does the same, but that's another story.) Their philosophy is, basically, the more notes you can cram into the song, the better. I know playing too much is a temptation for everyone, because I used play in Denton with some professional players who had that tendency as well. But I think things are magnified for these guys because of their background in Mexican folk guitar styles (like rondalla, where several guitars all play the same thing all the time), as well as because they simply haven't been exposed to alot of music that makes successful use of dynamics.

My plan is to listen to a bunch of good music with them (the easy part), and also try to get them to buy into the idea that, when playing with a group, the goal is to play as a group. I was impressed several months back by a post on Andy Osenga's blog in which he was talking about his old band, the Normals:

One day we were talking about symphonies, and how they’re a group of musicians who make this amazing sound, but everybody only plays one note at a time, whereas we had two guitars and a piano banging out big, six-note chords while the bass player played the bottom note right along with us. Somehow our sound was much less stirring and beautiful.

We started experimenting with what we played. Instead of playing chords, we tried to each play a melody, like a symphonic instrument, that would all add up to voice the chords. Eventually we got to the point where we didn’t feel a song was done until we could sit aroud and each sing our parts individually and know that the song still made sense. This gave our sound a real depth and complexity that it had never had before, and we were all doing less. It’s usually easier to just play chords, but this really set our band apart AND we all became much better musicians in the process. Not that we became the best band in the world or anything, but this philosophy really transformed the band, at least to us.

Obviously, in a worship band, where we have a limited amount of rehearsal time, we're not going to realistically be able to create individual parts for every instrument on every song. But I like this kind of thinking. Plus I dug the Normals' last album alot.

The High Road

Here's where I share with you some music that moves me. For a musician, or for that matter anyone who loves music, it's always painful trying to get someone to appreciate some musical moment on a favorite record, only to have them ask some unrelated question right in the middle of the part that sticks out to you as being so awesome. So I figure if I do it on this blog, at least I can't hear you talking over the brilliance.

If you go to the ANTI- Records website, you can download for free a Bettye LaVette performance of a song called "The High Road". Do it. No, seriously, do it.

I listen to alot of music, and a lot of good music, but rarely do I hear recordings where the songwriting and performance come together so effectively. The copy on the ANTI- Records site says that the song was written by Sharon Robinson especially for LaVette. This song has that pathetic quality where you know the grandiose declarations of stoic resolve you're hearing barely mask deep, regretful, and perplexed wounds, almost as if she keeps talking just to keep from bursting into tears. These days, all the hit break-up songs have the female victim hurling a scathing deluge of vengeful one-liners that essentially say, "I hate you, you %^$@#*!", but this song, like all good art, is worth a thousand words.

And LaVette's performance is as convincing as it could possibly be. As she sings, "I'll walk away with my head held high, Forgive and forget--uh, uh, daddy--not this time", you simultaneously burn from her scorn and hurt from her pain and weakness. In his review of the album at Reveal, Josh Hurst says:

And for her part, LaVette sings each song with a sort of lived-in passion, as if it’s her last night on Earth and she’s hell-bent on telling her life story. She may be a soul singer by trade, but don’t let that fool you—here she channels something more akin to black magic than traditional R&B, singing in a pained hush one minute and spitting her way into a righteous fury the next.

I'm a huge fan of this kind of production, and the band takes a masterful "less is more" approach in the performance. They accompany her so minimally in the quiet parts that it seems on the verge of exploding when they build. Check out the drum fills at the end of each major section--I don't think I've ever played with a drummer who'd be willing to play such a thing.

Anyway, as outstanding as each of the elements is--the songwriting, the accompaniment, the vocal performance--it's really the way they all combine that brings me into this character's head.

Comments?

Substantial worship music

God is glorious. He is worthy of praise, and for very good reasons. Here's a quote from John Piper's Desiring God:

The death of Christ is the wisdom of God by which the love of God saves sinners from the wrath of God, and all the while upholds and demonstrates the righteousness of God.

God's glory has facets as diverse as holy wrath and saving love, and yet he does things that reveal that he in fact harmoniously possesses these attributes more than anyone else in the universe. He is dependent on no one. No man can stay God's hand as he sovereignly rules the universe, and yet he does it with unlimited knowledge and perfect wisdom. Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

There is obviously lots more to be said, but my point is this: there are absolutely compelling grounds for the praiseworthiness of God, but for some reason the almost universal trend since the 2nd Great Awakening has been to ignore all that. Instead of making God the subject of our songs, we like to make our praise the subject. And that's in the songs that actually make sense. More often, the songs that are coming out today are just an incoherent stringing together of pious-sounding phrases, as if they were written using a P&W edition of those poetry refrigerator magnets. I'm reading this hilarious book by a British writer named Nick Page, called And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense, in which he makes a plea for worship songwriters to write songs that say something coherent and meaningful. I think that's a timely exhortation.

But more than that I want to ask why we think it's more worshipful to ignore all the reasons the scripture gives us to praise God, and go for pure emotional fluff. Don't hear me saying that emotions have nothing to do with worship--I'm with Jonathan Edwards that "true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." But you don't just come right out of the hatch with cathartic affections. People don't come to church on Sunday with hearts bursting forth with praise to God for all he is and does. They have to be given a vision of God to respond to. You have to labor to paint them a huge biblical vision of God with a view to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, awaken those affections in them.

That's why I love old hymns. Not all hymns, mind you--most hymnals published in the last 75 years are 75% garbage. But the great hymns are ones that present to us something about God's nature or characture or acts that elicits a response of praise (or joy, or godly sorrow, or some other holy affection). I'm glad groups like Indelible Grace are writing new music to these hymns, and I've done that a bit myself.

But I'd like to see some completely new songs written that will feed our faith with truth presented memorably, that will remind us of who God is and what he has done, and that will be our favorites, not because they sound just like Coldplay, but because of how much the truth they communicate has carried us through difficult times.

Here are a few examples:

• "He Is Altogether Lovely" - written by Eric Schumacher, pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He wrote the words, and suggests they be sung to the hymn tune called "Hyfrydol", which you may have heard with the lyrics "Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners" or "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus". This hymn is based on the content of Jonathan Edwards' sermon on "The Excellency of Christ". When was the last time you sang a song in church that was explicitly about the greatness of Christ? Seriously, when?

• "Awake, My Soul" - A great song written by Sandra McCracken, who is married to Derek Webb and has contributed songs and vocals to all of the Indelible Grace albums. Her album, The Builder and the Architect, is one of the best worship music records I own.

• "Indescribable" - written by Laura Story, recorded by Chris Tomlin.

Music recommendation: Matthew Perryman Jones

I'm gonna play to my strengths on this blog and do some music recommendations, since people are always asking me for them. I have bought an absolutely ridiculous amount of music on iTunes since I moved to Mexico--more than I care to admit, actually. I also buy alot of CDs of independent artists that can't be found on iTunes.

I'll start with a CD I recently received in the mail: Throwing Punches in the Dark by Matthew Perryman Jones. Matthew is one of my favorite male vocalists, so I knew this CD was going to be good. (Actually, I very impatiently anticipated its release.) He has sung a few songs on each of the four Indelible Grace records. His last few records have been more stripped down and folky for the most part, but they were both full of great songs performed well. This record is a full band record, produced by Neilson Hubbard (who produced Glen Phillips' new record--more on that later). Turns out it's even better than I thought. You have to order it through the link on his MySpace site, but it's worth it.

Legalism seen from an eternal perspective

I just saw this post on Justin Taylor's blog about the recent resolution passed at the Southern Baptist Convention. I wholeheartedly agree with Justin's thoughts, but what stood out to me more was part of a John Piper sermon that he quoted. Speaking of an amendment to his church's constitution in which he seeks to abolish the requirement that all members be teetotalers, Piper (a teetotaler himself) says:

I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves. And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism. If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment, after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement. Satan is so sly. "He disguises himself as an angel of light," the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 11:14. He keeps his deadliest diseases most sanitary. He clothes his captains in religious garments and houses his weapons in temples.

The pastor of my home church always says (something along the lines of) that the bad thing about legalism is not that it makes Christianity too hard, but that it makes it too easy. In other words, legalists easily follow their rules and think they have earned God's favor, when an essential truth of Christianity is that no one can (see Romans 3).

I love it when someone brings this kind of biblical clarity to bear on these issues.

Leading worship: disclaimer

I am, among other things, a worship leader. That means I get the opportunity of leading the gathered Church in the worship of her Creator and Redeemer. And in my church circles, that almost always means through music, though many would (rightly) lament the fact that "worship" has come to be synonimous with "singing"--more on that in a future post.

Though that's an unspeakably wonderful privilege, it's also a sobering responsibility. I love Jesus Christ, and I love his Church, and so I have some strong feelings about worship in the Church in America. So that's a topic I'll be posting on frequently. If you're interested in worship leading, first go and read everything at Bob Kauflin's blog before you waste any time on what I have to say. Bob has much more valuable input than mine, and it's always expressed so well and with such grace that you can actually learn alot just from observing his manner. Before he dives into some topic regarding worship leading, he'll first talk to you about the gospel, and in that way he'll lead you to worship before he's even started dealing with worship leading. I have tremendous respect for the man, and I have benefitted greatly from what he has offered just in the few months he's had a blog.

Subject matter

Oh, I forgot to tell you what this blog is gonna be about. That's probably a good thing, since that last post was getting so long (and booooring).

Anyway, you can tell from the blog description what I'm into. Those things are what I'll post about. So you can see it won't be a very focused blog. Hopefully it will be thought provoking, and hopefully it will generate some interesting discussion.

Speaking of discussion, please feel free to comment. But if you think I won't delete your comments if they're obnoxious, you're wrong.