Thin Christlikeness

There is a decidedly ironic and humorous typo on the Northland website that will probably be corrected soon, but Dissidens has been quick to provide a satirical commentary. (A screen shot of the post is below. Notice the last line: “grow thin Christ likeness.”)

It is our desire that this endeavor will create and strengthen interactions between students and staff members, leading to opportunities for Gospel-centered conversation and mutual encouragement toward grow thin Christ likeness.

Thin Christlikeness. Certainly this is probably an honest albeit unintended assessment of what results from discipleship while watching March Madness. Though clearly the ambition is nobler and the aspiration true growth in Christ, it does afford an opportunity to discuss the culture of American Christianity, particularly in the places where future leaders are being trained.

I must say that while I am an enthusiastic amateur bracketologist currently being destroyed by my wife and eleven-year-old daughter and barely ahead of my five-year-old son, I find myself wincing in agreement with Dissidens, a person that I very much enjoy disliking. I personally think (and don’t we all want to know what I personally think?) that the whole month of activities surrounding the NCAA tournament sounds like a lot of fun for a bible college campus, and if I were there I would probably be first in line to try a half-court shot for a free sweatshirt or whatever the prize may be. I have always had a huge addiction to free anything.

I take no umbrage with fun. Even at bible college.

But, let’s be real. If anything shows “thin Christ likeness” it’s the American evangelical bible college gaggle of spirituality. Bible colleges are too often the epitome of the church youth group in which the naive youth director feels it is his calling in life to prove to young people that they can be Christian and have fun too.

My college years were spent in both a secular environment and in bible college. While in Toulouse, France I clung to Christian fellowship and discipleship was all about prayer, resisting the wiles of the Devil, pursuing purity, witnessing in hostile environments, fasting, and spiritual affections. In bible college I metamorphosed from borderline mystical ascetic to class clown, becoming class and student body president and advancing frivolity with all the zeal of Saul of Tarsus. I was a Christian and having fun too.

Discipleship on the bible college campus was hanging out at the professors’ homes eating pizza and enjoying a few more liberties than were allowed in the men’s dormitory. Before I went to bible college and while I was in a secular environment I shared the feelings of Jim Elliot.

No ascetic, Jim enjoyed to the full all that he believed God had given him to enjoy, but he felt it wisest to exclude from the sphere of activity anything which had the power to distract him from the pursuit of the Will.  .  .  . He believed Christ to be utterly sufficient for the entire fulfillment of the personality, and was ready to trust Him literally for this.

But as college kids often do, I got drunk. I got drunk on American silliness and in my delusion actually thought it sounded very cool to justify every recreation as a “fun and discipleship.” Jesus said, “If you would be my disciple, take up your cross.” Giggle, giggle.

Thin Christlikeness will get offended by this, of course. It will be assumed that anyone who agrees with Dissidens on this matter is cynical, bitter, judgmental, and anti-smile. They might even assume that I am against all the festivities at my alma-mater surrounding the NCAA Championship. This, however, is a simplistic analysis. I’ve actually filled out two brackets and am intensely engaged in this hugely entertaining month. (I’ve picked Michigan State to go all the way.) But I think we do ourselves a disservice when we insist that we have to put a spiritual spin on everything: fun AND “discipleship.”

Serious minded Christians actually think you can have fun as a disciple, but that fun is not discipleship. One has famously said that there is no difference between the sacred and the secular. The problem is that there is.

We also do ourselves and our young people a huge disservice when we take sacred concepts and insinuate frivolity. The word “chapel” is meaningless now. Why not call it what it is: “school assembly”? But when you have “chapel” (understood by most in the world as a place of, or designated service for, worship) in which the sports guys discuss their brackets it undermines true seriousness about real discipleship and worship. And are all students required to go to the silly chapels?

I say this as one who personally orchestrated circus atmospheres that burst through the previous ceiling of frivolous “chapels” at Northland. I didn’t have good sense then. And I still don’t mind a good party. But I think 19 year olds aren’t really understanding what the real world is like where, in most places, discipleship is not fun.

I can’t help but wonder if there are not some students on these bible college campuses that are like Jim Elliot, the student at Wheaton many years ago:

My spirit is all a ruffle again at the vast, inexplicable complexities of humankind, and the careless, ineffective manner we fool ‘fundamentalists’ use in answering the cry of hearts which cannot understand themselves.

We American Christians cannot understand ourselves. But we understand March Madness. And we have just enough knowledge of ourselves to know that if discipleship is not fun we probably want none of it.

The Lutheran School Chapel and the Evangelical School Chapel

Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

The life, culture, education, and school chapels of the professing Christian ought to be a passionate demonstration of a yearning to see the glorious name of God sanctified, hallowed, in the hearts and minds of all people who claim to worship the God of the Bible. While visiting an evangelical school program recently, I was reminded why I prefer that my daughter be in a Lutheran school.

One is the form of everything they do in chapel, including the congregational recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “Hallowed be thy name” is a prayer that is also highlighted as a big deal by the forms that we choose.

Each week I attend chapel with my daughter and 300 children between the ages of k5 and 5th grade and I see the same thing everytime. On cue they all hush as the two designated acolytes (candle lighters) under the watchful eye of their teacher light the candles. The cross is then carried to the front of the sanctuary and the the three children reverently bow and with that routine symbolism chapel begins. Once after the routine of school chapel with my daughter I was visiting an area Christian school and was treated to children jumping and jiving on stage declaring to feel the Spirit in their toes and in their noses. The trite, vacuous, banal, and irreverent familiarity with the God of the Universe could not have been more stark.

“The problem with you Evangelicals is that you don’t think we Lutherans are Christian” opined the executive director of an area parochial school to me when he became aware of the fact that I was a Baptist pastor. This is an accurate analysis of the evangelical understanding of Lutherans and it shows a remarkable ignorance of all things Lutheran. Yet his assumption (if indeed it was) that all Lutherans are Christian is equally erroneous. I told him that it was truly egregious that a sweeping judgment of all Lutherans as not being in the fold was assumed by Evangelicals, particularly since I knew for a fact from my vantage point as a Baptist reverend that only some Baptists are actually Christian. And, clearly, that would also be the case for Evangelicals as well. And Lutherans.

However, if one were to juxtapose the Lutheran chapel that I observe weekly and the Evangelical so-called “worship and praise” that is drummed into the psyche of evangelical children week after week one could not blame a Lutheran for thinking that Evangelicals are mindless cultural grubs that think that drivel is proof of adoption as sons.  Few of the songs used in many Evangelical Christian School chapels neither lyrically nor musically would occasion the response of a hushed bow.  It’s the crass familiarity of uninhibited farting. The only symbolism that occurs in the Evangelical Christian School chapel is the closed eyes and bowed head during the opening and closing prayer.

But it’s a formality. And, of course, this is the pitfall of the formality in the Lutheran school chapel. I highly doubt that anyone is actually thinking of the symbolism of the candles and the cross. Probably the Baptist minister sitting near the back with his fourth grade daughter is actually pondering on it more than anyone else in the room, including those who have spent their entire lives in the confines of Lutheran formalism. Liturgical formalism is deadening and those of us in the tradition of “free worship” rightfully worry about the consequences of formalism.

But have we adequately worried about the consequence of no form and no symbolism? Or the bad formalism of our mindless forms?

Lest we hastily assert that we are formless and symbol-free, let me remind us that bowing our heads and closing our eyes is both form and symbol. Standing for prayer = form.

It is not formalism to insist on form even though people may not understand it. We must insist on certain forms not only even if people may not understand them, but particularly because people do not have enough understanding. Now, please do not read this as an apologetic for the use of candles in the service. That is not my point at all. I am merely appreciating the form as a message bearer to the children. They do not understand all the symbolism, but they do get a key part of the message conveyed through the form. The form is a simple message that they get: the service has started and this service is different than the pep rally. I don’t think that it is wrong that the acolytes and the children watching the lighting of the candles do not fully understand the reasons behind what they are doing, but you hear no shushing from teachers and, amazingly, nearly 300 hundred pairs of eyes are watching the candle-lighting.

Formalism is the sin of thinking that the form itself, minus heart and thought, is pleasing to God and a substitute for real devotion. But you cannot have devotion without form, especially corporate devotion. Music is a legitimate tool in worship because it is a form. Listen to a congregation read a Psalm out loud together. We do this in our church from time to time and some of our people are disturbed by it because they find the out-of-sync reading of several hundred voices to be distracting. Enter music as a form and instantly every word is perfectly in sync.

But the form is not just the carrier of the message. It is part of the message. It compliments it or detracts from it. It clarifies are obfuscates. Evangelicals want to elevate the worship so they add lofty words to banal forms. Poetically and musically and logically it’s the “praise and worship” rendition of a ring in a pig’s snout.

For good and for bad, I see evangelical influence in the Lutheran culture. On the good part, I see that they have learned from us the richness of a kind of grass-roots expression of praise. On the down side, too many of them are buying into the pop-culture idealization of worship as giddy tripe that makes kids jump up and down, and I roll my eyes and sigh when I see the real Christians introduce new slop from the Evangelical camp because they think that the answer to dead formalism is froth.

I put my daughter in a Lutheran school, not because I want her to become Lutheran, but because I want her to be less confused about what Christian is. I love the fact that they are distinctly Lutheran. At least I can peg who they are and we can understand ourselves more clearly. However, I have no idea what I will find in most Evangelical/Baptist schools. I’m not going to drop her in the the hodge-podge hobo’s soup of evangelicalism that is in our Christian schools where everything and anything that names Christ is called Christian. And I certainly don’t want her to be saturated in American evangelicalism that has so trivialized worship that even little children seem to subconsciously sense is ridiculously banal. The children who hush when the cross is carried in sense something far more lofty than the children who jump to the drumming beat and exclaim that they feel the Spirit in their noses.

Sadly, formalism has invaded the Evangelicals too. Their formalism is called “praise and worship” and looks more spontaneous and free. They feel that since their bodies have proved faithful to them by responding to the rhythm and that they have sung “God is greater, God is greater, God is greater” fifty times with intensifying passion that they have had worship. But since the form is so much like the forms of pop-culture, I can’t help but think while they’re chanting, “Who exactly is their god?”

Forms and symbols do mean something. And, yes, in the Lutheran chapel there are some forms and symbols that we don’t see in Baptist churches. But the very fact of their separateness from pop-culture makes them more effective and more meaningful. On the one side you have the lighting of candles and the silent bow. On the other you have the jarring twang of the electric guitar and the soto voce of the worship leader crooning that worship has begun. Both forms symbolize a beginning of worship. Both could be authentic; both could be mere formalism. The first, however, has the singular advantage of conveying that God and everything about God is actually bigger, transcendent, and serious.

So, that’s one reason I don’t have my daughter in the evangelical schools around here. Perhaps, in another post, I’ll explain why I don’t have her in the fundamental Baptist schools. Or, the Catholic parochial schools. Or, why we have chosen not to homeschool. But for now I’ll just say that we choose to risk exposing her to the formalism that is more serious versus the formalism that is trite, artistically evanescent, and flippant.

America’s Team and America’s Church

No offense to all my friends who are huge Dallas fans (and, yes, I have many such friends being the magnanimous and open-minded person that I am ), but I have always disliked the Cowboys and have made it a practice of mine to root for whatever team was playing them. Usually, I have been awarded the pleasure one gets for supporting the winning team.

My reason for disliking them was purely because even in the 1980s when I came to the USA as a geeky teenager who knew nothing about American football I was put off by the assumption that one team in one city from a state that I had never visited could be the de facto American Team. There was really no other basis for my dislike. I admit it. But perhaps because it seemed to me that everybody liked the Cowboys I decided to actually support a team that was winning at the time, the Chicago Bears. Since then I have been almost as disappointed as Cowboys fans except that Chicagoans have the humility to claim their team for their city, bad QBs and all, without arrogantly foisting them on the rest of the nation as “America’s Team.” Since I am virtually Chicagoan now I stick by the at-least-better-than-Cowboys Bears.

But that is not my point.

The Cowboys have passed themselves off on gullible Americans as “America’s Team” for years despite the fact that they have not been to a Super Bowl in a gazillion years. Well, 1996 to be exact. This year they were once again (yawn!) vaunted as Super Bowl likely with the highest paid roster, big name stars, a palatial arena, and all the accoutrements of royalty. From cheerleaders to stadium the Dallas Cowboys get all the press. They have it all.

Except for W’s in the win column.

Former Cowboys have dished out some scathing criticism, saying that the team is a bunch of stars who are overrated. And did you see Steve Young’s diatribe after last night’s game? Google it. Before the game Steve said that the Cowboys practice too soft; they don’t get physical or fast in practice. That’s a recipe for disaster in the minds of most NFL players unless you are part of the fantasy that is “America’s Team.” The Cowboys have drunk their own kool-aid. Jone’s kool-aid, to be exact.

It seems that the Cowboys believe their own press. They have imbibed the euphoria of gullible people who are distracted by glitz and glam and don’t have the insight to see the naked facts that are obvious to anyone who thinks that one thing a hyped team should do, among other things, is actually win. Even the Bears (my team) went to their house and spanked them. Even the Bears!

But the Cowboys can get away with being “America’s Team” and lose because they have money and money and money. It’s about marketing. It’s about loudly pretending a fantasy even though they can’t live up to it on the field. In this they have become analogous to the American Church. But the American Church is discovering with all the same dull and slow realization of Cowboys’ fans that money doesn’t buy substance.

Churchianity in America is more glamorous than any other place in the world, but it is wracking up losses in the columns that actually matter: truth, discipleship, evangelism, fellowship, and purity.  But most people can’t see it. They become fans of a churchianity just like they are fans of their team. They wear the jerseys and get all giddy when the glittery stuff struts before them. Fancy websites, cool pastors, new rap songs, big crowds, snazzy facilities. But finally after week after week after week of disillusionment they begin to find themselves unable to rationally ignore the encroaching befuddlement that something’s missing. Like Cowboy fans are finally starting to realize that “America’s Team” is not doing one basic thing really necessary to please fans, winning more than losing, so some Americans are starting to scratch their heads and wonder why it is that they still feel empty after going to the church with the palatial building, the glamorous get-up, the feel-good message, and the star-studded roster.

If the Apostle Peter had been a football fan he might have said the Cowboys were “clouds without rain.” “America’s Team” in the football world is exactly that. America’s Church, having profited with the same marketing genius that makes the Cowboys “America’s Team” is starting to be recognized by people who know as all talk and no game.

Warning: Unleashed Snobbery & Hoity-toity Pretentiousness (but I’m right).

I listened to Mozart’s Mass in C minor on my headset this week. One of the items on my to-do list before I die was to hear it live. I did. Two years ago. A birthday gift. And here is what I wrote.

It was great! I’d gladly pay the $57 per ticket to hear it all over again. We sat three rows from the front, almost too close. Close enough to count the moles on the concert violinist’s forearm. But she only played 17 minutes. She regaled us with her mastery of Knussen’s Violin Concerto, Op. 30, a modern piece written in 2002. Jennie and I attended the pre-concert conversation and enjoyed hearing Knussen explain his work and tell us what to listen for. It definitely made the 17 minutes much more enjoyable. Then we heard Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. I had heard a not-so-great symphony and chorus perform this piece many years ago so I ended up being more impressed this time than I expected after hearing the the CSO and Chorus show us how it was to be done. This time, however, I was much more pensive and reflective as I listened to Stravinsky’s treatment of the Psalms. I listened as a Christian, a pastor, a lover of theology. I had many rich thoughts and contemplations (to me anyway) that I would like to share in a future post if time permits. This post serves basically as my journal of events.

Good music all of it, but just the warm-up gig so to speak. The crowd bait was the incomparable Mozart and his amazing work, Mass in C minor. I was disappointed that the scheduled soprano had taken ill and we were going to have to hear a soloist that I had never heard of (and I tend to be somewhat familiar with musicians in the classical and operatic musical world). The soprano has the bulk of the work load in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and it is a notoriously difficult piece. The hastily printed profile of the understudy said that she was a native of Huntsville, Alabama and my self-styled haute culture snobbery that I presumptuously assume as soon as I drop $57. per ticket for anything instinctively snorted, “Can anything good musically come from the South?”

I dreaded the prospects of hearing Latin with a Southern drawl.

They should never have said that Susanna Phillips was from Huntsville, Alabama in the first line. And the name Susanna Phillips is so next-door-girl. Why not something Italian or Russian or Polish? But Susanna Phillips?!

Being a snob is very enjoyable, but because in the Bob and Jennie Bixby financial parlance $57.00 times 2 is a very large sum of money (therefore precluding the opportunity to be a snob with any sort of frequency), I sometimes rush to snobbish conclusions before I read the third and fourth lines; the quintessential illustration of high-brow parvenuism. The profile went on to say that though most of us had never heard of her (that was actually in between the lines) she had nonetheless won four of the world’s most prestigious voice contests and was a regular at the Santa Fe Opera. Ok, capturing four major awards is indeed impressive. But where in the world is Santa Fe? (snort, snort). The US has five of the top ten opera venues in the world. Santa Fe is not one of them.

We got the picture taken during the intermission. No flash. Very discreet. On Jennie’s head is the concertmaster. We heard him do a violin concerto once. The gracious patron made the picture blurry. Oh, well… I thought I’d just add that parenthetically.

Meanwhile way back over in the holler, seems like the folk of Birmingham, Alabama knew this would be a big night for their gal. “Cancellations can often lead to discoveries of rising stars, and although Susanna Phillips has had several early successes, she will get a boost tonight (Jan. 25) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” So ya’ll think of her tonight.

Well, she deserves the boost she got. We heard musicians say afterwards that she had not practiced with the orchestra or chorus or other soloists and, said one, “we were praying for her all night.” I don’t know how much that one musician knew, but if she did not practice with the other mezzo-soprano for the best two and a half minutes of two high voices singing something in Latin, the Gloria Domine Deus, then I tip my hat.

I know some of Mozart’s religious works so well that I can shut my eyes and mouth the Latin sans Southern drawl. Granted, it helps that there is so much repetition and melismata six miles long, but nonetheless I am as familiar with some of Mozart’s religious music as the average Baptist in Alabama is of “I’ll Fly Away.” It’s always best to hear great musicians perform music you already know and love. And as much as I would love to be a critic for pay I could never do the job because my emotions get in the way. My hoity-toity opining and self-congratulating pretensions of actually knowing what I’m talking about when it comes to music instantly dissipate as soon as the conductor lifts his baton. Especially at the CSO. So going to hear some of the world’s best perform some of the world’s best music (thereby checking off a simple item on my to-do-before-I-die list) was destined to be a great time.

Plus it was a date. With Jennie. The love of my life. (She sometimes reads my blog).

The baritone-bass, Eric Owen,. was exceptional even though, as you all know, the baritone has only one very small role in the entire 55 minutes. The choir was powerful, the orchestra as always was perfect, and the entire evening was something my wife and I have been re-living over and over again in our conversations.

Mozart’s music is superior. Period. People who don’t like classical music are simply ignorant. And people who think that all classical music is the same are almost equally as ignorant. Now, there is nothing necessarily ungodly about being ignorant. It is not even illegal. In this country you can pay $57 to go see a gyrating teenager scream obscenities or, worse, actually dupe yourself into thinking that some contemporary Christian musicians are “artists.” The Mozart Effect may be disputed, but one thing that cannot be disputed is that no person in their right mind is going to suggest that listening to anything “Christian” these days will make you smarter.

(Not that I’m saying that “make you smarter” is a criterion for Christian music, but why can’t we at least settle for music that doesn’t “make you dumber”? But I digress. That is for a later post. Here I wish simply to recount my evening.)

Several years ago I stood at the very back of the eternally long Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome pressed on every side by smelly Italians as we listened in complete silence to Mozart’s Requiem. I couldn’t help but thinking as I inhaled the body odor of the construction worker on my right, the store clerk on my left, and the hundreds of working-class plain people who politely and quietly stood – stood! – for the entire concert that somehow God’s people are among the most ignorant of the world, the most unsophisticated, and culturally banal. I couldn’t think why.

Last Friday as I listened to more than six score musicians powerfully and musically deliver the Mass’ Credo (I believe), the humbling explanation hit me. As Jennie and I drove home that night we talked about it. (And perhaps I can share part of that conversation on a later post even though I’m quite sure it will not garner universal agreement.)

Carrying sleeping children to their beds after having picked them up at our friends’ house, I thanked God that as starved as I am here on earth for good music at least every bit that I enjoy is merely a faint foretaste of eternal enjoyment reserved for me in heaven. For too many of the world’s best musicians music will soon be eternally silenced. Hell will be music-less.

What is Worship Music?

I’m going to buy multiple copies of Paul S. Jones’ little booklet What is Worship Music? and give them out to anybody who will read it and take his thoughts seriously. I like it that much. I will also promote the booklet in church.

Paul Jones’ premise is simple: “We need to follow biblical principles for worship music, not the world, youth culture, or ideas based upon mistaken notions of success.” Nothing original there and almost anybody in the gamut from “liturgical robes and organs to flip-flops and digital drum sets” would at least pay lip service to that premise. However, Jones goes on to give a very simple outline of the purpose for congregation worship music.

I. Praise: the lauding of God for his acts and attributes, acknowledging his supremacy in all things.

II. Prayer: communication addressed to God.

III. Proclamation: any activity that proclaims the Word of God – quotations, explanation, teaching, and preaching.

Recently I conversed with a man in a large church that had just acquired a new “worship leader.” (As we all know nowadays, “worship leader” does not mean pastor. It means the guy who plays the guitar.) Anyway, he specifically poked fun at my church because we have “the guy up front still waving his arms” instead of a “praise and worship team.”

Well, first of all, I have always wondered if the redundant “praise and worship” wasn’t a subconscious double emphasis on the part of its proponents to convince themselves that what they call “praise and worship” is really worship! But, secondly, in our church “the guy up front still waving his arms” is on the pastoral team, if not a pastor. When the music necessitates, he directs with his hands, but when it is unnecessary, he leads with his voice.

All that is secondary, however. The main point is that the pastors are the worship leaders and it is God’s plan that corporate worship be led. Period.  Even in heaven worship will be led by the elders. “Music is not in competition with pastoral work; rather, it is pastoral work” (Emphasis his). He says later, “Music in worship cannot be conformed to biblical standards unless it is actively supported by the church leadership in word and deed and is adequately funded.” I’d add “and led by the pastors” as well.

I personally do not have a problem with guitars, bass guitars, drums, and tambourines. I have grown past the superstition of my fundamentalist upbringing. And I love organs and grand pianos. I think they all have their place in corporate worship, but I strongly believe that if the pastor is to take his responsibility of worship leadership seriously he will diligently research the music choices he selects or allows to see that the ensemble of hymns offers up a balanced diet of praise, prayer, and proclamation. He will very soon discover that limiting himself to the best selections is not a matter of superiority or legalism, but merely of common sense. You can only sing so many songs in a year or in one service.  Also, once the pastor realizes that the congregational music is supposed to have a corporate emphasis (“we” instead of “I”), he will once again be limiting his selections. In other words, pastoral thoughtfulness naturally imposes huge restraint on what the congregation sings.

I have suggested elsewhere that the “three C’s of congregational music” are:

1. Content.

2. Continuity. This is singing songs that have been in the Body of Christ for a long time and help us celebrate the unity of One Body. As T. David Gordon said in Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal about Bernard of Clairveaux’s 1153 “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,

Set to Hans Hassler’s 1601 musical setting, translated into German by Paul Gerhardt in 1656 and into English by James Waddell Alexander in 1830, and, yes, harmonized by an obscure German composer named Johann Sebastian Bach in 1729.  From Bernard to Alexander, 677 years passed.  It took nearly seven centuries for this hymn to travel from medieval Latin to modern English. After seven centuries of input form some of the church’s finest musicians and theologians (James W. Alexander was the son of Princeton Seminary’s first professor, Archibald Alexander), who was I to prevent my church from knowing it?

Ouch! It’s so obvious. But we regularly have educated Christians pass up our church because they can’t tolerate the old hymns. Gordon graciously refers to these people as idiots! “I observe from the term idiotes (from the adjective idios , “one’s own”)  was not originally a term of contempt (as our word idiot normally is); rather, it was used to describe people who could speak only their own language, their own idiom, and not those of others.” We minister to people who are naturally “idiots,”  but we need to teach them a different musical language. Thus, you will see in a service that offers a variety of styles (as our does in a moderate sense) some people only responding to the music that is “one’s own.”

I notice, for instance, in “blended” or “supplemental” worship services that the congregation dutifully, and sometimes surprisingly, heartily, sings the traditional hymns and musical rubrics, such as the Doxology, Gloria Patri, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. But when the guitars come out, and we sing the contemporary songs (with repeated refrains between the verses), the place takes on another aura: it gets funky.  At this point, middle-aged women start to get down with Jesus, swaying and singing as they did thirty years ago at Grateful Dead concerts.  People who would find it odd if we repeated the Gloria Patri  or Doxology four times don’t find it odd that we repeat the refrains to these choruses numerous times, even if they are less theologically significant. (Gordon 11).

Gordon acknowledges various cultures and the legitimacy of dance, even, in some cultures, but his point is that there is a huge problem of “one’s own”-ism going on in the worship service. Pastors need to connect the local body with the Body.

3.Thirdly,  Contemporaneity. By this I mean what Jones says: “We must meaningfully interact with people immersed in popular culture, yes; but we do not have to take on its character or speak with its trendy musical accents.” Granted, Jones might not like some of our musical choices (or even instrumentation), but I think that we agree in the main and our selections are far, far from being trendy. They are, however, conscientiously interacting with the culture of our day.

I strongly encourage the members of my church to read Paul Jones’ book. You’ll see that we don’t see everything eye to eye. For example, I’m not sure that we must sing Psalms every time we congregate. However, I am willing to be corrected on this matter if I can be convinced that we are erring at this point. Nonetheless, the main heartbeat of his booklet is something that mirrors our heartbeat.

If you want to go a little bit deeper, read T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Sing. This would be a particularly good read for the many people throughout the years who have sniffed at my insistence on hymns in the church as legalistic obscurantism or who have blown off my concerns by saying I am being elitist or — usually this is the case — that they don’t understand it so it doesn’t matter. Maybe they’ll see that I am probably not the one who is ignorant. Gordon again:

I am not suggesting that is is sinful or shameful for an individual to be unfamiliar with the sociology or philosophy of music.  Each of us is ignorant of many things.  I, for instance, do not understand the fundamental theorem of calculus, and could not explain differentials or limits (when “x approaches zero,” my understanding of the fundamental theorem approaches zero also).  But I do not deny that the teorem exists, nor do I deny that it is important.  Similarly, it is fin for some individuals to take no interest in the sociology of music, or in musicology per se; but it is not fine for them to deny that such areas of study exist, or to deny that significant individuals have taken them seriously.

It’s sort of like my third grader telling me that studying math makes no sense to her and will be totally un-useful. Ignorance always pontificates on the invalidity of the subject it knows nothing about. At the very least, if you want to admit that it is a complex matter and that your leadership takes it seriously, Paul Jones’ booklet will be a great introductory read. I’m going to order some right now!

Huntsville, Latin, Music, the Mozart Effect, and So Forth (Warning: Judgementalism and Snobbery Unleashed)

It was great! I’d gladly pay the $57 per ticket to hear it all over again. We sat three rows from the front, almost too close. Close enough to count the moles on the concert violinist’s forearm. But she only played 17 minutes. She regaled us with her mastery of Knussen’s Violin Concerto, Op. 30, a modern piece written in 2002. Jennie and I attended the pre-concert conversation and enjoyed hearing Knussen explain his work and tell us what to listen for. It definitely made the 17 minutes much more enjoyable. Then we heard Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. I had heard a not-so-great symphony and chorus perform this piece many years ago so I ended up being more impressed this time than I expected after hearing the the CSO and Chorus show us how it was to be done. This time, however, I was much more pensive and reflective as I listened to Stravinsky’s treatment of the Psalms. I listened as a Christian, a pastor, a lover of theology. I had many rich thoughts and contemplations (to me anyway) that I would like to share in a future post if time permits. This post serves basically as my journal of events.

Good music all of it, but just the warm-up gig so to speak. The crowd bait was the incomparable Mozart and his amazing work, Mass in C minor. I was disappointed that the scheduled soprano had taken ill and we were going to have to hear a soloist that I had never heard of (and I tend to be somewhat familiar with musicians in the classical and operatic musical world). The soprano has the bulk of the work load in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and it is a notoriously difficult piece. The hastily printed profile of the understudy said that she was a native of Huntsville, Alabama and my self-styled haute culture snobbery that I presumptuously assume as soon as I drop $57. per ticket for anything instinctively snorted, “Can anything good musically come from the South?”

I dreaded the prospects of hearing Latin with a Southern drawl.

They should never have said that Susanna Phillips was from Huntsville, Alabama in the first line. And the name Susanna Phillips is so next-door-girl. Why not something Italian or Russian or Polish? But Susanna Phillips?!

Being a snob is very enjoyable, but because in the Bob and Jennie Bixby financial parlance $57.00 times 2 is a very large sum of money (therefore precluding the opportunity to be a snob with any sort of frequency), I sometimes rush to snobbish conclusions before I read the third and fourth lines; the quintessential illustration of high-brow parvenuism. The profile went on to say that though most of us had never heard of her (that was actually in between the lines) she had nonetheless won four of the world’s most prestigious voice contests and was a regular at the Santa Fe Opera. Ok, capturing four major awards is indeed impressive. But where in the world is Santa Fe? (snort, snort). The US has five of the top ten opera venues in the world. Santa Fe is not one of them.

We got the picture taken during the intermission. No flash. Very discreet. On Jennie’s head is the concertmaster. We heard him do a violin concerto once. The gracious patron made the picture blurry. Oh, well… I thought I’d just add that parenthetically.

Meanwhile way back over in the holler, seems like the folk of Birmingham, Alabama knew this would be a big night for their gal. “Cancellations can often lead to discoveries of rising stars, and although Susanna Phillips has had several early successes, she will get a boost tonight (Jan. 25) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” So ya’ll think of her tonight.

Well, she deserves the boost she got. We heard musicians say afterwards that she had not practiced with the orchestra or chorus or other soloists and, said one, “we were praying for her all night.” I don’t know how much that one musician knew, but if she did not practice with the other mezzo-soprano for the best two and a half minutes of two high voices singing something in Latin, the Gloria Domine Deus, then I tip my hat.

I know some of Mozart’s religious works so well that I can shut my eyes and mouth the Latin sans Southern drawl. Granted, it helps that there is so much repetition and melismata six miles long, but nonetheless I am as familiar with some of Mozart’s religious music as the average Baptist in Alabama is of “I’ll Fly Away.” It’s always best to hear great musicians perform music you already know and love. And as much as I would love to be a critic for pay I could never do the job because my emotions get in the way. My hoity-toity opining and self-congratulating pretensions of actually knowing what I’m talking about when it comes to music instantly dissipate as soon as the conductor lifts his baton. Especially at the CSO. So going to hear some of the world’s best perform some of the world’s best music (thereby checking off a simple item on my to-do-before-I-die list) was destined to be a great time.

Plus it was a date. With Jennie. The love of my life. (She sometimes reads my blog).

The baritone-bass, Eric Owen,. was exceptional even though, as you all know, the baritone has only one very small role in the entire 55 minutes. The choir was powerful, the orchestra as always was perfect, and the entire evening was something my wife and I have been re-living over and over again in our conversations.

Mozart’s music is superior. Period. People who don’t like classical music are simply ignorant. And people who think that all classical music is the same are almost equally as ignorant. Now, there is nothing necessarily ungodly about being ignorant. It is not even illegal. In this country you can pay $57 to go see a gyrating teenager scream obscenities or, worse, actually dupe yourself into thinking that some contemporary Christian musicians are “artists.” The Mozart Effect may be disputed, but one thing that cannot be disputed is that no person in their right mind is going to suggest that listening to anything “Christian” these days will make you smarter.

(Not that I’m saying that “make you smarter” is a criterion for Christian music, but why can’t we at least settle for music that doesn’t “make you dumber”? But I digress. That is for a later post. Here I wish simply to recount my evening.)

Several years ago I stood at the very back of the eternally long Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome pressed on every side by smelly Italians as we listened in complete silence to Mozart’s Requiem. I couldn’t help but thinking as I inhaled the body odor of the construction worker on my right, the store clerk on my left, and the hundreds of working-class plain people who politely and quietly stood – stood! – for the entire concert that somehow God’s people are among the most ignorant of the world, the most unsophisticated, and culturally banal. I couldn’t think why.

Last Friday as I listened to more than six score musicians powerfully and musically deliver the Mass’ Credo (I believe), the humbling explanation hit me. As Jennie and I drove home that night we talked about it. (And perhaps I can share part of that conversation on a later post even though I’m quite sure it will not garner universal agreement.)

Carrying sleeping children to their beds after having picked them up at our friends’ house, I thanked God that as starved as I am here on earth for good music at least every bit that I enjoy is merely a faint foretaste of eternal enjoyment reserved for me in heaven. For too many of the world’s best musicians music will soon be eternally silenced. Hell will be music-less.

The Importance of Being Earnest Thoughtful (Part 1)

The impetus for this muse is the fact that several Christian colleges have produced or will produce the well-known Oscar Wilde play, The Importance of Being Earnest. A group of people from my own congregation attended the production at Maranatha Baptist Bible College. I myself watched a movie rendition of it recently and then began to ponder more deeply on what I had at first blush found to be so enjoyable.

When discussion ensued at the site of the bumptious gadfly, the remonstrating dissident, whose persistent and sneering aspersions on conservative Christians (particularly fundamentalists) who seem to preen themselves as cultural sophisticates because they love old plays piqued the sensibilities of those who are lovers of drama, I ignored my good sense and proffered a reluctant agreement with the peevish misanthrope.

It hurts to agree because most of my friends and the people I love probably will not see it the way I perceive it. It vexes me to agree because Dissidens is haughty and unloving toward the Bride of Christ. It hurts to agree … but he is Shemei. And humble spirits let Shemeis throw dirt. They don’t behead them. Shemei’s motives, mood, words, and accuracy may be dubious, even obviously wicked, but a spiritual person hears the voice of God behind the rantings. Whatever God was saying to David’s heart through Shimei’s curses was probably very different from what Shimei was actually saying, but David would have never heard it had he dismissed him by taking off his head. “Let him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord hath bidden him” (2 Samuel 16:11).

The Lord bid me think. And he used a gadfly to do it.

I said

Frankly, I’m scratching my head on how the play can be sanitized enough to be played as harmless humor — especially in the context of a Bible College. If it is sanitized like it ought to be then it loses its substance.

I watched the play recently and chuckled all the way through. It wasn’t until after the whole thing was done that I started reflecting on what made me laugh. My own depravity was shocking, shocking in the sense that I was thoroughly enjoying the glamorization of things for which Jesus died.

This particular quote was picked up in discussion on Sharperiron.org and used several times either as support for one’s point of view or with an issued challenge that I produce the explanation for why I felt this play, rather the enjoyment of the play, revealed to me my own depravity.

In the next few posts, I shall attempt to unveil what are mostly abstract thoughts about my soul and entertainment in what I hope will be helpful for the reader who is as interested in the soul as I and daring enough to risk thinking thoughts that may sap some cherished pleasures of their pleasure.

But shouldn’t we be willing to do that anyway? Is it not the most serious part of discipleship that we are prepared to die? Does this not mean at the very least that some pleasures are killed? Are we who are supposed to die daily and to subject ourselves to the violent sacrifice of self-denial in order to be called disciples of Jesus Christ afraid to think thoroughly through our pleasures lest our pleasures be exposed as the lifeblood of our self-love? Wouldn’t a firm conviction of the fallenness of man be enough to make us pause to listen when the critic speaks of us because we know that even if there is no truth in his words, the pain of them reveals an unChristlike self-love?

If someone mocks us for the plays we choose to love, do we dismiss him? Or do we stop to think? Could it be that our defensiveness is indicative of a fatal error? Does it hurt us to ponder? To think?

I don’t think so. And, I sincerely hope that the following articles will promote thoughtfulness and humility. I don’t expect, nor do I necessarily desire agreement. I am merely attempting thoughtfulness, not preaching.

Thoughtfulness must be accompanied with the profoundest sense of our innate proclivity to error. We are inherently sinful. The song writer captured what should be our self-evaluation: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” That is why we cry out, “O that my ways were directed to keep your statutes.” This cry admits the possibility that increased knowledge will result in shame when we suddenly become more enlightened to our sin. “Then — if I were directed to keep your statutes — shall I not be ashamed when I shall have respect unto all thy commandments” (Psalm 119:5,6).

In the articles I will address some of the comments and questions of individuals that are recorded in the various blog discussions on this matter. I will not name anybody because I do not want this to be personal. In fact, I want to be very clear from the outset that I do not question the motives of anyone who defends the use of the play. I sense sincerity and genuine interest in being pleasing to God. I sense true love for God’s people.

This is more than I can say for the enshrouded censurer with whom I agree.

Therefore, I am appealing for patience. I will ponder on the issue of Wilde’s sexuality because it is unavoidable, but wade through my thoughts with me to see how I connect Wilde’s sexuality to the play’s possible objectionableness. I don’t think it will be in the clichéed fashion which, I think, makes a rather superficial link between Wilde’s sexual perversion and his play. Rather, I think the connection is there in a more subtle, philosophical way: the pervert’s philosophy in harmless humor.

However, the superficial connection will be/must be considered as well if there is, in fact, any such connection. No thoughtful Christian can ignore it. Nor should he. But if you are inclined to reject any discussion of Wilde’s morality as relevant to the merit or non-merit of “Earnest,” please grant me the assurance of your commitment to distinguish the nuance between the superficial and philosophical connections before you post your comments.

I think it is helpful to know that I am not against drama per se. In fact, I quite appreciate it. Recently, a good number of our church people saw a production by Overshadowed and I plan to enjoy more productions from this good company in the very near future. So, I would like to think that I am balanced. (But doesn’t everybody think they’re balanced?)

Finally, at the conclusion of these entries I hope to suggest hints for the thoughtful critic of “our way of life.” I sincerely hope that my views be regarded as shared thoughts and not judgments. Unlike some critics, I do not prophesy the demise of the institutions that choose to use these plays. If my daughter were college-age, I would enthusiasitically support her decision to go to some of these institutions. I wish to contribute to what I think could be a very helpful discussion if we are willing to consider these things patiently and with grace.

And, once again, I don’t preach. I’m thinking.