DGRMM.net comments

"More pictures, graduation!" by BRENDA

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:18:52 -0500

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"More pictures, and yet more..." by Grandma

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:14:40 -0500

Finally!

"Welcome, Jonathan Caleb!" by Tricia

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:02:54 -0500

I just got the news – contratulations! And I’m so glad it went well and everybody is OK.

"Welcome, Jonathan Caleb!" by Wanda

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:07:02 -0500

He looks absolutely beautiful. Congratulations to all of you and please continue to keep in touch with me. I miss all of you.

"New look for Maia Mailguard site" by Damon

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:28:57 -0600

gradients. . . schmadients

"DNS change" by dgm

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:41:40 -0500

testing ie7

"Philosophy of Church Music" by Jim Hunsucker

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:09:17 -0500

Music is made up of 3 basic components, melody, harmony, and rhythm. when any part is out of balance, the resulting sound fails to minister to the body, soul and spirit. Additionally, when the words fail to give ALL the Glory to GOD, man is attempting to lift himself into a place where “God is lucky to have man to worship Him.” None of us would be outwardly so bold as to make that ridiculous statement, but it would seem to me that our selfishness is leading the way here. We must remember that God alone is worthy of our praise. To make a “joyful noise” with a right heart is better than the most “professional” music, bands, or worship teams. Who is the worship for and toward anyway?

"Philosophy of Church Music" by dgm

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 13:48:28 -0500

BTW, nice use of floating divs for key quotes. :)

"Philosophy of Church Music" by Tim Morton

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:28:24 -0500

You stated it pretty well…

On the other hand, blindly following the herd is bad. I have seen many churches and christian groups who will blindy follow the herd, without actually looking at what they are doing.

I will admit that there are some jewels that come out of CCM. And, there are some hymns that are real klunkers.

But the other issue that I mentioned, but did not elaborate on, needs to be addressed here.

Redefinitions

As culture changes, some words come in to prominence and other words fall out of favor and are replaced with other words. One classic example is how in the 60s and 70s the word, commitment, came into vogue. But with it, another word fell out of usage. What was it?

Surrender.

We as a society became more interested in making commitments (which are subject to our whims) rather than surrendering to our Lord (which is NOT subject to our whims)

There is another paradigm at work in our current culture: relevance. Think about what it replaced…

Reverence.

We will parade all day around the altar of relevance, yet forfeit all reverence.

C’mon, can you really say that the vast majority of CCM is reverent? That is probably the thing that irks me most. It is not the triteness of the music (although that does irritate me); rather, it is the self-absorbed lyrics that tell God how lucky he is to have us worship him.

(sorry, got the emotions worked up again…)

And no, I don’t consider closing your eyes, holding your hand up where everybody can see how spiritual you are and shaking your head, “no”, while you emotionally sing about how great you have declared Him to be—no, that’s not reverence, either.

Relevance and the Watered Down Church, or, The Inmates are Running the Asylum!

It is this fascination with relevance that brings about the other death blow to a church: “We can’t expect the kids to learn reverence, so we’ll just let them do their own thing. Better yet, we’ll give them our blessing to do their own thing. We’ll be kids right along with them and be their buddy. Rock ON!”.

Do we need to relate? Sure. But should we be just a bigger version of the kids? Absolutely not. Kids need an example. Who would you respect more as a leader, someone who dresses like they mean business, or someone in flip flops and an unshaved face? Kids aren’t stupid; they know that what you think will be reflected in what you do. Now, you can’t always judge a book by it’s cover, but most of the time, you can.

Our churches have become so placid, following this herd, that they have abdicated all responsibility to be LEADERS of the kids and to set down some boundaries. You will only shoot as high as you aim. ...and we seem to be shooting rather low.

Musical Illiteracy

(This is really an aside…) Musically, most choruses are shooting in the dirt. They have little to no harmony (certainly no bass parts!), rely on constant “Barry Manilows” (bumping up a half step is a profound admission that the song has gone on too long and has become boring), use the very same chord patterns (ever seen a five/seven of five in a chorus?), and actually diminish the musical ability of the congregation by subjecting them to pretty pictures with the words. No music—that’s too complicated. Musically, our congregations are becoming blithering idiots.

What Grows a Church?

Ask the seeker people, and they’ll point to all manner of things to up your relevence. They’ll have contemporary music, Holy Ghost explosions, a great pep rally…

But they don’t know what really grows a church.

Even Rick Warren, with all his wild success, doesn’t seem to realize why he was successful.

It’s not the upbeat concerts, it’s not the world’s longest banana split, it’s not the seeker services, it most certainly is not the music, whether contemporary or traditional.

It’s doctrine.

We can target youth, we can target old people; but the only thing that really works is doctrine. Not storytime, not drama, not the lights, not the slick musical package. It’s doctrine that grows a church IN SPITE of its programs and philosophies.

Summary

Sometimes churches grow in spite of themselves because they actually preach doctrine. And that’s the key: the main thing must remain the main thing. And without it, the church will bleed to death.

"Philosophy of Church Music" by DGM

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:10:49 -0500

It does not necessarily folow, though, that all modern praise and worsip is bad. Equally bad is letting yourself becoming locked in a style that doesn’t make sense to today’s world. I’m not saying that we should change the message; heck no! But many things change over time. Bellbottoms were in, then they were out, and now they may be coming back in.

The 18th and 19th centuries did not have an exlusive deal on the best music. What did they do for music before then?

On the other hand, blindly following the herd is bad. I have seen many churches and christian groups who will blindy follow the herd, without actually looking at what they are doing. I think this is what my big brother is talking about, and has been burnt by.

What people need to realize is that worship has very little to do with music. What’s that? Heresy!

With well orchestrated music, I can move anyone into a high emotional state that many people confuse with worship. You may be surprised to learn that many, many people experience this same feeling while listening to a U2 concert!

Let me choose the right lineup, fill out the orchestration and I could even get my big brother here to enjoy a “modern worship service”. Well, maybe…

Worship is not about the feeling; the feeling just happens to arrive sometimes. Worship is about sacrifice. Yielding myself to God for acts of service and love. When we come together as a group for corporate worship, we build each other up and in a unified voice declare our service to Him. If that’s all we do, however, it’s pretty worthless.

Sometimes, just getting to church is such an effort, that just getting in the door is an act of worship; even if I don’t feel like singing. Even if I don’t get anything out of the sermon. we show our love for Him through our obediance.

So what is the purpose of music in a church service? I don’t think it has anything to do with building a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I don’t think it should be entertainment. It certainly shouldn’t be a showcase for the worship band to show off. (Though our band is certainly worthy of showing off sometimes!)

I think the purpose of music in a church service should be to help focus our thoughts in a particular direction, the theme of the sermon being the most obvious option.

As such, a most important question regarding music is the content of the words. Does it present a God focused message? Does it follow the patterns presented by the Bible; ie, the patterns of words and phrases that occur often in the Bible? I have yet to find a bad song that uses the words, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD God Almighty!”

I have to brag on my own church a little bit. We have adopted a “mixed” style, which makes use of a more contemporary style than my brother prefers. However, the process the worship team goes through is quite extensive, and constantly reviewed to make sure that all we do has a well thought out reason. The songs that we do are evaluated for their lyrics, message, style, “editablity”, length, mood… and out of hundreds of songs put out each year, we may only adopt two new songs. We also have kept a few hymns in our repertoire.

We also edit many songs to make them more presentable and consistant in style; we may not have the right instruments or ability to reproduce the original style, or it just may not be appropriate.

As for our choice of style, it has a purpose too. I may not have all the details right, but it evolved out of a combination of our stated goal as a church for reaching out to youth, the availability of instrumentation and skillsets of our musicians. We don’t have a pipe organ, so the big traditional pipe organ sound just doesn’t work. :)

When we started this transition, like many such transitions, it was bumpy. But I think most of the church knew it was an intentional change and we had a goal to accomplish.

The result? Our church has grown from about 200 people then to over 500 now. Numbers aren’t everything; with those numbers have come many new ministries and the fruit of the Spirit is evident in all of them.

The end result is that the music we sing on Sunday is a miniscule part of our week long worship.