escapingbabylon.com

Kurt Carr – Just the Beginning | Christian Music Today

Simply doing church proves Just the Beginning‘s undoing. From start to finish, the project is one sweeping, larger-than-life church extravaganza—an overproduced, oversized, oversung pageant that’s large on pomp but limited on circumstance. Earlier Carr standards allowed parishioners sing along and join the praise, but Just the Beginning barely lets them get in a word edgewise, as Carr and the imposing Kurt Carr Singers monopolize the entire live recording in their soloing, vocalizing, and sermonizing. There’s no room for the church when they do church!

Ok this may be a little bit obtuse for those who aren’t familiar with the Christian worship music scene and for that I apologize I’ll get back to something more universal next time. If anyone has heard the Kurt Carr Singers, you know that they are incredibly gifted musicians who create incredibly powerful music. But in this situation, it seems from the review that they fall into the trap that many musically talented worship leaders fall into. They let their musical ability get in the way of leading the congregation into worship.

Now I can’t speak for Kurt Carr and his group. But I have been with several groups who, while genuinely worshipping, will do things that leave the congregation as simply spectators, or confuse and distract the congregation from the worship they came to participate in. Here’s what I think every worship team should keep in mind. The primary reason that they are in front (or behind or to the side or whatever) of the congregation is to help the congregation worship, which is to say, to facilitate the conversation that the congregation is having with God. Whenever the people on stage begin to dominate the conversation, or carry the conversation in a direction that the congregation cannot participate, then they have failed.

I have more thoughts on this, but they may be posted later (if anyone cares).

I’ve often talked about the problem of race, bigotry and discrimination, so I figure if you’re still reading you are at least interested in the issue (or at best tolerant of my rants).  Asif (I would link to his livejournal but he rarely posts anymore) pointed me to an article on CNN that talks about racially segregated churches. There’s one quote that I thought was particularly interesting.

Via CNN: “Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated.”

The people in the pews must also do their share of adapting, scholars and ministers say. Only when ethnic groups no longer feel compelled to abandon their entire culture on Sunday morning can a church claim to be interracial, Brelsford says.

…

Interracial churches resist “taking one dominant identity and forcing everyone to fit into it,” Brelsford says.

I think this is the probably the hardest temptation to overcome when trying to create a church or other organization of mixed ethnicity, particularly if one is of the majority culture, you think that certain things are universal, as opposed to being part of your unique identity. It took me a very long time to get over the idea that if people just stripped away their American-ness/African-ness/Indian-ness/Whatever-ness then deep down inside they’ll be more or less Jamaican. This is often the error of people who say “why can’t we all get along” or “why do we have to talk about race/ethnicity”. They think that deep down, if you strip away all that “ethnicness” that you’ll be just like them.

It’s pretty easy to say that that’s not true. Speaking as someone who was born into an ethnic majority, it’s much harder to live it. There’s always that voice that says that ways that my culture have taught me to act, think and relate are “correct” or even just “normal” and that everything else is wrong or a distortion from the baseline of myself. I think that we start to silence that voice by deliberately being open to, and seeking to understand the spectrum of culture. I think that we also need to deliberately put ourselves in a situation where we are the minority, and we seek to learn from the culture in which we immerse ourselves. It’s always easy to jump into a culture from a position of “rightness”. We’ve seen lot’s of people do it, including some missionaries. The challenge is to jump in to a culture in a learning position.

Now, with all this being said, the advice that I’ve given above is for the individual from a majority culture. Some of it is probably applicable for people from a minority culture as well, but I suspect that a lot is different. And as the article talks about, members of minority cultures can have as many issues dealing with racial/ethnic integration as the majority. I do not mean to imply that those that are members of minority cultures have no responsibility in this pursuit, and may post some of my thoughts on that later. Their embracing or rejecting of the pursuit has absolutely no bearing on our responsibility to pursue equity.

Just a quick link to an article I found interesting.

They Love The Church But Not The Institution: parts one and two:

I am not anti-institution. I am not one of those rabid fluid-organic-anti-linear-pomo-loosy goosey-anti-establishment church people. I believe structure is necessary. Structure is good and even God-ordained. We see organization and structure from the very foundation of the church in Acts. But these structures always existed to serve God’s people in the fulfillment of their mission. Today, it seems like God’s people exist to serve the institution in the fulfillment of its mission (which is usually to become a bigger institution). Most of the curricula available to pastors on spiritual gifts and service focus on getting people to serve within their institution. Rarely does a church recruit, equip, and release saints to serve the mission outside its own immediate structure. (Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, is a refreshing exception.)

This is the heart of my dilemma. I sometimes feel the energies and time I pour into the institution doesn’t translate into God’s people being more equipped for the ministry of loving God and neighbor. Could my spiritual and personal resources bear more fruit if poured into real people (the church), rather than into the institutional trough they feed from on Sundays? I’m haunted by that question.

It’s worth a read.