Yesterday I posted the video of Tim Smith’s interview with Bob Kauflin and I must say how blessed I was by listening to the interview. I respect both of those men and value both of their insight. I mention in the same post some of the wonderful things that were brought up and I’ll blog more on those in a bit. The first follow up I have though is a disagreement in application of musical gifting in the church.

Around 34:50 of the interview. Bob says,

“…in the church I’m never going to achieve, or want to achieve the degree of musical excellence that I’m probably capable of, because I don’t think all that musical excellence will serve the glory of Jesus Christ in the gathered church.”

I would simply ask, “Why not?” The implication here is musical mediocrity will serve the glory of Jesus in the gathered church and I just don’t buy that at all. I think we’re all grateful Michelangelo didn’t have this attitude when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Surely those in worship would be distracted by the beauty of his art and the level of excellence he demonstrated. Surely it would have been better for him to paint in a more mediocre way so as not to draw attention to the art. Of course not, I don’t think there are many who would make that argument. The Sistine Chapel is one of the world’s greatest artistic expressions of worship ever created, if not the greatest. It’s easy to see the folly in this logic with other forms of art, but for some reason many make this argument when it comes to music.

Bob goes on to refer to something John Piper calls “an undistracting excellence.” Which states that “you are so excellent at what you do that no one really notices” but instead notices how great God is. Before I get rolling here I want to point out, I’ve never read John Piper’s thoughts on this, I’m only commenting on what Bob communicated in the interview. I love John Piper, and Bob Kauflin for that matter, and will certainly look for some text or audio on this topic to see what John has to say.

Now, while I agree fully that our focus should be completely upon the greatness of Jesus I disagree that the better you are musically the more of a barrier you become to that purpose. I also disagree that art is in someway a “distraction” from worshiping God. Our art should be a reflection of good, great and loving God just as our lives should be a reflection of Christ as the image bearers of God. Art is an expression, and to pick a point on a the scale of excellent artistic expression and say, “beyond this point you’ve expressed too well and now you’re a distraction” I think is pretty silly. Quite honestly I find mediocre and poor expression much more distracting than excellent expression and I think most would agree.

Looking at a crappy painting on a wall doesn’t reflect anything of God to me. Looking at the Sistine Chapel however reflects the beauty and majesty of God, not of Michelangelo. Listening to a bunch of mediocre musicians lead worship music by playing an uneven time, singing out of key, and writing terribly boring and poorly crafted melodies does not “better serve the glory of Jesus Christ.” Now I’m not saying Bob is saying this, but what other option are we left with?

We either strive to improve, play our best and craft the most beautiful music we can in response to God giving us the best of himself in his Son, or we stop working at our craft and say this is good enough for God and the body of Christ. I say the latter is not a good option as Malachi 1:7-10Malachi 1:7-10
English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar. And ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of Jehovah is contemptible. ⁸ And when ye offer the blind for sacrifice, it is no evil! and when ye offer the lame and sick, it is no evil! Present it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee? or will he accept thy person? saith Jehovah of hosts. ⁹ And now, I pray you, entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he accept any of your persons? saith Jehovah of hosts. ¹⁰ Oh that there were one among you that would shut the doors, that ye might not kindle [fire on] mine altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.  

warns, we must offer our best sacrifice of praise. This also means using all wisdom in crafting beautiful but singable songs for the body to unite in. It’s possible folks, we don’t have to sound like Grade C musicians in the church to unite the body, please believe me…please!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Video: Tim Smith interviews Bob Kauflin (3)
• Worship Evangelism and why it isn’t working (3)
• Why do I write? (0)

Resurgence posted a video interview with Tim Smith, worship leader of Mars Hill Church, recently interviewed Bob Kauflin, Director of Worship Development at Sovereign Grace Ministries. It’s a good long interview with a lot of great topics discussed, so make sure to watch the whole thing. I just want to point out a few points that were made that I find very poignant.

Tim explained the culture in Seattle and how stoic and passive people are even at rock concerts and how that culture is mirrored in their church. Tim asked how physical expression in worship might be impressed upon the congregation without going overboard and have physical expression just as habitual as non expression. Now I’ve heard this a few times from the Mars Hill worship leaders and I really appreciated Bob’s response. Bob explains how a non-christian should notice in the church something more significant happening than a rock concert. That the transforming relationship with Jesus Christ has made this church respond in major ways.

The important idea here I think is that sometimes we are so concerned in the church now with engaging with culture and not freaking out the lost that we forget we are supposed to be counter cultural in many ways. We shouldn’t measure our worship to rock concerts, because what we’re doing is orders of magnitude greater in not just importance but in life impact and purpose.

One of the great takeaways from this interview is this gem:

“I’m not called to lead a worship experience…I’m called to build a worshiping community.”

That statement is so rich and true, so much to talk about there, inspiring a few more posts I think. let me know what you guys think of the interview.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Video: Spontaneous Baptisms on Easter at Mars Hill (1)
• Should we not demonstrate musical excellence in church? (8)
• Lacrae performs ‘Send Me’ at Mars Hill Church (3)

I continue my discussion with John Mark on his songwriting technique and John gives us a little teaser on his upcoming album. Make sure to catch part 1 if you haven’t already. Once we release all the parts (there will be 4 I think) I’ll collect them into a single post. The free John Mark album giveaway applies for all post on the interview. So refer to part 1 giveaway rules and link up on this post.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• John Mark McMillan video interview and live concert clips coming soon (0)
• John Mark McMillan performs “How He Loves Us” at the Call (0)
• John Mark McMillan Interview Part 1 + free cd (8)

As many of you know John Mark McMillan performed at our church, Life Connection Church in April. He was nice enough to sit down with us for a good long conversation. This video is just part 1 of our conversation. John Mark is an amazing guy and had a lot of great insight into music and worship. You don’t want to miss any part of the interview so make sure you subscribe to the rss feed to keep up to date when we release the other portions of the interview.

Also We’ll be doing a little giveaway here. The prize is John Mark McMillan’s cd “The Songs Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down” on iTunes. So you will get the album gifted to you over iTunes. To enter into the giveaway you need to so 2 simple things:

1. Link to this post on some other site. Could be your own blog, could be a digg submission, delicious, Facebook, you get the idea. All those nifty links are at the bottom of this post.
2. Comment on this post with a link to where you mentioned this post.

That’s all you have to do. I’ll let the competition run for 2 weeks. Now onto the video…

See also Part 2.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• John Mark McMillan and Life In Stereo concert TONIGHT! (0)
• Alan Roxburgh interviews Sally Morgenthaler (6)
• Welcome to the new Rising Sound worship music blog (0)

Carlos Whittaker runs the crazy popular blog RagamuffinSoul.com. He is the worship leader at a megachurch in Atlanta called Buckhead Church. Currently he’s acting as a blog reporter at a stealth Rick Warren conference where a 1,000 pastors were invited to attend and a select few invited to speak on a range of topics. Mark Driscoll is there speaking on discipleship and had some really interesting, amazing and funny things to say as usual. Mark tackles the topics of worship, multi-site churches, the fake Mark Driscoll on twitter and why he likes to pick fights. Feed folks you gotta click through to see the video.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Video: Tim Smith interviews Bob Kauflin (3)
• Christianity Today interviews Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill (0)
• Video: Spontaneous Baptisms on Easter at Mars Hill (1)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Sigur Ros film ‘Heima’, what can be received and redeemed? (0)
• video: Helio Sequence on Jimmy Kimmel (0)
• Tom Waits press conference, tour kickoff (0)

One thing I really received from the Mars Hill Continuous Worship Conference was the concept of receive, reject, redeem. That means simply that when assessing our culture we should put it through this filter and not passively accept or reject anything. We should see what we can openly receive, what we must reject and what can be redeemed.

I find it valuable in critique secular songs, concerts, etc… In this example I wanna take a look at Sigur Ros latest project which is basically a documentary of their latest tour. I really appreciate Sigur Ros as a band. I use the word “appreciate” usually to describe bands, writer’s, musician’s who’s music I like but can’t listen to regularly. This would include bands like, Led Zepplin, Zero 7, Sigur Ros, the list goes on.

The first think I think the church can receive from Sigur Ros artistically is their patience. They let their songs develop at such a drip pace, but never allow it to stagnate. That is really really hard to do. They certainly didn’t read the A&R handbook as far as how fast you should get to the hook. Second, is their instrumental creativity. You can tell that they approach every instrument much like most bands approach a vocal melody. They weave melodies together instrumentally in such a beautiful way. And what more can you say about Icelandic vocals(Bjork anyone???), I mean they are just amazing. Haunting but still very light and pleasant.

What can be redeemed is their creativity. Goto 45:15 of the video in this post to see just how creative they are, really amazing. Of course watch the whole thing when you get time to hear some beautiful music.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• video: Helio Sequence on Jimmy Kimmel (0)
• Preview of Hillsong United’s new DVD release “We’re all in this together” (0)
• Video: Radiohead performing In Rainbows live! (2)

I’ve previously posted here on Sally’s assertion that worship evangelism wasn’t working and generally agreed with her assessment. I thought she made some wonderful points and a lot of what she said is something we value very much in our church. I don’t know Sally personally but from what I’ve read and seen I believe her heart to be in the right place. That being said, there was much in this interview I found troubling, more so from Alan Roxburgh than Sally Morgenthaler. Alan is Vice President of Allelon Canada and they deal with missional church growth and strategy. I don’t really know anything about their organization beyond what their website says. Let me now link to the interview, you can watch for yourself and my comments will be below.

Let me start off with the positive. I’m fully on board with Sally’s description of “in the building” Christianity and how that’s not all we are to be. That we must move out of the building. That is the vision of our church, Life Connection Church, it’s how we are growing, it is simply doing what Jesus told us to do. Get into our culture, love them, show them Jesus, make disciples, raise them up to be leaders and to disciple others. I think her critical assessment of the church in that area is fully warranted and beneficial to the kingdom. Her worship music critique is also something I’ve agreed with in the past about us only playing “happy clapply” celebratory music. That we are missing a huge slice of humanity and the journey by ignoring what the rest of the world is experiencing and how God is relevant in it. See the previous post I linked earlier for my thoughts on that.

Now onto what bothered me. I’ll take it quote by quote, starting at 8:42 in the video Alan explains what he is experiencing in church’s:

“Here’s what I start to experience. I can now guess what’s gonna happen next in the song, like, when they’re going to slow down, when they’re going to stop, when the prayer is gonna come in and out of that when they’re going to come out loud again and go forward. You can almost script what’s going to happen…And here was my experience…I went…you know what this worship is really about, it’s about a whole bunch of people that actually have no experience of God and our desperate for it and don’t know how to get it and it’s a cry for God not a worship of God.” - Alan

Sally’s response to this:

“…we engineer these experiences which are not…they’re just engineered. It’s not the cataclysmic thing that happens when we truly meet God. Cause to meet God is to meet ourselves.”

Here’s my problem with the above. The fact that Alan has been around music to know the arrangement of songs, how they are built and disassembled in congregational worship has nothing to do with the authenticity of worship. I think his critique here is way off base, I have no problem with critique, but you have to examine your critique and see what the expected corrective response is. In this case, there is no appropriate corrective response. What should the worship band do in this case? Change the arrangement of the song everytime? Not use any dynamics at all so there is no getting louder or having softer prayer time? Never play the same song twice? All this just so he can’t script it? This will have the added benefit of confusing the congregation so they can’t follow along at all, spread dis-unity, awesome! The worship band exists to unite the body and aid in the organization of worshipping God in song.

Claiming that worship is “engineered” and not true encounters with God because you know the arrangement of a song is absolutely absurd. If a church member said they couldn’t enter into worship and thought what I was doing was “engineered” because they knew where the song was going, then I’d tell them, they need to examine their own heart because they’ve surely have missed the heart of worship and the band’s role in the church. I’m sure if the next song I played was a new song they couldn’t guess at all their complaint would be, “I couldn’t enter into worship because I didn’t know the song”. Again just as off point as the opposing complaint.

Both Sally and Alan tossed out the phrase “to meet God is to meet ourselves” without much any explanation. On face value I say I agree in one sense and disagree in another. When encountering God our sin is surely exposed and we see ourselves for the sinners we are and God for who he is. But I also believe that to encounter God is to meet Jesus Christ, how else can we approach God but by being buried in Jesus, so that God sees his son. The phrase they used was simplistic and they chose not to explain, so I’ll show grace there and say, I think I know what you meant.

The last thing I have a problem with was this confusing story told by Alan starting at about 11:25:

“I’m in Australia and I put the television on Sunday morning and it’s a huge church in Sydney…this big stage and it begins! And the curtains come back and this great big band and across the stage are the men mostly who are the band leaders. And they’re mostly in the 40’s and 50’s and kind of overweight and rolly-polly. And they got their guitars and they kind look like a 70’s rock band doing their thing and some of them are long in cheek. And then beside them are the women. What I found interesting was that all the women, there was not one over 40. Or if they were you couldn’t tell. And they all wore black turtlenecks and had mics in their hand and they began singing.

And I have to confess what struck me was this was the ackro-corinth. You know Paul goes to Corinth and on top was the Acrocorinth where the vestal virgins were. And I thought, this is about sex. Only now in a nice, clean, evangelical world it’s look but don’t touch. And the whole worship thing was this kind of anti-septic, all these happy clappy, Jesus is my boyfriend songs. And everybody is an individual in the audience watching this in an experience. And that was an American Beauty[the movie] moment. The un-reality of what was going on.”

Ummmm, about sex? what??? First off, I don’t believe the vestal virgins had anything to do with the Acrocorinth beyond their Roman heritage and geography(if my history is off please tell me, you can follow the links above to read for yourself). Secondly, comparing female singers on a worship band who are wearing black turtlenecks, to those of female priests of a Roman mythology goddess, I struggle to find the correlation. And again, the only basis of this critique is the fact that the women are below 40 and wearing black turtlenecks. I mean am I the only one laughing at this point? This was just one of the craziest trains of thought I’ve heard. God bless Sally for being nice and saying, “interesting”. I don’t know what I would have done in that position since it really made no sense at all. And again what would he have the band do, what’s the expected corrective response to this critique. Only have older women? dress more modestly than black turtlenecks, like a burka? Stand on the same side of the stage? See what I mean, it’s just ridiculous, get over it Alan. If these things are bothering Alan this much I can’t imagine there’s a worship service on earth that he’d feel was hitting the mark.

But what this really exposes is the attitude, coming up with that crazy of a critique of modern worship based on age, gender and clothing is so far removed from the heart of worship. I am extremely self-critical, I look at my attitude in worship, my expression, my songs, my playing, I look at it all continuously. But I try to remain grounded in truth and scripture in my critique, am I justified in scripture by this position, or this expression and especially, judging the kingdom effectiveness of whatever I am doing and leading.

I’m curious for all of your thoughts on this interview.

 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Worship Evangelism and why it isn’t working (3)
• John Mark McMillan Interview Part 1 + free cd (8)
• Video: Tim Smith interviews Bob Kauflin (3)

Early in October we mentioned Chris Lizotte had agreed to do an interview with Our Rising Sound. Just heard back from Chris and below is the conversation we had. We tried to have a wide ranging sample of questions taken from our readers and contributors. I want to personally thank Chris for taking the time to respond, he’s a busy guy so we really appreciate the love. Please follow the link above and check out(and buy) Chris’ music if you have not already. Ok let’s get this party started, ORS = Our Rising Sound, CL = Chris Lizotte:

ORS: Who are some of your biggest music influences, regardless if they are in the church or not?

CL: I Love the new Wilco record! My Friends are a big influence on me: Ryan Delmore, Rick Kamrath, John Barnett, Marc Ford, Paul Jackson, Kevin Prosch.

ORS: Earlier in your career you wrote mostly non-congregational worship music. Now we’ve heard more of your songs being played in congregational settings. Did you find the transition of audience and purpose difficult to make in your songwriting?

CL: At first, Yes. As the years have gone by I it’s been easier. Maybe because I lead worship on a regular basis and I love to write songs that point people in the direction of honoring Jesus!

ORS: What sort of songwriting discipline do you follow? Some people write something everyday even if it’s bad just to keep the discipline, other’s only sit down and write when they feel inspired externally or internally. How do you approach songwriting practically?

CL: When I’m inspired. I try to have a guitar around always.

ORS: When you find yourself lacking inspiration to write how do you fight out of that? Or do you fight out of it?

CL: The prayer room helps with that. Just stopping everything and getting still helps a ton. Gives me a chance to listen.

ORS: What part of songwriting does you find the most challenging? What do you do to overcome those challenges?

CL: Lyrics. Refer to answer above

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Worship Evangelism and why it isn’t working (3)
• U.S. religion: even “Christians” see other ways to heaven (1)
• Alan Roxburgh interviews Sally Morgenthaler (6)

My previous post was about a worship conference at Mars Hill church and I eluded to how much I appreciated Mark Driscoll’s strategy and theology. Recently Christianity Today interviewed Mark Driscoll and there’s certainly no shortage of controversy in the article. I love it! One great quote from Driscoll in the interview:

“My first core group was single indie and punk rockers committed to anarchy,” he says. “Needless to say, they didn’t naturally organize themselves or give generously. If I would have said, ‘Everybody tithe,’ it would have been in cigarettes.”

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 

Related posts

• Love songs - the good the bad and the tacky (0)
• Carlos Whittaker interview with Mark Driscoll (0)
• Video: Tim Smith interviews Bob Kauflin (3)