The Enemy Within

Spotifty is a great thing. I would never have signed up on my own, but one day Wendy told me that we now had a family Spotify account. Great. So I've been tooling around through all the old records that I remember. Hey, they even have stuff like I heard when I was a toddler. Anyone remember The Medical Mission Sisters with "Joy is Like the Rain?" Anyhow among all the other memory lane strollings, I used to really like Kerry Livgren's post Kansas group AD so I downloaded Time Line (the album) for a listen. Not bad at all but quite dated. One track stands out. New Age Blues. Brings back such memories. Memories of a church that thought it was under siege from values and experiences it had not known before. Afraid of demonic influences. Afraid of it knew not what. And lashing out against this perceived threat to its existence...

Fast forward to today. The influence of the New Age on the church might actually have been quite positive. The involvement of imagination and feeling in our prayer life has been an avenue for the Holy Spirit to communicate that just wasn't there before. We are now more open to God being present in the thought life of those with other worldviews-- i.e. western rationalism is no longer baptized as the only way to understand the Gospel. We are maybe not quite as dyed-in-the-wool about things as we used to be. And yet we elected Trump. How can this be? (I am painfully lumping myself in with Christians I disagree with in America here. I do relate to their motivation, even though convinced against it. I write this way because there are corresponding forces in my home and native land among Christians that would have elected a junior Trump in Andrew Scheer.)

My answer is that I think we were great at identifying enemies from without but we were blind to the enemy we carried within. This enemy, not a simple entity by any stretch, might be labelled fear or pride or narrow-mindedness or legalism or any one of dozens of labels which only partially describe it. It can only really be identified by its narrative and its results. The narrative is one of once more being under siege, this time from the scientific community, the news media, the unions, the educators, the medical community and so on. But now we have political power of our own, “friends” in the media who will echo and intensify our distrust, and don’t forget the population to force the situation to swing in our favour. Population is an important one. While those of our neighbours who had other views were carefully guarding the world from overcrowding, we were breeding an army of sometimes narrow-minded, but almost always conservative home-schoolers to legally stuff the ballot boxes. So it was that we really gained the upper hand, but we never admitted it. After all what good would it be to live without the fear of being over run by socialists? We might actually have space to breathe the free air and think other thoughts. And anyway we had a few trophies that we were dead set on taking. These trophies had eluded us for decades but were now in our grasp-- if only we could get a president elected who could tip the SCOTUS balance in our favour. And here he came, as the scriptures put it, “to deceive even the elect” and no matter how else morally, mentally, stupidly unfit for office, we labelled him “God’s Man” and ushered him in.

So we won. Brett Kavanagh may yet down Roe vs. Wade. Other trophies regarding the definition of “Family” may yet come. But what has that got us? Let’s start with the word “Evangelical.” Nowadays, when people hear that precious word they don’t think, as they ought, “Those people are really all about the Gospel (The Evangel!) of the Kingdom.” They think of us as those bitter sods who can’t see the need of protecting the mother’s wellbeing through strong and well-funded social welfare after bearing this child we sooo cared about through pregnancy. They think of us as those who lash out in fear and judgment against those who are honestly convinced of their alternative gender identity. They think of us as those who would sell out our country to the rich and powerful and cheer as they vote themselves yet more money and power at everyone else’s expense. They think of us as those who confuse God with Country and support what can only be described as imperialist wars all around the world. They think of us as those who lap up the oil-driven conservative views on global warming and think blithely that the whole thing really isn’t in crisis. Yes, the Evangel (The Good News!) has suffered at our hands.

So the enemy within has put us in a pretty bad place. And it really remains to be seen where to go from here. How do you change a controlling narrative? How do you change decades of telling our kids not to trust what the hippies would have called the Establishment even while we became the Establishment? How do you unconvince people conditioned to hear the evil word communist every time there is a just call for government funding, intervention, and regulation? How do you break the my-little-kingdom-ism which motivates us to vote for the party which promises tax cuts-- tax cuts that will make it impossible for the government to support those less fortunate? (And how do we do that in time for the world not to end?)

Worship songwriter's manual

Let's start with an explanation. This post is sort of masquerading as a manual, but is in fact more or less a polemic. There are some severe issues I see in the field of worship songwriting. I've been doing this myself for some twenty years or so now. And it appears to me that we're going about this wrong. Songwriters, worship song writers that is, have a tendency to see themselves as something so unique in the church that they have a special list of rules that only applies to them. So the following is an attempt to correct the skewed perspective we've been living with.

1. Your songwriting is a spiritual gift, therefore, unlike songwriting in the secular world, what you produce does not belong to you. What you produce is inspired by the spirit of God for the people of God in the context of the church. It belongs firstly to the church. (Do the math. No Spirit, no church, no song.) Therefore, it's immoral to assume that residual income from copyright belongs to you or worse, to those you to whom you sign your 'rights' away. Money is a powerful corrupting influence and we have certainly seen that recently in the field of worship songwriting. Some people have "made good" as the saying goes, and so many others have jumped on the bandwagon, for their own gain. The quality of worship songs has suffered in the face of quantity. If, on the other hand we turned off the tap by recognizing that the money was never theirs to begin with, the dominance of powerful 'Christian' publishing houses who flood our churches with substandard worship songs, might be reduced. You, the worship songwriter can assist this by backing off of your vision to make serious bucks off of something that was freely given to you for others.

2.  Never lose your raw edge. What you wrote when you were inspired by your own anguish, or by a theological truth, or by a corporate experience is what will last and what people will remember. Beware the commercial music mentor, who comes to tell you what really works and how to craft music to his false standard. Speaking as a fan, after Famous Worship Leader X had this kind of encounter with Recording Artist A, few indeed are the songs written after this 'discipleship' that anyone wants to sing.

3. Production values are false values. Creating perfect music is a worthy goal gone off the rails. Why will people sing your song? Because and only because God touched them once when they were singing it. Focus on that.

4.  Once the rush of inspiration on any one song has run its course, work on poetic composition. Rhymes are good, consistency of rhythm is good. Consistency of expression and thought are essential. Hill Song songs are the worst offenders. A best example of this is one of their older offerings: "My Redeemer Lives" can't stay on the same subject for more than one phrase. But this is hardly a one-off. I'd say that not more than five percent of any of their songs doesn't veer off-theme at least once. Another song which could have used some help was Brian Doerksen's "Holy God." The inclusion, without any other Hebrew names of God, of the word 'Adonai' was ill-judged in my view. We just don't use the term often enough to throw it in the way it was done.

5. Publicity as a pursuit is a symptom of the involvement of money in this thing that should never have become an industry. Don't bother. Publicity photos drip with the vanity of assumed expressions, poses, etc. There's just nothing good about it. Also choosing cool names for your band, etc. What do you get out of it? Nothing.

6. Beware elitism in your sector. This includes not just writers but performers and worship leaders. There isn't a need for you to think of yourselves as artists to be pandered to, even among yourselves. Connect with other people. In one event, I wasn't sure whether to be elated or disgusted when I was finally in conversation with Famous Worship Leader Y, whom, I'd been with in various places and churches with, for years. The reason for this extremely random connection? I'd just conducted a choir at some seasonal production at a Vineyard. Magically, I was now not a nonentity. Worship leading just a function in the church. Stop being so bloody aloof. And the pursuit of excellence must be subordinated to a bunch of other concerns. Firing someone off your band because there is now someone better available sends every wrong message about your own character and the character of your church.

7. Also for the whole sector, don't let new teachers or new teachings side track you from what you do. A couple of years ago there was a nonsense circulating about how all of life was worship. Of course it's true in one sense, but not in the sense that we talk about when we say "corporate worship." Maybe we should be using the word liturgy, instead of worship. Would have been clearer. At any rate that teaching took the life out of corporate worship so effectively, we haven't really recovered.

8. Wanting to teach your songs and wanting your congregation to make the most of their together time with God can be a conflict of interest. Be aware of that. Check on how it went.

9. Music should be fairly original. There are some pretty hackneyed chord progressions going around these days. Stay away.

10. Stop pillaging the public domain for your own gain. Chris Tomlin has no business claiming copyright on his version of Amazing Grace.

11. As an alternative to copyright, being that you don't want others to falsely claim a song you wrote as their own, may I suggest Creative Commons Attribution? It's what I use.

That Darn Signpost

A poet of more stature, and with volumes to his name

A forking of a path did find and wrote about the same.

Between the two there was not much to guide his choice that day

Except that one was trampled more; he chose the other way.

This story, in the main, is viewed with parabolic eye,

The path of life presented with a forward stretching “Y”.

We’re forced to opt for one of two, we cannot choose them both

And as we go, our way is set more binding than an oath.

But this is not that story nor an equal fame will get:

A choice of roads before me I but have not chosen yet.

For I await the opening of yet another way,

Though how that will present itself I will not dare to say.

At present there’s a signpost for the weary travelers gaze

Displays a gross dichotomy a parting of the ways.

One arm proclaims a journey home to ancient, tried and true;

The other to forsaking all, and all you ever knew.

The road of turmoil to this place scarce bears an explanation.

Suffice to say the church has found itself in consternation.

What thought we done and dusted rose again to give us trouble

And many shaken found that it’s their faith that's on the bubble.

And thus the fateful moment comes upon the new arrival

And after all the buff’ting, what to do for his survival?

Shall he to safety promised by established thought and praxis?

Or deconstruct conviction with agnostic knives and axes?

But I, as I have said before, am camped out by this junction.

I’m filled with reticence to let it carry out its function.

To make a choice between such poles is hardly a good option.

And either seems to me an irrevocable adoption

So stand I here like traffic cop or maybe concierge,

Watching all the passers as they come by in a surge.

See streams to left and right and wonder how it now can be:

So many guiding lights are going somewhere not for me.

My heart and head would holler after haulers down the halls,

And chooses each one way to yell, ‘what’s drawing you is false!’

The heart in desperation wants to call after the agnostic,

While Brainy sends his diatribe the other way (and caustic.)

The heart would say “The things you did, the things you felt, were real!

You knew him in a way that was far more than you could feel.

Why turn against him now just because the facts are blurry?

You’d do to any other so? why be in such a hurry?”

“No issue is enough,” I’d cry if only they would hear it

“Whatever’s shaking you right now, your love could surely bear it.

All claims of science, wounds in church, and swirl of changing mores

Do not compare with what you had before you shut your doors.”

And yet I honour all the honest seekers who must stray,

Who sense no firm connection with convention’s well worn way.

To seek the truth, if truth there be, though through the mist alone

Must touch the heart of Truth himself. I think he’ll guide them home.

The head in disbelief must shake, declaim in tones of gloom

“Is there some common sense about or has it left the room?

The vestments, edifices, canon law, monasticism’s vow

All innovations in their time add nothing then or now”

“For everything we’ve ever done expressing our faith thus

Through culture served to bring us yet a minus with each plus.

A practise that has lasted long is neither here nor there.

To mistake old for right and good? it makes me tear my hair.”

Don’t get me wrong I’m not in fear at all for their salvation.

These are true churches and they rank with any denomination .

A man can change his cult’ral trappings any time he pleases.

The lie is that this change will bring him nearer at all to Jesus.

But these my thoughts of heart and head will likely not suffice

To bend the steps of any who step up to throw the dice.

The agony that brought them to this pass was theirs alone.

My frustration doesn’t figure in the choice of their new home.

For still the stream of pilgrims marches on to measures steady

To see it I would say that I am much more numb than ready.

They make their choice for good or ill, for mundane or for odd,

And all that I have left is to commend their way to God.

For God, whose presence does not thin, awaits at either end

T’assure them of his lasting love and name himself their friend.

They may have left me far astern: my form is less than dim.

They may have left me far behind but never could leave him.

If that is so why should I wait? I could be just like they:

In awe of things liturgic, or too smart to even pray.

But neither way seems good to me, they both appear so lame.

I’d think myself an idiot, a loser at this game.

The truth is this, no change is sure, no state is so enduring.

Give but ten years or slightly more and all that we were fearing

Will melt away, be swept aside by’vents then in arrival

With all my heart I hope that those events will be revival

Historic’lly it always comes when the church is really low,

Disordered and bewildered and unsure of where to go.

God wades right in and shakes us all with some new understanding

Somehow en masse we turn to him, diff’rences notwithstanding

And that’s the third way I expect though when I do not know.

It gets here when it gets here and that’s neither fast nor slow.

What shape that it will take is more than anybody’s guess

Just hope that when you see it come, your answer will be ‘yes!’

Some mention must be made about the movements of today

Who claim to be the thing for which the intercessors pray.

Who knows? It could be you He’ll use to bring the change about.

But your commercial bent I think puts all of that in doubt.

Who knows? I might be wrong about the stuff I find repelling

But just for now I’ll steer clear the odour I am smelling.

The constant use of catchphrases is much too much like magic.

I’m sure that’s not intended and I find it rather tragic.

So here I stay, the signpost near, awaiting something real.

I hold so lightly what I know not trusting all I feel.

I’ve walked the road to get here and I know the sense of loss

And many are the tenets held have had to get the toss.

Still I will hope the time will come for holy interventions

And clarity despaired of now will come in all dimensions.

Then neither left nor right will serve as king takes back his crown

For straight ahead we’ll forge a way and tear that signpost down.