Where i Am

A worship curator

I have been reading and pondering the idea of the value of artists and the arts in our community worship gatherings. As I walk down this road, I am more inclined towards creating a position for a worship gathering curator than I am for a "producer", maybe we need both, I'm not sure. A curator is someone who is cultivating and helping to create environments. Their work is felt but not seen. Still thinking...

In hopes to help people enter past only using their reasoning function in worship gatherings, this Sunday we are using a variety of tools to help facilitate this. As we focus on Pslam 77 through the lens of Walter Bruegeman's three movements of the Psalms, we have:

1. created a prayer station that is simply a table in the back, with black cloth on it, two bowls: one with rocks and one with water, as well as a stack of blank index cards and pens. A sheet of instructions on it will state - “Please use these rocks to reveal struggles in your life to God. Use the water as a representative of your baptism and the index cards to write out memories of how God has healed struggles in the past as a way to enter the hope of Christ now and in the future.”

2. Asking people to take a rock from that station and hold it with them through out the service. Those rocks represent what we have brought in with us, specifically our struggles. There are always struggles, some of them are personal to our specific situation, some of them are situations that are near us that we bear as well.

After a congregational reading of Psalm 77 we are asking for people let the weight and substance be a reminder to them of the reality of their struggle. Then to sit with that reality, look at it, perhaps name it. Then as we move through the time of worship and on into teaching for them to allow God to speak to them through the reality of that experience.

3. The music arrangements that we are doing are more blues in reference. Using only electric guitar and drums and synth. A harsher, sadder, more visceral experience.

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Becoming the Artist You Were Created to Be

Most music in the Christian subculture genre is off-putting to me, at best. Reason being, whether we're talking about the category of worship music or Christian pop, it's all being produced with the same lack of creativity and artisan craftsmanship that didn't start out defining music overtly made by Christians but has come to over the last 25 years. Concerning this, there are three problems I'd like to address:

1. We need to demolish this unnecessary and make-believe line between the sacred and the secular. Everything that is good is good and everything that is not is not. When God created the world, God looked at creation and said, “It is good.” Creation is good because it is infused with the presence of God. The best and most redemptive music out there is often far from the Christian music industry namely because the Christian industry is trying to create a product that fits into an assumed perception about music as opposed to honest art. Create good art. That's it; it's that simple. Art is a reflection of life, so reflect your life. Stop regurgitating tired phrases that don't reflect the tensions and joys of your soul and worldview.

2. Just because the words Jesus/the cross/my sins are forgiven, etc., are included in the lyrics doesn't automatically make it poetry. If anything, the overuse of those wonderful themes makes it suspect before anything else. We need fresh statements of beliefs and worldviews. We need musicians who are reading and practicing theology as well as absorbing the works of T.S. Elliott and James Joyce. For both are needed to produce great art as a Christian.

3. We need honest sounds, real music. I'm not talking about level of technical skill here. New York, L.A. and Nashville have some of the top musicians in the world playing on these records. What we need are the Son Houses, Bob Dylans, Jack Whites and Billie Holidays of this world to step up—people who make music that is real and that sticks to your ribs, not because of their level of musicianship (which is often great too) but because of the weight of the conviction in which they write, play and sing.

As youth workers, we play a big part in the formation of our students. Let's stop encouraging the use of bad art, whether this be in our youth group's worship music or in the encouragement of our students’ personal discovery of music and culture. I understand that because of the context we find ourselves in as Christians, it might be offensive to some families for you to encourage their teenager to take their art serious enough to look beyond the Christian genre. It's worth it, though. Take that risk of offending and being offended for the sake of protecting and guiding the journey your youth are on to becoming the artists they were created to be.

First Friday's and Wilco

Last night I dropped Page off at a Friends, they were going down to Springfield, Mo. for a reunion with some girls at MSU.  Afterwards I drove myself over to First Fridays to see what was going on.  Now for those of you who don't know Kansas City is grappling to pull itself up in the arts, and the Crossroads district is our proudest component of this quest.  The Crossroads consists of about 12 blocks in the just south of downtown area of the city.  And on every first Friday of the month all of the art galleries and places that are not normally galleries open up and show art, bands play in the streets and people are walking around all over the place.  It's a great scene, and for a fleeting moment you feel like you're in a city where you could live and walk to the places you want to be.

I saw some good (authentic) blues  in front of the little sandwich shop YJ's and a great alt rock band in front of the Habitat Shoes store.  While walking around the Art Incubator and a few other galleries there were about three to four pieces that caught my eye.  I also ran into about five or six people I knew.  A really nice evening.  I came home and tried to write, which didn't produce anything.

Wilco's  "Sky Blue Sky" is killing me.  From the opening notes to the end I  have a smile on my face.  No joke, I instantly feel good when I  put it on.  It's the definite recommend for the week.  I'm excited to see them next weekend in the Crossroads district.