Recently in Church Musican Category

My cousin, Sam, (yep, "Sam Ward" is a recurring name in our family tree) is a worship music guy over in Fort Wayne, IN and has an excellent blog that you should all read called Worship360. Please refrain from writing comments about how weird it is that my family produces so many creative types and have a look at Sam's questions and comments in response to the stuff I posted the other day.

Here's a few of Sam's thoughts and my responses. (Dude, this is what I love about blogs!)

"... the question was asked, "How can your church still be recognized as a Presbyterian church?" as if the only distinctive was the version of hymnal in the pews..."

For me this question in the interview seems so odd. Why do we care about being recognized as Presbyterian? Don't we care more about being recognized by a family resemblance to our big brother, Jesus Christ? And isn't racial segregation one of the major signs of hypocrisy that make people reject the church?

"...we are to sacrificially serve each other as Christ did in all areas including our music choices...the way this plays out in a specific congregation might change based on the cultural make-up of the congregation..."

It's true that if your town is all "X" and no "Y" then it would be silly to try to incorporate "Y" style music into your service. But what's God's universal will in this situation. Sam had an excellent post on his blog a few weeks ago about the difference between God's universal will vs. God's individual will (universal will=care for orphans; individual will=adopt an orphan.) God's universal will is that we are all called to break down walls, be reconciled, and love our neighbor (and our enemy). How that looks for individuals will change. We have a sister church in Kenya, New City Fellowship in Nairobi, whose mission is to see Africans and South Asians reconciled in a worshiping community. That's a unique vision that applies in Nairobi but would be kind of weird to attempt in Springfield, USA. I believe that every church is called by God's universal will to humbly and honestly look at themselves and decide if their music planning is intentionally building trust between diverse tribes of people or whether their music planning is just building up taller and thicker walls of division. Mercy, mercy mercy! We can only do this by grace.

"Through my adoption experience, I'm realizing how much we as Christians define ourselves based on physical characteristics. It also seems to me that Paul encourages the church to attempt to avoid those types of classifications such as Jew or Greek, slave or free. So while we are to serve each other sacrificially, are we continuing to define ourselves simply based on biology instead of the spirit who makes us one family?"

Sam, this is a profound statement. Reading through "Adopted For Life" I am growing in my own appreciation for how amazing the doctrine of adoption is for all of us. In fact, this is one of the strongest arguments for reconciliation. We are new creations in Jesus, a family by his grace! However, I don't believe that our adoption creates a "color-blind" church. There's a temptation to say that God doesn't care about race. God made a beautifully diverse world that Revelation 7 shows us will be diverse even in the new heavens and new earth.

We are heading into a big music weekend. It starts Saturday morning, I've got a morning rehearsal for Sunday's worship. Hopefully, my dad will be there for the rehearsal. We've got a massive band with 2 keys, 2 guitars, drums, bass, perc. and 8 singers (I love working for the church!) We'll be doing a lot of my dad's music Sunday, so it should be a fun service.

Saturday night the jam continues. We've got the International Worship and Prayer Service. The should be a fun time with a really open feel. We're going in sans-rehearsal. A rehearsal wouldn't be worth it anyway since 3/4ths of the music will be provided by various groups of immigrants and refugees from our church and those of us in the band will just be playing by ear. Good times! I'm excited about being able to play with Mike Ramsey and Jules Gikundiro from our South City worship site and being able to hear some music from our Nepalese folks.

Sunday we have our 2 worship services of course. J-dub sitting in.

Then Sunday night, Dad and I will be at Covenant Presbyterian leading the worship music there. We'll be doing a few of his classic tunes like "Rock of Ages" and "Morning Sun" but we'll also be doing a few more of his unique tunes so come on out and worship with us.

The music doesn't stop Sunday! On Monday, we will hopefully be completing the last session for my new CD. I'll be meeting with Michelle Higgins at Jacob Detering's studio to cut some back ground vocals (BGVs). With my dad being in town, we might have him replace some of my tenor parts too if time permits.

Speaking of the recording, I've been interacting a lot this week with my graphic designer, Ken to get the layout ready. We are getting very close to a finished product ready for the holiday shopping season.

I can't believe how quickly my fall schedule has become overwhelmed with special events! I've had to create a unique section in our planning center to administrate these non-Sunday morning services. Here's a rough schedule so far:

International Worship & Prayer Service - THIS SATURDAY September 26 6pm @ NCF (U City)

James Ward worship concert - THIS SUNDAY September 27 6pm (come at 4 to singing in the choir) @ Covenant Presbyterian Church

Youth Worship Night - NEXT Friday October 2 7pm @ NCF (U City)

NCF Church Retreat - October 9-11

Reformation Day Service - Sunday October 25 6pm @ Twin Oaks Presbyterian

West Africa Musical Instrument Fundraiser - TBA

Adoption Celebration Service - TBA

Here's two different choirs performing the exact same arrangement of "Mary Did You Know?" One is a black youth choir. The other is an older white choir. Notice the layers and layers of cultural communication that defines each choir: location, attire, phrasing, instrumentation. It's a credit to the composers and arrangers of this song that it could fine a place in such different contexts.

Here's a fun experiment: start the lower video and then at :45 start the top video. It's a mashup! If only the tempos were the same, it would work for the entire tune.

There's a few tools that I've learned to employ to train myself in different cultural styles of worship that I can share with the blog readers. Of course, when you work for a church like mine, there's not much of a music budget, so I've had to learn to be resourceful with the awesome power of the web. Here's a few places to get started:

1. iTunes, iTunes, iTunes.
I am surprised that more people have not discovered how awesome iTunes is when you really dig into it. A lot of folks in my church are under the impression that this software is only for iPod owners. In reality, iTunes is just a place to by music that you can save onto your computer for listening, burn to a CD or upload to your mp3 player of choice. iTunes has a great store that can also be an education in music. Start by taking one artist that you know, let's say Kirk Franklin that everyone on the planet is familiar with. Type that into the search and go to his link where you'll see all his recordings and on the right you'll see a list of artist who are similar. So, you can follow those links to other artists and songs all day long, getting deeper and deeper into the gospel experience. Each song plays a 30 second sample which is enough to get the general vibe. If you hear something you like, create a playlist and drag and drop the song into the list. At the end of your session you might choose to buy a few tracks, but you can still learn a lot for free from those little samples.

2. YouTube
You can also go over to YouTube and type in the names of a few artists and you will find scores of videos that are sometimes just the track from the CD in it's entirety. This is certainly not legal to post, but it's there for you to experience if you don't feel guilty about it. You are not stealing by listening to it. Again, if you really like the track, then buy it. YouTube also provides suggestions, and so you can spend all day listening to videos. Check out my previous post to see what the type of videos I'm describing. This is also a great tool for finding African music. Type "African Gospel" or a word like "Nzambe" or "Yesu" into the search and you will get a bunch of videos of African gospel.

3. Internet Radio
Now head back over to iTunes. If you look at the top left hand side under "Library" you will see an icon labeled "Radio". This takes you to a massive catalog of radio internet radio stations organized by genre. This has been fun to discover because the actual radio in my car is pretty lame. Internet Radio takes me back to the days when you would sit by the radio with your finger on record to catch a good song on tape. My sister had boxes of radio mix tapes. What a fun time of musical discovery! Internet Radio is not on demand, but it's another way to open your mind up to what people are listening to who are from another culture. Listening to the good stuff along with the bad means that you are becoming more discerning. You can be conversant in the style so that you can engage with that style in a constructive way. What makes good rap and bad rap? What makes good Soukous and bad Soukous? How does Kirk Franklin's sound compare to Donnie McClurkin?

4. All Music Guide (allmusic.com)
This is a little more intensive. The All Music Guide website has bios on artists, articles on the development of genres, and even album and song reviews. This website is for when you are read to really learn more about the origins of the sounds you hear. It helps you understand the "why" of certain sounds. Pick a genre or even a country and start reading about what music is part of their cultural landscape. This website has been a big source of information for me about the Congolese sound. (I could also recommend Wikipedia for this sort of thing.)

Now that I'm back from vacation, it's a perfect time to start getting ready for the fall. This week, I spent way too much time on iTunes, YouTube and other websites getting ideas for the upcoming choir season. I was impressed with how many cool gospel choir songs are coming out these days!

Enjoy~

There's a few songs that I don't have videos for that I'm considering:

• I Am the Resurrection, Angel Carol by James Ward


• Dwell In the House - we sang this last year at the Black History Celebration; it would be nice to do in the fall.

There's always a twinge of guilt around featuring my own music. Am I just glorifying myself? Is this just a big advertisement for my CD and my agenda? I can recite to myself the reasons why it is better to allow the community of believers in a church to create their own unique expressions of worship, but it sometimes just feels like a justification for exploiting a captive audience. Of course, these feelings of guilt are just a lie. Would feelings of guilt that inhibit the creation and expression of new worship really be from the Holy Spirit? No, this is the guilt of the enemy who wants all expressions of worship to cease.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with someone who has been at our church for several months. They were surprised that I was recording a CD. They asked if I wrote songs. They didn't recognize any songs that I had written from our worship services. After that conversation, I immediately consulted my records and found that I had not featured much of my own music over the past 6 months. One song a month was the average. So, I decided, in anticipation of the CD release, to schedule one song of mine every Sunday. I want my songs and the CD that I've spent so much time on to be a gift to the congregation of people who I lead in worship. If they don't recognize my songs then I have been failing to faithfully share the gift that God has equipped me with.

I believe that any artist (or any other labor) who does not faithfully practice and share their gift is being unfaithful to the Spirits work. The gifts we have been given are not for ourselves; they are gifts that are to be shared with our communities. So, to my community, New City Fellowship, I apologize for the way I have allowed false guilt to drive my gift into the dark.