Mary

As an introduction, the title. I'm not calling her St. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, the Theotokos or anything else that might come to mind. I believe in a church with only one real titled position. Jesus the Messiah. That's it. There are not really any Father Stephens, Pastor Bills, Popes Francis, etc. Jesus explicitly told us this himself. If we had ears to hear we would have heard. We didn't and generally don't. And the following is to explore some of why specifically Mary doesn't deserve and presumably doesn't want the titles inflicted on her by an inexplicably adoring church.

Ever Virginity

The virgin birth from early times had a functional necessity in the story of the incarnation, both as a signal miracle of the uniqueness of Jesus and a vehicle of his sinless nature. What it didn't have was any value in and of itself. That was imputed to it later when the Romans got their grubby paws on the story. Romans involved virgins in their worship of deities. Jews did not. Catholic Mariology reports that Mary grew up in the temple as one of a cadre of virgins, but apparently Jewish historians don't think much of this idea. (I need to research that more) Jewish Christians did not add asceticism and monasticism as enhancements to their spiritual lives. The Romans did. When Paul talks of celibacy, he mentions it as a gift equal and different to non-celibacy. When he counsels couples to not deprive each other for long, he includes no parenthesis about Mary depriving Joseph for the whole of their married life. This tells us one, maybe two things. One, that it wasn't common knowledge in the early church, (which makes it strange that it should be so well known in the later church and what's Mary doing disclosing this anyway?) and two that if he knew about it, it wasn't nearly as important to Paul as it would be to later church leaders. 

With this as well as other bits of Mariology, one has to ask what purpose does it serve? And actually the answer seems to be same in every case. The story of the Incarnation is not enhanced, rather weakened. Along with Immaculate Conception, how can Jesus be really "tempted in every way we are" if he had a perfect mother and his parents never had sex? But what it does strengthen is the Catholic status quo.

Queen of Heaven

When the idea of Mary's majesty as heavenly queen developed, we were not as aware as now as to the size of the universe. At this time we know of approximately 125 billion galaxies and have discovered 16 possibly habitable planets in our own. Assuming there are no more and that our galaxy is typical, this makes for 2 trillion possible locations for beings similar to ourselves with a God story of their own. Surely a creative God such as we believe in would have created life on any number of worlds. What could possibly make our story (potentially one in trillions) so much superior to theirs (maybe they never even had any 'fall'?) that one of the main characters in our story would be promoted to be their queen? The only way such a story makes sense is if God is not the God of the universe, but a solar deity, with a heavenly court not greater than the universe, but merely greater than the universe that we are able to dream of travel to. But then no other Christian story makes sense.

The stable

The Christmas narrative we know well is probably not true. Animals were housed with people in Bethlehem. The Inn was not a Gentile travelers stop. It was a guest room in a family home in a culture so hospitable that thirty years later, Jesus horrifies his audience with the tale of a neighbour who had to be actually begged to assist his friend with an unexpected guest (using the cultural pressure the neighbour is under as one of several analogies for God's own motivation to hear and act when we pray) Even if you factor in gossip filtering south from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Mary is at this time a married woman. People got married after pregnancy back then as they do now. Even for a sanctimonious outsider a marriage is always an acceptable way of patching everything up. The kinswoman of the Joseph's home town would not have consigned their new relative to the barn, a distant cave, etc. to go through the trauma of a first childbirth. Makes no sense. The only purpose it serves to isolate Mary, to make her superhuman and as above, to bolster the myth at the centre of so much Catholic practice.

Well, you get the idea. Mary was one of us. And is still one of us. God asked much of her and she said yes. An absolutely incomparable example. But that's that. Anything more is just a distraction from the one that this whole thing is about.

Lessons from Living Among Charismatics

 I was perusing my blog and I found this unpublished bit. I like it.

1. It's always been this messy
1. If we accept that God still pours out his Spirit on the Church, we have to accept that there are not different eras in the history of this outpouring. People have always "seen through a glass darkly." Prophecies, miracles and such like have always contained some element of imperfection. It's a mistake to revere the Early Church times as something we need to get back to. It's a mistake to revere the writings of the Early Church as 'the perfect Word of God.' What we are saying if we take that view is that some workings of the Spirit are forever lost... And that runs counter to any ideal of the Church growing in power as, speaking intuitively, is God's obvious intent.
2. God has never stopped inspiring his people. 
1. We are the people of the Holy Spirit. God has never stopped speaking or acting through us. Yes, it has come in waves. Yes, we have quenched the Spirit through sin or through lack of faith. But every time we get together, God is present and we experience his speaking to us. We are the people of his inspiration. 
3. No word, action, decision is perfect
1. Everything we do has an aspect of our imperfection. This imperfection was just as present at the beginning as it now. Therefore all of the works of the church, the New Testament, are subject to it. Human character flaws work their way into the way we do any ministry. It's all at once blessed and open to question in the same way as what you see on 'any given Sunday' is blessed and open to question.
4. Leaders do not have divine right status and can be disagreed with.
1. Abuse is still abuse in whatever form. When leaders demand that you come under their 'authority' or never allow themselves to be disagreed with, they are in error. When you read that kind of thing in Paul's writings, you take it with the same grain of salt as you would a present day leader. Just because patriarchal authority was accepted in Early Church times, doesn't mean it needs to be kowtowed to today. Christ declares you to be equal. One Father. One Teacher. Compare Matthew 23 and 1 Corinthians 4:15. Paul is clearly in error here, though understandably. Leadership is not a top down, God ordained thing. It's a functional thing because large groups of humans need some form of delegated management.
5. Our primary relationship with fellow Christians (past, present, future) is familial not positional
1.  Carrying on from Matthew 23, we are all brothers. Therefore in the presence of divinely blessed imperfect ministry, our default is to smile affectionately and recognize each style as unique. For instance, Paul in his letters, loves lists. It's his favourite way of fleshing out a concept. This does not mean that it's always the only way of looking at that concept and it certainly doesn't mean that the lists are exhaustive. It's just the same as certain prophets and healers like to raise their voices 'just so' when they are doing their stuff. It doesn't mean it's normative. It's just them. We stand up for them because they are our brothers and sisters but we don't have be like them or obey them in every particular.
6. The simplistic survives.
1. Nuances will always get lost from one generation to the next. Well reasoned theology and practise will be subordinated to crass formulaic mumbo-jumbo. This is not a good thing. It's a human thing. You can't stop it. People who weren't there won't get it. 
2. There are two obvious solutions, neither of which work
1. renewal, will probably go even farther in wiping out the nuances of the past. Renewal is very desirable but cannot bring back an understanding of what you once had.
2. Over-training to try to transmit nuances will probably just kill the precious thing you are trying to preserve by making it dry as dust.
7. Earnestness isn't always the answer
1.  So, let's try harder. Let's pray longer. Let's worship louder. Let's... It really doesn't always work. It's not inherently futile. Sometimes God just lets us run out of steam. Relax. Try again when it's the right time. Hopefully you'll know.

Prayer...

“the real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
Henri Nouwen

Prayer is largely just being silent: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. Prayer is commonly a willingness to say “I don’t know.” We must not push the river, we must just trust that we are already in the river, and God is the certain flow and current.
Richard Rohr

She did not, in the ordinary sense, "pray for" Nancy; she did not presume to suggest to Omniscience that it would be a thoroughly good thing if It did; she merely held her own thought of Nancy stable in the midst of Omniscience.
Charles Williams

These quotes and countless others exalt a sort of prayer that while not in itself evil, (how could these activities be wrong?) is completely unknown in the Gospels, untaught by Jesus and, while it might be looked at as enriching one aspect of prayer, that is, adoration and/or contemplation, I argue is hardly the central essence at the core of our interactions with God. Do a quick online search for ‘the prayers of Jesus.’ Lists abound. And if you look through the lists, you will find none that fit into these admittedly pleasing molds. You might argue that records of the Lord praying all night indicate that he ‘must’ have been doing something like this, but that is pure conjecture. He does teach directly on the subject of prayer (“when you pray, pray like this:”), and, crudely, actually gives his disciples a prayer to pray, that only barely touches on what the above luminaries tell us is the very kernel, the very soul of prayer. (“Hallowed be thy Name.”)

I have said that these mystical statements about prayer are naturally pleasing. Of course they are. They evoke bright imagery of high thoughts and a place of peace and beauty where all is taken care of as we rest in God’s love. If this is where you often find yourself, I would not want to take that away from you, but I suggest that most of the time we are not there. Rather we merely yearn for it without actively doing the one thing that might give us a fleeting taste of that bliss. We yearn for it and we exalt these ideals by sharing these beautiful quotes on social media. And our fellow pilgrims “like” them and everyone goes “ahhh.” And if our prayers are more in the manner taught by Jesus, which I submit is far more intuitive and natural for needy souls such as ourselves, it’s possible we feel guilty that we are not silently flowing down the river as Richard Rohr says we should.

But it’s not merely their implied beauty that draws us to share and reshare words like this about prayer. I think the real reason is a bit more harsh. Prayer like this is never tested for results. By making this the central task of prayer, we completely avoid the nervous question of whether and how our prayers were actually answered. In this we diverge greatly from the one we claim as our rabbi, our model, our guru. Jesus prayed for things to happen, most of the time for things to happen as he spoke them. If he flowed in the river that has been described for us, and there is evidence that he did, he spoke out of his understanding of its current clearly as if what he said was the missing component that the river needed to accomplish its work. This is why I included the quote from Charles Williams. (It’s from one of his novels. The Greater Trumps can be read online at the Canadian and the Australian gutenberg sites. Good read!) The character of Sybil who can safely in the context of the book be called a sage and displays many worthy qualities, is unlike Jesus, because she never presumes to find out what ‘Omniscience’ might want to happen to her niece and therefore never actually prays anything specific for her. It’s the supplication equivalent of the other two quotes. Beautiful and without risk.

I think that the intimacy actually comes in the risk. I think that it comes in finding out one was wrong to pray a thing or wrong about what to pray. I think that the intimacy comes in the agony of asking for something and not getting it for a long while or maybe never. I write this from experience. I have found that the statement, “you can’t always get what you want” applies to my prayer life. But I have found that some of what I ask for, I get, and really, I recognize the hand of God in that. I think the intimacy comes in sensing what God wants prayed and praying that, having a sense that yes, he could have done it without my help, but that he hadn’t just the desired result but also my participation as the end in view. (Daddy, can I help?)

So I really don’t have any use for the “prayer” outlined above. What starts out looking beautiful becomes unattainable, off-topic and counter-intuitive.

The Bill of Goods

   (With some editorial assistance from ansak.blogspot.com)

  In the 80's most of us Christians were duped by the political puppets of the aspiring super-rich who sold us a bill of goods as part of a covert class war that they have ultimately won. Amazingly this bill of goods is still out there being touted by any number of people who after all these years, still see each entry on this intellectual invoice as obvious and axiomatic, standing by the same liars who promoted it in the first place. I say 'liars' because there is ample evidence that many of these talking points were known to be false by the people that originated them. That we bought into their ideas amounts to a swindle and a con game, and makes one wonder when reparations will be possible. It's been on my mind recently to itemize these ideas and provide some refutation of each. I recognize that my refutation will not be enough for many to simply about face on any of them as each are exploiting a deeply ingrained part of our cultural outlook, such that when what relate what I have now found to be true, many will simply read, and angrily dismiss. But that is the way of such things. So here, in not any particular order, the conservative bill of goods:

    1. Small government is better than big government. Not true. We need adequate government. When reducing government in size is an end in itself, regulatory measures are put at risk. These regulatory measures, ideally, are there largely to limit the ability of corporate interests to endanger the public in any number of ways. These are not "job killing regulations". They are "life-and-health saving regulations." An undersized government lacks the appropriate power to inspect and enforce regulations. Frustration over weak, bad, or even nonsensical regulations (government is a human institution) is not a justification for wantonly slashing government size. Achieving an under-regulated, under-enforced "small government" can only advantage the rich and give them a free hand to increase their advantage.

    2. Government salaries as well funded support for the less able constitutes waste. Related to point one in that the focus is misdirected onto the money that it takes to fund even adequate government and likewise not true. Government waste as a whipping boy is a huge talking point of those who wish us to vote in such a way as to limit their tax bill. As long as we are focused on that, we remain unaware of the obscene amount of wealth that is being removed to stay into the bank accounts of those who have promoting this. Even worse is the vilifying of the needy, who need the support of government to live, judging them by a standard which requires them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. "if only they would just get a job," or some such. Exploitation of this natural judgmentalism in our culture is par for the course. But there is again ample evidence that when support is made available, that many of the less fortunate are able to get far enough ahead as to be self-sufficient. But even if they are not, as humans and citizens of our country it's right to always give them that chance.

    3. Tax cuts are good for everybody. (related lies: trickle down economics, "rising tide lifts all boats") Manifestly not true. Tax cuts are a measure that only marginally benefits the low and middle wage earner and egregiously over-benefits the top earning brackets. What tax cuts do is produce a downward spiral supported by points one and two whereby government is now underfunded and we demand that it become leaner and certainly meaner. People that were supported in some way lose their support because that is now labelled 'waste.' This deplorable state is even legitimized with a semi-virtuous sounding name, that is, austerity. But austerity is really not the enforced necessary poverty it appears to be. What it is is when those who are advantaged by wealth are allowed to increase their advantage utilizing government, which should have been in place to defend us against them but has now become their weapon.

    4. Labour unions are evil, are all about greed, etc. etc. Very wrong. Most of the labour laws that benefit us today, limiting work weeks to ensure that families can have a life together outside drudgery, adequate wages, extended health plans come to us via union bargaining and since they came to us, have been steadily chiselled away again by big business. Parallel to that has been a successful propaganda campaign to vilify the unions and tar them with any number of charges. Okay. its a fact is that the unions haven't been pure. Organized crime has had its grubby paws on some unions. But the current wage differential between labourer and brass is yet another indication that the class war being waged by the super-rich against the rest of us is going very well for them. We would be wise not to invoke Paul's advice to slaves (a gross misapplication) or other authoritarian claptrap when a union votes to strike. After the current covid-19 crisis is over, I guarantee the nurses will want a better deal, for instance and they will deserve it.

    5. Free enterprise. Yes, you heard correctly. Just the phrase itself is questionable. Money is based on, wait for it, money. This is something that we've learning about as society recently. It's called privilege. If you start with any sort of advantage you can increase your advantage. If you start with a disadvantage, you will likely not transcend it but probably end with a greater disadvantage. The ableist myth propagated by the idea of Free Enterprise is that anyone, through hard work and God-given smarts, can start any business and get ahead. I think it's an example of the true Scotsman fallacy (look it up) because as soon as you would limit that 'anyone' and demonstrate that many cannot and have indeed failed utterly, the proponent will, by circular reasoning claim that they simply didn't work hard enough. And while Christians argue amongst themselves in this manner, Big Enterprise happily continues to tell its success stories in this rubric pointing to themselves as proof that "free" enterprise works. But until the government levels the playing field through progressive taxation, redistributing the advantage, we would be wiser to refer to this idea rather as privileged enterprise.

    6. We must enshrine Christian morality in law. Here's the one where the super-rich (such a moral group) lead us along by the nose. They know our hot-button issues -- our nostalgia for the way things were when “evils” by the score were invisible because they were underground. Drugs, abortion, Feminism, LGBT, etc.: The super-rich know that if they can get us riled up about these issues, we are distracted from their depredations.They know that if they can package up promises to bring back the past along with all of their other dastardly schemes, we’ll vote for their said puppets.  Secondly each of these categories represent people whom the donor class want to silence. The war on drugs for example is evidentially a creation of the Nixon Republicans to silence the hippy and black left.  Outlawing abortion does nothing to help children live. The evidence is out there. Countries with liberal abortion laws have fewer abortions because co-incidentally they also have in place what actually helps children live, which is social support for the mothers of said children. But that eats into the profits treasured by the super rich. In the case of LGBT, it's not so much a political silencing but more of a divide and conquer tactic. While we waste our time wishing that this segment didn't exist thinking 'if only we could ban them through legislation,' we are distracted from finding the real culprit.

    7. Capitalism is Christian. False. No governmental system is Christian. But capitalism more than any system has few friends in the pages of scripture. Where do I start? Try the book of James. Condemns in no uncertain terms the oppression of the rich and the obsequious toadying of the rich by the church. Look at the Jubilee economic system (maybe never really tried -- we don't know) presented in Leviticus. Every fifty years, a reset. A limiting, balancing factor par excellence. Look at all the prophet's words against oppression by the rich on the poor. Oh, but you say, that's not against capitalism, that's against oppression by the wealthy. Let's have a wake up call, if you please. Wealth is oppression. If I have, it means that someone else doesn't have. If I have more, then someone else has less. Sounds terrible, but this thing has a scale. Here in the middle class, the oppression factor is maybe not as egregious. But when we realize that half of the world's wealth is owned by 1% of its population, the oppression is extreme.

    The wealth gained this way represents legalized tax evasion. Legalized through swindling the Christian white middle class vote through this bill of goods in the 1980's. We voted this way (tax cuts!) thinking it would do us good. but little gain has come our way and our ranks, which should have been swelled by many others entering the middle class as wages went up instead of down have been depleted and we are losing power to what are now not merely the wealthy but oligarchs, people who can and do outright buy political power to ever increase their hold on society. Democracy is dying. The legalized tax evasion has other dimensions too. The rich have access to tools the poor do not. Holding companies, offshore accounts, stocks, etc. etc. represent an upward spiral accessed through privilege. It's a thing crying out for a societal limiting factor. (something Judeo-Christian maybe, like the Jubilee year?) But no, we've eviscerated government so that they haven't the resources to control this. Maybe it's time to wake up.

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.