Just one of those things...

It's been a busy weekend. I really just want a day off, but that won't happen until Saturday. So I just have to live with it. There was a lot of good in the weekend. It's just that I spend so much of it exhusted and crankey, I'm still just a little kid is so many ways. This all started Wednesday when I drove up to Milton, PA, which is about 2 1/2 hours away, to hear the chorale sing. I needed that...I really needed that. It was refreshing in a way, and in another way it gave me just a little bit of closure that I needed but never really realized. It's one thing to sit in on a practice, there where many times when I was in practice that I felt like I was just sitting in, but it's completly different to sit through a concert. I've never sat back and heard the choral before...and they where good. I know that people say that it's never the same if your not singing with the group, but they tend to say it in away that makes them sound like they were the reason the chorale sounded the way it did and that without them the group is somehow less. Proff perpetuates those feelings and I completly understand why, it's hard to invest as much as he does into that many people and not feel some great lose after four or five year when they move on to other things. The thing is, no it's not the same, and it never will be, and that is a good thing. Certain people I remember saying the perticular statement about, said it with a distain that I don't think that even they noticed. They hadn't moved on, but in there minds were forced out. But Wednesday night, getting to see Nate and Maria, Proff, Gale, Dan, Tony, and Jenn helped me let go. My personal problem was that my last year I was the only 5th year, and in many ways I was everyone's older brother, or grandpa to some (that stopped quickly). There was respect for me that was given automatically, proff took my advice, freshman to senior asked me questions, even among the officers I was the one that went to proff with questions. It was odd to me that I was in that kind of position, but it was even how I saw myself to a certain degree. Even a year later when I was back on campus for a couple of days, people asked me what I thought and asked what I thought they could do to make it better. I had told them that I washed my hands of the organization, but then continued to dole out advice like usual. But Wednesday it was gone. Talking to Gale afterwards he asked me directly, as only gale can,
"did it bring back memories?"
"Yeah, yeah it did."
"Any tears?"
"No, only good memories."
"Good."
It's nice to have the answer that they're looking for from time to time.

Thrusday was technically my day off, and for all intesive purposes it was. I had drive up to Reading, again about two hours way. Now I say I had to because a friend of mine was in Reading. This isn't a begruding had to, this is a "if I don't I'll kick myself for not doing it." I'd not seen Jordan in probably four years, and it was a great time to just catch up and see what each other had been doing. The time spent was great, except for me faigning guilt about not flying out to San Diago to visit him. It's not that I don't want to, but I just havn't had the time or the money. It was a good time, a really good time.

There's a song that a local Christian radio station plays, What could be better by 33 miles. It's actually a rather normal christian song. It talks about heaven and what could be better than living in heaven, It's just a normal song...and that's what bothers me about it. I heard the song again on Saturday while I was driving through York and it suddenly hit me exactly what this song was talking about. More than talking about heaven it talked about already being in heaven. Here's the chorus:
I’m living in the days ahead
I’m already dancing on the streets of gold
Can’t stop celebrating in my soul
I’m living in the days ahead
Nothing on earth could ever compare
Can’t wait for the day when I get there
When I see Jesus face to face
Tell me what could be better
Tell me what could be better

Now I know I'm reading more into the lyrics that I should, and it's just a normal song that was writing by a new well meaning christian based band, but I don't think that this is right. I hear the phrase, Be in the world but not of the world (an exact phrase that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist in Scripture), and I start to think that songs like 'I'll fly away' and the one above arn't getting ahead of themselves just a little bit. Like a mentioned before, I don't believe that the exact phrase above can be found in scripture (or at least the parts that I've been reading latly) there is certainly more than enough scripture to support the phrase. In John 17 we read Christ's prayer for us his followers. Christ says over and over that he doesn't want God to take us out of the world but to protect us from it. He prays for our unity. He prays in certain words that we would be in the world, but because we are from him, not of the world. Now you could accuse me of being to much of the world and on certain occations you'd be very correct. I'm not going to defend those actions, I can't and any attemp to do so would be futile under the light of scripture. My only defence is that Scripture is vague on certain issues, and I do toe the line on a lot issues. What can I say, I'm slow. I'm just a little confussed by all of this talk about already being in heaven. I think Paul says it better than I can:

"12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only let us live up to what we have already attained."

Press towards the goal, be focused on the goal, but continue running the race. I'm just not convinced of the benefits of living with my head in the clouds while people are dying for attention here on the ground.
A.T.H.

The Philosophy of Music...Beginnings

I think it was three years ago, some time around my Junior year at the wu, that I first started asking a question that has become one of the central defining factors in my music, and my worship leading. I had been taking Dr. Bences' class on later church history, and became very troubled with how music was used during the revival era, late 19th and early 20th century. It was around the same time that I was taking Music History with Dr. Kindley and relearning the introduction of pathos and ethos into music. The question became very troubling to me and for a time made me consider a different direction for music. The question came from first acknowloging two basic absolute facts:

1) Music, regardless of whether or not it was purposefully created to do so, evockes an emotional responce from the listener.
2) Humans are emotional beings and, regardless of ablility to set aside those emotions for any period of time, are primarily guided by those emotions.

The enivitable question manifested it's self very quickly:
Q: Is modern musical worship, or musical worship in a historic sence, pre-revival era, in the simplest sense manipulation, and as such is it morally responsible for the christian community to to eliminate music from the service?

This is a topic that I can't seem to get away from, and honestly I'm glad of it. This single question has kept me honest in my worship leading, helped seek out good songs with substance, and kept me warry of my own short comings as a musician. On the adverse side it has also pertetuated a certain amount of distrust and cynisim toward worshipleaders who I've not personally worked with, or at least gotten to know. Honestly it made the the last three years of chaple at the WU almost unbearable. I won't name names, and it would be remiss of me to think that similar thoughts weren't directed toward myself as well, but I know I was not alone in my feeling when certain personalities where seen mounting the stage, guitar in hand. It was the question along with these simple feelings of distrust, and in certain cases having it revealed that the distrust was desearved, that lead me to understand that worship leading is a relationship between the leader and the congregation that must be cultivated over time. It cannot, like any good relationship romantice or otherwise, be rushed into fruition. Any worship leader who has faces their congregation for the first time can tell you that there are many more blank looks staring back at you than open mouths and closed eyes. It's disconcerting at first, and if it doesn't directly kill your dream of a large congragation worhiping along with you, following every subtle move, completly in tune with what your going, and not caring what that the powerpoint guy just messed up another slide...it definatly beats it within an inch of it's life.

This relationship is a sacred thing to me. It dictates many of the things I do, and in many respects determines the life I have a head of me. We all have reputations that we strive to live up to, even if it's simply not living up the reputation of not having a reputation. I've tried to look good in the eyes of those I lead, all the while trying to stay true to who I know I am. While I was living in Connecticute a possition ended up falling into my lap. Tim, the music director and my boss, was regularly asked to lead a song at the begining of the commity meetings. Everyone meet together for a short devotional before splitting up into the individual groups. I hate meetings, hate meetings, but unfortunatly so does Tim. Being the boss and having abundantly more excusses to get out of them, it evenutally became part of my job discription to lead the song at the begining of the meetings. For the most part I presented myself respectully, but never changed my clothes from what I had been wearing all day. As a result this lead to one day leading the song in jeans and a tee shirt. Everything was clean and my appearance was other wise more than appropriate, but the Senior Pastor felt the need to calmly correct my appearance after the meeting was over. I took the "advice" as he called it with an obvious grain of salt. This was the first and only time I wore a tee shirt to a function like that, and honestly had the people that were there been offened like he assumed they would be, they would have come directly to Tim or myself, not to the senior pastor. One of the things he said to me has really stuck though. He said that he understood that I was a musician, and as such thought of myself as an artist, but he would appreitate it if I dressed a little nicer so that I didn't alienate the folks who just got off the train from New York to be at the meetings. My immediate, but unspoken, responces was: if you understood the mind of an musician/artist we wouldn't be having this conversation. I never said anything of the sort, but Tim and I did discusse it later on, after the Pastor went to Tim as well. I was basically told to ignore the comments.

My immediate internal responce probably common given who I am socially, and then my subsiquent external responce was right on par with who I am personally. I never showed up like that again, at least not to those meetings. Honestly the intial comment never bothered me, but after thinking about it, the second part of what he said, his reason behind why he said what he said really started to bother me. You see I liked Sam, the pastor. I liked what he preached on and how he presented it. He was a good speaker and delivered the messages well, but after thinking about what he said, I started wondering why he avoided some topics. We all avoid certain topics, and we all have our reason for doing so. I avoid talking about things that I consider personal because I don't want you to know about them. I'm not going to come out and say that I know why he avoided certain topics that others would readly go after, and I'm most certainly not condeming him in any way for it. It was his reasons why he wanted me to look "nice." We don't want to alienate the people at the meeting. Some of whom are fresh off the train from the financial district of NYC. They come in there nice, expecive suits, and there I am in jeans and a tee shirt. My only thought on that is this: who am I singing to and for?

There's been a lot of personal experience that has lead me to where I am, and there are many more that await me. I titled this The Phliosophy of Music, and I'm getting to it, but I had to get through some personal things before I could break it down. This is by no means the end of the personal experiances, they'll creap up in the writing from time to time as they always do, but I intend to focus the true philosophy of the music and not just my personal opinion. What is to follow is a treatise. An essay on worship and the power of music. Yes Liz...this is going to be very long.
A.T.H.

More Proof that even I don't know what I'm doing...

You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 75% Neo orthodox 75% Emergent/Postmodern 75% Reformed Evangelical 61% Fundamentalist 50% Modern Liberal 50% Classical Liberal 50% Roman Catholic 32% Charismatic/Pentecostal 32% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

There was a tie breaker question to get to this result. The top three make me laugh because even I don't think it's completely possible. though the bottom is pretty close to my personal feelings. If you thought that I was messed up, know you know for sure.

A.T.H.

btw, I'm stalling. I have things to write about, but I'm not sure how to put them to words right now.