No Music Monday this week. Though if you want to scratch that itch and more, check out this article on U2. I'm a casual but ardent U2 fan and it was a lot of fun going through their catalog.
I did want to share another fun thing I'm indulging in, narrative sermons for our Christmas series. Thanks to my friend and author Amy Green, I have some really good scripts to 'act out' instead of preach this holiday season.
I first learned of narrative sermons in seminary, but I had seen a few from my mentor, Pastor Ralph Porter, when he was at my home church during my college and seminary days.
In our seminary preaching classes, they required us to preach one. The hardest part for me was the 'script'. Writing from the point of view of a character didn't come naturally to me. So last year, when I read through Amy's blog, I knew I had the basic content I needed to actually preach one well.
So, on top of the excellent material I was beginning with, I added a few rhetorical nuggets, found some pretty good costumes in our church storage, and warned our people ahead of time that these Christmas sermons were about to get weird.
Don't be fooled by these pictures, there were plenty of people in attendance. Few of our folks want to sit right up front is all. I will probably add some more later. And next week, I might even have some video and you can judge for yourself how good of an actor I am. For now, you can listen to our audio recording, and imagine me prancing around the front wearing some very interesting garb.
As I was trying to come up with a selection for this week, I couldn't even settle on a topic. Should I go with Christmas music? I did that last year and my friend Amy is doing a real good job on her blog on that anyway. Should I go with the current Top 40 hit that has a lot of backstory but also some depth when you consider its message? Maybe another day. Well, what about something related to my sermon, which was on prayer? There's not a whole lot that comes to mind (at least my mind), at least currently. Sidetrack - I find it very fascinating how some old-school artists often made prayer a topic. Petra, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman...probably not a statement against current artists, just interesting. Anyway, instead of going all-in about those old-school artists of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, I came across the selection below from a classic Christian artist and I knew this was it. To my chagrin, Keith Green hasn't been featured on this blog. Green was a force of nature in the early days as Christian music was becoming an industry. You can read his story here, but he was a prophetic voice who was passionate about waking up the church and calling people to Jesus. He was a talented artist with a litany of great songs despite having a short career. Technically though, this song was written by his wife. And it is a beautiful song of dedication and prayer:
Keith Green was cut from a different cloth than what you'll find these days. A man who had a different perspective and who passionately was calling us all to something better.
We like our pop music simple. Give us a snappy chorus, a memorable beat, fun lyrics and we're good to go. Most of the time, we like our music to give us an escape. The above is true of both secular and Christian music. CCM can venture into serious subjects and tackle hard questions, but it is still more peppy than profound.
Therefore, it is not surprising then that one of the deepest songs of the new millennium never got popular traction even within CCM circles.
When Jars of Clay released their final big-label album "Good Monsters" over 11 years ago, it was met with criticalpraise and had decent commercial success. Re-listening to it recently, it's a solid album beginning to end. The fanfare it received was deserved, but the best song, "Oh My God", was overlooked. Here's a non-official music video:
It is a song that has stops and starts with emotions varying from melancholy to desperation. It observes how "oh my God!" is found on the lips of many people in many different situations - both in sincere pleas and in crassness. It agonizes over the really discouraging aspects of life and crescendos to urgent cries of "oh my God!" This interview captures the artist's story behind the song. It confirms what we would suspect, that this song is about wrestling with tough questions of faith and life. In the interest of space, I'm giving a link to the lyrics, rather than copy them all here. They are abundant but startling in their depth. One more thought though. In the 11 years since this was written, I find it interesting how much more prevalent "Oh my God" has become in our cultural vocabulary. It's abbreviation - OMG! - is everywhere now that texting and messaging are the main methods of communication for our younger generations.
I do find it gratifying to return to this song because it takes a flippant, second-commandment-breaking phrase and turns it back on us. I rediscover the heart of this song all over the Bible, like in passages such as James 5:7-12. Maybe I'm giving to much weight to one song, but maybe this one song has prophetic value. I can say that seeing and/or hearing OMG (or one of the variations) just won't sit right with me anymore, thanks in large part to this song. And I think that's good. I'll listen to the peppy, snappy songs that give me some escape. But give me more of this - deep theology and deep questions.
Last week, I spent an unusual amount of time in a car with two other pastors, traveling to the annual national meeting for the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). A good recap is here, but the TL;DR version is that we drove 14+ hours to Providence, Rhode Island to expand our theological horizons, eat a lot of food, and pick up some valuable ministry resources. There was nothing that inspired me to do a Music Monday per se, but I did run into a Grace prof who I consider a friend. He has recently been touting an up-and-coming artist(s) on his Twitter. And as it turns out, he's doing so for good reason. This is Caroline Cobb (with Songbird & Strings) with a song that packs every single line with beautiful theological truth. Be sure to watch to the end for 'behind the song' insight by the artist.
Honestly, after a busy week filled with deep conversations and deep theological topics, this earnest, simple, Jesus-focused song hits the spot.
Halloween is right around the corner. Growing up, we never celebrated it for all the standard conservative Christian reasons.
I definitely respect that decision my parents made. But my own opinion has softened on the subject. At our church, we've begun a tradition of hosting a Halloween Fun Fair in our gym. Milford's a small community but there are a lot of kids and families who go trick-or-treating. We use the 'pagan' holiday for kingdom purposes, offering a inside option full of games with subtle Gospel tie-ins, a ton of candy, and even passing out Bibles as part of our Grand Prize table. While it is not too much of a stretch to redeem Halloween for ministry purposes, it felt like a stretch to do a Music Monday around it. I did a half-hearted search for Christian Halloween songs, expecting little to no results. To my surprise, I found something I could use. Thanks to this video breakdown, I realized there are some cringe-worthy old-school options along with some more current ones. I also realized I had been forgetting one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums of my late high school/early college years.
Audio Adrenaline's "Some Kind of Zombie" isn't overly campy and by-and-large still holds up. Notice the good and bad imagery in the video and how the song itself goes back and forth between the harsh and light tones, fitting pretty well with the overall themes of the lyrics.
The Walking Dead has brought Zombie Apocolyptic-ism to mainstream culture. This song reminds us that we can actually see spiritual truth in the horror trope. One could of course embrace the idea that we are born to new life in Christ (1 John 5:1-5). But this takes the opposite approach, that we are the zombies, dead to sin (Colossians 3:1-9). It's presence is still there, but it holds no power over us if we walk by the Spirit. In that sense, we are some kind of zombies.
Personal Opinion Side Note: For my money - when it comes to back-to-back albums - "Some Kind of Zombie" and "Underdog" are as good as any CCM artists ever not named dc Talk.
Working ahead has it's benefits. And this week's music feature comes from next week's sermon that I've just finished writing out. Let me take you back in time to the mid-to-late 90's as I was entering high school and looking for any Christian music that fit my tastes. Along comes a new group from the South (Georgia) called Third Day. Solid lyrics, great sound, and a lead singer who I'd later realized sounded exactly like Eddie Vedder (I liked Pearl Jam back then, the stuff I heard on the radio, but it took 'til in my 30's to realize the parallel). One of my favorite songs that my friends also gravitated towards was "Nothing at All", which connects an old nursery rhyme trope to James 3.
No fancy or archaic music video for this one, just the song. I had fun revisiting this single and hope you enjoy some late 90's Christian rock too.
Yesterday, we were challenged with James' words at the end of chapter 1,
27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James is continuing the long-running biblical theme of caring for the most vulnerable around us (Ex. 22:22, Isaiah 1:16-17, Acts 6:1-6, etc). There are plenty of modern day examples and ways of application of this principle. But one that fits our "Music Monday" theme is one of my favorite artists of all time, Johnny Cash. His entire persona, appearance, and career turned into a service on behalf of the overlooked. He captured this in his song "The Man in Black".
So often, music is an escape or simple entertainment. Cash stops us from overindulging in that ambivalence. He reminds us of the need to live out our "pure and undefiled" faith.
