As I recall, the “3 Rules” for this economy are that content must (in this order): Educate, Entertain, and Enlighten.

You may quibble with the entertain, if you serve the church, but that’s because you’re thinking Disney (or The Avengers). By entertain, the author meant what entertain always has meant: engaging the audience in some manner. Boring is out in the Attention Economy.

That doesn’t mean that you have to have a blockbuster every weekend…but it does mean that you can’t produce a bomb very regularly either.

Food for thought…

How about at your church? Blockbusters, bombs, or art films? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think is best, and what you are doing…

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 4039 (Lodi (now there’s a song about a good idea gone astray…) – Creedence Clearwater Revival)  of 7875

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It’s a great story about the influence of the blogger. More importantly, it’s a lesson for those who serve in small churches. If you can “get over” the worldly success measuring sticks, and persist in the face of people and systems who don’t care, you can have a big impact. You can change lives. It’s the old “bloom where you are planted” thing, crossed with “Just Do It!”

For me, because I’ve made a conscious decision to serve in small churches (actually just one now, if you are reading this Charlie – I’m not leaving…) during this season of my life, it is a great reminder that some are called to be in big churches, and some are not…and the impact of your ministry, wherever you serve, cannot be measured by the size of your building. Those who serve in large churches (I know from experience) are not free from problems…they just have different ones. Ministry is not always what it seems from the outside looking in, but for those who do ministry…every day, no matter what their circumstance…you only need to touch one life to make a difference.

Please let me know what you think…whether you serve in a small church or a large one.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 4029 (Ave Maria – Morten Lauridsen)  of 7875

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Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 4022 (Sweet Georgia Brown – Oscar Peterson Trio)  of 7875

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So click here and scroll down to the bottom right of the home page to see the digital issue…

Once you read it “online,” come back here and let me know what you think.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 4000 (Balerias “Con un Clavel” – Sabicas)  of 7875

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First, I’m much farther along than the number and tune listed at the bottom of this post. I decided that I’d keep a list as I went along (the metrics of how that list is assembled is a secret with a security clearance akin to that of the Osama Bin Ladin operation last year…) and, at some point after the post referenced above, I started the little footer you see below.

Second, as far as I can tell, there have been no repeats in the shuffle process. It’s a bit difficult, because I’ll hear tunes in some Muzak restaurant/grocery store stream, and then it will come up shortly thereafter on my Ipod, and I’ll think, “is this a repeat?” There are some tunes among my 7875 that appear twice because they are on an original album and then the greatest hits collection, but not too many.

But most importantly, my listening habits have changed over the course of this quest. Whereas at the beginning it was just, one after the other, now I’ll “replay” tunes with some degree of frequency. (That list, which I’m not keeping, would be really interesting view into my head, but it’s not happening…) And here’s what is happening…I’m hitting replay because the tune hits me for some reason, generally random, and some (like a movement from a Bach cantata I heard yesterday) I’ll play multiple times (5, I think it was on the Bach yesterday). And when I let the shuffle go on and do its thing, there is a sense of “goodbye old friend” because I know I’m not going to see hear that tune again…perhaps ever.

Music, like friends and family, can produce such strong emotional ties. And as a church musician, I am very aware that one parishoner’s treasure is someone else’s trash. And for folks of a certain any age, the memory baggage of any given tune is inestimable. If you don’t believe me, think back to any concert you attended which was headlined by a solo artist you went specifically to see. Think about your absolute need to sing along on some of the hits, and your deep disappointment if that artist didn’t do your favorite of their whole catalog. It’s like that, at some level, every Sunday in every church in the US: play the tune I’m waiting for, or I’m left feeling cheated.

And yet…

Worship can’t be just a “greatest hits”" concert, and who gets to make the choice even if some small part of it is?

Serve your churches well…don’t just play the tunes you like the most…

What you think? Are you even listening? Leave me a comment and let me know you are alive…all 3 of you…  

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3990 (Dr. Feelgood – Aretha Franklin)  of 7875

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Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3975 (April in Paris – Ella Fitzgerald  and Oscar Peterson)  of 7875 (simply a great album, and this is a great rendition of the tune)

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While Brooks is a “political” columnist, and there are political references in the article, I’m not sending you there because I’m trying to sell a political agenda

More importantly, I specifically want you to know that the political views expressed by Brooks may or may not reflect mine, and I’m not going to tell you what or which

The article has nothing to do with “monopoly” in the sense of antitrust or the game

When you read the article, think “church” or “leadership” or “your own creative voice” as you read it

I will have more to say about this “finding your own voice” in an upcoming article at Creator‘s website

That having been said, I highly recommend that you read the article, which you can find here.

After you’ve read it, please come back and leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3958 (Don’t Laugh at Me – Mark Wills)  of 7875

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At my family reunion last weekend, one of the people there spent time on the second day reading an ebook as an escape from the conversations and catching up.

On the other hand, I complained to my daughter that there were frustrating things about reading books on my phone, and she handed me 3 very interesting looking books that I would never have picked up, either from a bookstore shelf, a library shelf, or an ereader shelf.

(What are they, you ask? The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne; Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende; and Planet Walker by John Francis)

And on the third hand, I know a lot of people who have bought books and been introduced to authors they never would have explored simply because of the color of the cover.

I’m sure this is going to be one of those generational things…the kind of power steering thing, where if you grow up reading on a crt or led screen, you can’t imagine anything else. And think of all the trees that will be saved.

But I think paper will be here for longer than you might think.

What do you think? Leave a comment below, please.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3950  (Boogie on Reggie Woman – Stevie Wonder)  of 7875 (we’ve passed the halfway point!)

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At every one of these, it is like coming home again. We talk about what we have in common, which is mostly our childhood, and catch up on what is going on in each others’ lives, and those of our children, and now, grandchildren.

So I’m getting ready to go, but I’m also in deadline week with the magazine…and yes, there is a connection. Our lead article this time is entitled Searching for a Worship Home. It details one family’s struggle to find a new worship home after a move due to relocation for work. It turns out, what they were looking for was home, however you define that…which is not to say “what I remember from my childhood, e.g. tradition.” What they were looking for was an ease of being around a worship family and a family at worship.

It seems to me that sometimes, as professional worship leaders and church musicians, we too often chase the “new” for our own needs, rather than considering the comfort sense of ease of the congregation we serve during worship. Now don’t go all postal about what I’m saying…I’m not saying that worship should never change.  The one we worship does not change, and yet in this world change is inevitable. So there has to be some organic change in what we do as professionals on the platform. Yet how often have I observed that when a congregation is having trouble with the war worship department, it is most often because either the leadership has distanced itself from the congregation (either by not changing or by changing too much), or distanced itself from the unchangeable.

Robert Webber, among others, has said it well: Worship is like a gathering of extended family and friends. The vagaries of calendar conjunction have brought me a 125th anniversary of the founding of the church I serve within a two week window of my own family reunion. I’m looking forward to that as well, because I think that it is helpful, every so often to remember that we are a church family – both locally, and across this planet – with roots, even though we might be scattered over geographic and chronological distances.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3902 (Scarlatti: Toccata in A movement #2 Giga – Matthew Dirst)  of 7875

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All to often we [performing artists] forget to listen and fail to connect. We get trapped, both literally and metaphorically, behind our instruments. We get lost amid our conflicting roles as vested spiritual leader, teacher, and performer. We become consumed by thoughtful desires to be as true as possible to performance practice – or conversely, we flounder in efforts to create a voice intentionally devoid of “performance practice.” We are sometimes hindered by our curious personalities, and most egregious of all, we too often operate on misguided notions that one’s all-too-human emotions, one’s gut, one’s naturally human physicality, and one’s profoundly individual artistic voice are somehow undesirable components of proper music preparation and refined performance. We get trapped, and we fail to listen. We fail to smile or grimace. We fail to connect. For each of these traps we encounter, we remove an opportunity to…connect with our listeners.

There is so much to unpack here, and I encourage you to do so in the comments below.

For now, though, let me just focus on one thing: the willingness to be human (as in: show emotion, have a “personality,” remove the “mask,” or however else you want to define it)  as a musician in a worship service. There is a time and place for everything, my mother used to say, and, in worship it is particularly true. Most of the time, as a “performer,” you want to remove any barriers between the One who is being encountered during a worship service, and the ones doing the encountering. And yet, “Jesus wept.”

If, as a church musician, one can get the notes and the performance practice out of the way and get directly to the music, there are human emotions involved. And suppressing those emotions means you are not completely involved in making music. I’m here to say from experience that “losing yourself” in the emotional moment can get you into trouble if you abandon yourself to the emotion of the moment. But losing yourself to emotional abandonment of self within the process of music making is part of the process of full commitment to speaking to listeners about everything in a particular piece of music. It is there to be found…and being willing to “go deep” to find it is one of the traits that separates a “world class” musician from those who can’t – or don’t – make that breakthrough.

OK… have at it in the comments…(and you might want to read this as well…)

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 3889 (Adagio for Strings – Samuel Barber, performed by a choir directed by Robert Shaw)  of 7875

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