Free Digital Sheet Music

Discussions of Culture, Music, and Worship

As of today, this blog will no longer be active. Neither will my Kara Ministries site or RARadio.org. Now don't start cheering too quickly, oh ye critics! I am combining the three sites into a brand new site: ReligiousAffections.org Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly. I'll see you over there!

I often get accused of playing a one-string fiddle. Issues of music, worship, and culture do indeed occupy much of my attention, reading, study, and writing. Monday I was vindicated, however. At our church's Conference on the church for God's Glory, Dave Doran preached on the importance of pastors maintaining theological sharpness, and one of his final points was an encouragement to chose one specific issue to zero in on and make one's specialty. That is what I'm striving to do. I hope to maintain balance and keep strong in other areas of theology and life-issues, but God has given me a strong desire to zero in on the topics of music, worship, and culture and how Scriptural principles relate to them.

Weaver argues that all cultures are not equal.

I've mentioned before that I have developed our church's service order from Christ's statements in John 4 about worship being in spirit and truth, which I take to be spiritual responses to truth. I divide our service into sections of truth affirmation and responses to that truth, and then plug elements such as hymns, prepared music, and choral numbers into those slots depending on where they fit. Here's an example from this past Lord's Day: May 21 Morning Service Prelude: Organ - Hymn 177 Before the Throne Call to Worship: 36 All Hail The Power Affirmation of Truth K Aniol, vln - A Mighty Fortress Doctrinal Reading Hymn 51 Jesus Shall Reign Scripture Reading Intercessory Prayer Truth: Choir - If Ye Love Me Truth: 170 Jesus In His Heavenly Glory

Here's a discussion of "Jesus as My Girlfriend" lyrics and whether or not CCM would survive "Didache Scrutiny."

Today is the Conference on the Church for God's Glory at our church, and I just had the opportunity to meet and spend some time with Bob Roberts of Kids 4 Truth. I am greatly encouraged by his burden to found children in sound doctrine at the earliest ages (and it helps that his doctrinal convictions seem to be very similar to mine!) His burdens for doctrinal integrity in children's curricuclum sounds very similar to my desires for children and hymns. I'm excited about his ministry and will look forward to seeing it develop.

I think Phil Johnson's comments on what the Bible has to say about bad language applied to musical forms of communication, too, don't you?

Bob Kauflin starts a series on how to increase "expressiveness" in worship. Come on, if you have to encourage it, then it's certainly artificial!

Some poetic forms simply cannot treat serious subjects seriously, while other forms are more capable of supporting serious subjects. I’ve found that one issue that people have a difficult time grasping is that the meaning of the same propositional truth content can actually be changed depending on in what form it appears. Let’s set musical form aside for a moment and concentrate just on the poetic form. Here are two love poems. Propositionally, they both discuss love. But see if you think they deal with the subject in the same way:

"Modern “Christian music” is neither good music nor good Christianity. Musically it’s bland and derivative, lyrically it’s banal, and the general artistry is slightly below an intoxicated lemur clambering about a toy piano. Of course, most music of any sort isn’t very good, but the Christian variety has managed to secure a reputation for especial atrociousness. The reason is that the industry which produces it isn’t much interested in musical quality. Rather, it is by definition more concerned with spiritual content than auditory standards." Read the rest of this insightful article. (HT: Linscott and Kris Stephens)