follow-up on accessibility of lyrics

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: music, planning, quotes of note, worship
• Date: Jan 11,2007

I had a great comment of note from my 01.02.07 entry about the accessibility of lyrics. I would like to reprint it here for your edification…

It comes from my new friend Ron Rienstra, who teaches homiletics at Western Theological Seminary and is a frequent contributor to Reformed Worship magazine.

This comment comes from another blog I contribute to called Worship Helps, where I reprinted the accessibility of lyrics entry:

Thanks for this post. I’ve used this song before, and like it a lot, especially for services that are dealing with issues of idolatry.

Two comments: First, you helpfully give some of the background to a phrase like “God of Jacob.” Of course, its origin was in an exclusively patriarchal culture, and so I’ll often use a balancing phrase elsewhere in the service to remind congregants that our God is God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel.

Second, I also like the phrase “God of Jacob” so well because of all the Patriarchs, I find Jacob the most deeply flawed and hence the most like me. He had many good qualities, but he was a liar, a cheat, and didn’t let scruples interfere with his ambition. Just the same, look what God was able to do with him! If God can speak powerfully to him and through him, there’s a chance that I, too, can be a useful tool in the hands of the “God of Jacob.”

Something that Ron says in his comments struck me as a worship leader. He used the expression “balancing phrase” to describe what the worship leader can do to help explain a seemingly ‘unaccessible’ lyric. Futher, his example is didactic, rather than purely instructional. I like that…

We have a great responsibility as worship leaders to bring understanding and clarity to the time of corporate worship. Accessibility sometimes depend on what we do in the spaces between the songs, namely our talking.

In addition to the accessibility of lyrics, we need to be equally conscious of how to make those phrases or statements in our worship songs that could confuse more ‘accessible.’ This is truly ‘seeker-sensitive’ worship…

bill simmons quote of the week

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: quotes of note, sports
• Date: Jan 8,2007

Nobody enjoyed the cheesy ‘stache and Bird-esque Indiana roots more than me, and nobody sympathizes with someone suffering from a bad back more than me … but I can’t imagine how Donnie Baseball makes it, not when his career tailed off in the late-’80s faster than Anthony Michael Hall and Andrew McCarthy combined.

-Bill Simmons from his ESPN Page 2 Column, Ballot-Soap Box, on why Yankees alum Don Mattingly does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame

boice as prophet

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, quotes of note
• Date: Dec 18,2006

What you save them with, you save them to.

-Dr. James Montgomery Boice

Challies reviewed the soon to be released book [January 2007], The Rise of Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, today on his blog. Wonderful review. Here is a quote of note:

…strangely absent from this book is any real assessment of what Osteen offers the wider church, unless it is merely a message that is positive. But many other pastors have shared a sin-free, positive message before Joel. The word “gospel” appears a handful of times but is never explained, never declared.

So what does the opening quote have to do with this?

In the comment section of this entry from Challies, a woman, who happen to live in the Houston area where Lakewood resides, quoted the statement above in response to the shallowness of many of the churches in her area. [Updated: This woman does not specifically cite Lakewood Church as a 'shallow' church, although I think it is insinuated. ] I had never heard the quote it before but was instantly intrigued with it.

She attributed it to a unknown Puritan, but after a little research, I found that it came from the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice. Boice was a well-known Reformed theologian and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1968 until his death in 2000.

I think Boice’s point was that any church that is not anchored on Christ’s atoning work on the Cross, leaves its “converts” still separated from God. People “saved” with sentimental appeals or therapeutic promises may join our church, consider themselves as Christians, embrace the evangelical sub-culture, and even have some temporary, surface-level change in their lives. But those saved by the way of the Cross will be saved to a Gospel that transforms the inside of man: his soul.

[Updated: Though it was subtle, I have tried not to make a broad generalization and/or judgement about Lakewood Church or Joel Osteen. More, I am trying to make a general comment on the danger a church can make when they preach a 'different' gospel. I would be lying, though, if I didn't say that what seems to be Lakewood's predominant theme provoked this line of thinking. But what Lakewood Church and Osteen do will ultimately be judged by God alone.]

the trick of advent

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christian season, quotes of note
• Date: Dec 14,2006

From time to time, I like to reprint comments that get lost in the midst of the hullabaloo of blogging. Many times, these are better than the entries themselves. This is true for my introductory post on the importance of Advent in the midst of our holiday season.

Wonders of Oyarsa beautifully encapsulated the sentiment I had, but I think better. Here is what he had to say:

Advent is a tricky thing indeed in modern America – virtually impossible to do right with the pressures of our culture. Since it is supposed to be a time of reflection and preparation, this goes against the hectic extravagance and constant stress that goes on in early and mid December. By the time Christmas comes, most people in our culture have had enough – having celebrated and shopped for the past month and a half. But traditionally Christmas day is the start of a 12-day celebration that our hearts should be ready for having spent the last month in quiet anticipation.

To really go against our culture – preparing quietly during their extravagance and celebrating heartily during their exhaustion – is nearly impossible for an individual or even a family. But it just might be possible for a Church…

Awesome! I think it is possible too…

If you haven’t checked out WOO’s blog, do yourself a favor and check it out here.

If you are catching up, here is this year’s Advent-related material on relevintage.com:

-Virtual Advent
-Virtual Advent Week 1: A Syllable of Hope
-Virtual Advent Week 2: The Way Back To Praise
-Advent F.A.Q.’s

Virtual Advent, week 3 is coming up this Sunday, December 17. Don’t miss it…

shiny happy people

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, missiology, quotes of note
• Date: Nov 17,2006

[HT: "Family Portraits" in the Fall 2006 issue of Leadership journal]

‘Reality’ for some:

“Just look at church websites. How many of them have this picture of a perfect family with a blue sky background. They all look so nice in their polo shirts, and the kids all have straight teeth. It’s all just so lovely.”

-Ivy Beckwith, minister to children and families at the Congregational Church of New Canaan, Connecticut

[Note: I'm sure Beckwith is being sarcastic, but this is a profound commentary on the image or 'reality' most churches want to put forth]

Then there’s reality:

“Christians tend to look at life neater & tighter than it really it is.”

-T.S. Eliot, one of the most influential poets of the 20th century

“Postmoderns want you to be real. They know all information to be blemished, partial, perspectival. They all know people to be blemished, partial, perspectival.”

“People will assume the worst about you and your church and still value you and even join your congregation-if they don’t see you dancing in denial about what you’ve been or dancing on the hot coals of fads and fashions trying to be something you’re not.”

-Leonard Sweet, E. Stanley Jones Professor of evangelism at Drew University

“There are no longer any saints without warts.”

-Don Cupitt, writer, broadcaster and popularizer of innovative theological ideas

the heart behind relevintage.com

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: culture, missiology, quotes of note, relevintage
• Date: Nov 9,2006

“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and in Greek; …at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died. And that is what he died about. And that is where churchmen ought to be, and what churchmen should be about.”

-George MacLeod, founder and former parish minister of The Iona Community, now an international ecumenical Christian community

shlog on relevintage or should i say, relevintage on shlog

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: quotes of note, relevintage
• Date: Aug 5,2006

I’ve arrived! At least, for a day…

On July 26, on his blog, shlog, one of my favorite peeps, bloggers, artists Shaun Groves, wrote about my review of Confessions of a Reformission Rev by Mark Driscoll:

For anyone still interested…the most thorough and well-written review in the blogosphere of Mark Driscoll’s book Confessions of a Reformission Rev is over at Relevintage. Brad writes a great summary and a brief interesting little discussion/diversion on Mark’s choice of language

Wow Shaun! Thanks for the kind words! It means alot coming from you…

I met Shaun and his wife Becky during my wife, Holly and I’s time in Nashville where we attended the same church and sunday school. Shaun is one of those guys you want to get to know. I’m grateful I did, if but for a short time!

And further, if you don’t know, as far as blogging goes, Shaun is consistently one of the best bloggers in the ‘sphere. He is witty, smart, deep, sarcastic, introspective, bold and worth a check everyday! Show him a thank you from the relevintage readers by frequenting his blog as often as you can.

Thanks again Shaun!

popping the bubble

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: quotes of note
• Date: Apr 13,2006

From time to time, I would like to post a timely comment that pops up in the comment section of relevintage. This was a comment posted by one of my best friends, Mark, who is a public high school teacher in the St. Louis school district, on how important it is to have the heart and mind of a cultural redemptive:

When asked which is the “greatest” of God’s commandments, Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).The longer I live the more I’m convinced and convicted that Christians in our society forming relationships with lost people and showing them love by just being their friend and being an example is the greatest form of evangelism.

Recently in my church, one of the members of our youth group died suddenly. My pastor talked of the visitation and how people this kid had waited at a restaurant came to pay respects just out of how he lived his life and treated them.

In education there is a common trite expression used “people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care”. I think the same holds true in our culture of corruption and Godly people walking away from their faith. People are desperate to be around radical, wide awake Christianity. Souls are tied to our obedience. Christians must perservere in the faith and be a light in a dark world as opposed to living in a bubble of Christian friends and influence.

Amen, Mark, amen!