Sing Unto the Lord

Our rehearsal times at CCEC are OK. We run them at 4 on a Sunday arvo. We only have about an hour before the band have to prepare for the set that night. We try and do something a bit different that can allow the band to try out creative ideas that a normal practise doesn’t have room for. Too often Sunday night practises are stressful because of the time restrictions. The four o’clock pracs are supposed to be less stress so more creative juices. We also have a look at the Bible and sing together. Its hard to fit everything into an hour – especially because musos love being late for stuff. How do you do your rehearsals? Do you only practise just before church? How can I make ours more effective?

I spend a lot of time devoting myself to defending the place of hymns in our church context. I have all the arguments and reasoning down pat and I’m sure that I rant about it probably too much! What can happen then is that we forget why we do Contemporary music. Sometimes you can get so good at arguing one way that you forget why you do things another way.
I think that often churches that want to be contemporary miss the point of contemporary music and why it is so useful. Over the next week I’ll put up a few posts that outline the question – ‘why comtemporize (I love making up new words)’.
Contemporary music has heaps of historical, cultural and musical implications that people don’t take the time to think about and so just charge in without being intentional just because everyone else is contemporary. I’ll try and put something up this afternoon or tomorrow on ‘Why contemporary music is different and how to use it well.’

People (songwriters and cruisos) seem to find the creating majesty of God the primary muse for their reflection. What that means is that above all other things, people love to sing about the creator-ness of God. Another pillar of modern Christian song is an emphasis on vague statements about God’s God-ness. eg (I’m trying to make one up without bagging out any particular song) “You are High and wonderful, my God”.

I believe Christian song should be primarily reflecting on the cross. Heres why.

Keep writing and singing songs about the cross! There are so many more reasons why but these three were the first I could think of. We should be cross people. We should be cross singers. May we keep being cross centered and may Jesus work there be our primary muse to his glory!!

I’m on a bit of a resource frenzy at the moment. I thought it would be good if I stuck up here a bunch of sites I’m looking at that could be helpful in different ways..

Andy M posted abut hymns and comtemporizing (is that a word) them. One group that are brilliant at this and have already written new music or updated old music to hundreds of hymns is Indelible Grace.
They have a hymn book that is free to download with guitar chords, lead sheets and vocal sheets.
Another site worth checking out is Cyberhymnal. I have a link to them in my sidebar. The site is really daggy and the midi files that play over the top of some of the pages are atrocious. It is a good site for finding out information about hymns that you love though.

For sound and thinking about tech stuff… there has been a good post up on the Garage Hymnal blog this week about sound gear. I also found a cool blog from a guy who runs the sound team at Covenant Life church in the states. Interesting stuff.

For thinking about theology and music… I’ve been greatly encouraged by the free lectures you can download from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary school of Worship. There are heaps of great gems here. Particularly listen to the lectures from Dr Harold Best, Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend, and David Peterson. Great stuff.

All that should keep you going for a while.

I love and hate doing our church roster. I hate it because it looms over me as some massive undertaking where I have to line up all the right people with all the right people and fit in everyone and not look biased or self-seeking. It takes a lot of drafts before an ideal roster can be produced.
The love comes from the excitement of trying new things, hearing new combinations, and being reignited to pursue our our goal as a ministry team.
Myself and the music leadership team did a bit of thinking before we put out the latest roster (it’s not out yet).
The model we have gone for in the past has been get musos to do as much as they can with each other. We have been aiming to get people to mix with different people all the time so as to create team. With a music team of just under thirty all we have created is a pastoral nightmare! Our new approach is to have three separate bands. These bands will be two weeks on, four weeks off. This allows them to develop ideas together over their two ‘on’ weeks but also gives them time to arrange their own stuff in the off-weeks. We are hoping this leads to a better sense of ‘band’ among the smaller groups. Within those groups we are aiming to set up a mentoring system within those smaller bands having older dudes looking out specifically for one or two younger dudes. This may help in keeping up with everyone and having everyone feeling like they belong.
The band model means that rather than being a bunch of christian musos, the cruisos (my affectionate term) can be a band. A single cell.
They can bounce ideas off each other and learn how to serve each other in a smaller context.

As well as all of this we are launching an event called ‘Project Sinai’ (the first of many ‘Projects’: watch this space!!!). Project Sinai is an event aimed at keeping our Cruisos passionate about God’s word. We are going away together as a team… not really to do too much music stuff, but rather just spending some good time reading God’s word and praying to him together. This will help with still feeling like a larger team even though people will be more connected to those in their own band.
How do you do music rostering in your church? What dramas do you see and how do reckon they can be resolved?

P.S – These guys are not from our church band. That would be cool though.

Yesterday I bought Chris Tomlin’s new CD – “See the Morning”. It’s an album full of hope. That is why it is called ‘See the Morning’. Tomlin encourages listeners to ‘see the morning’ when they feel as though they are going through a period of ‘darkness’. God’s glory and the joy that it brings to witness it is what ultimately gives hope to those who feel overwhelmed.
There are two songs that I’m particularly hooked on. I won’t tell you which they are because I don’t want to influence your listening.
Overall the album doesn’t have the depth that Tomlin’s previous album ‘Arriving’ had. However, it does rock out a lot more. The energy of this album far surpasses that of Arriving which at times felt lethargic.
I’m sure lots of these new songs will make their ways to our church music books before long.

I’ve been reading a book by CS Lewis called ‘Reflections on the Psalms’. Yesterday, I read the chapter on praise in the Psalms. He brings up an interesting question… Is it selfish for God to demand praise from his worshippers? Not only that, but God wanting his people to worship him makes it seem as if he is weak and needs our compliments.
There are two good answers to the question.
Lewis goes on to say that someone who genuinely values something can’t help but praise it. Whether it’s a poem, a song, a good joke or a piece of art, valuing something leads to praise. His challenge is that if we value God above all things and if we see him as supreme, then the praise we give him should be supreme over the praise we give everything else. It isn’t as if by praising God we are just giving him a compliment to satisfy some meglomaniacal urge he has – like a tyrant or dictator. We praise him because we genuinely value him and what he has done. He is valuable above all things – so all things praise him. Luke 19:40 ‘If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out!’
I listened to John Piper’s sermon from New Attitude this week on God seeing God as the most important thing in the universe. It gave a second answer to the question. God is the only being in the universe who can ordain praise for himself without being selfish. This is because God is the best thing to Praise. The action of praising God is supremely valuable for us as we do it. We are recognizing God for who he is and this is right – as opposed to worshipping anything else in all of creation. God is the only true God. So for God to command us to praise him is the most loving, generous thing he can do. Go could have chosen to hide himself from us and to let us continue to worship idols but instead he reveals himself to us and shows us the only being worthy of our praise… Himself!