worship

James’s Blog: McChurch.

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James’s Blog: McChurch.

Welcome to St. Ronald’s,

May I take your order please?

We can give you a serving of Jesus,

With an extra helping of cheese.

 

We can do a Resurrection Burger,

And a side of Holy Ghost fries,

As long as you like it LOUD,

We don’t do any other size.

 

We’re all about convenience,

You don’t even have to stay,

No-one really likes washing-up,

That’s why we do takeaway.

 

Sure there’s other restaurants,

And other places you can eat,

But we’re cheap and quick and easy,

And we won’t disturb your sleep.

 

Don’t worry about nutrition,

Or if we’ll make your soul fatter,

As long as you leave feeling good,

Then quality doesn’t matter.

 

Our menu’s tailored just for you,

Our staff will help you to begin,

Our manager is God Himself,

But I’m not sure He’s ever been in.

James’s Blog: Noises that Sound Good.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Noises that Sound Good.

I am not musical but I love music; it’s such a clever idea – noises that sound good. Also, I like it when people put words to the backdrop of said music. I believe that they’re called ‘songs’.

Like most people, I have my own personal taste in music, but it’s a taste that seems to put me at odds with the Christian majority, a fact I find hard to believe. Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks that most church services could be improved by the introduction of some Dubstep?

When I was a teenager in the 90s, the Christian music I was familiar with didn’t do anything for me. As for the lyrics? Well, let’s just say that I felt more of a spiritual kinship with someone like Kurt Cobain than I ever did with Matt Redman or Martin Smith. One of the best things that ever happened to me at university was meeting Terry Wright. During Fresher’s Week, Terry sat next to me in a chapel service purely because I looked like the type of person who was into the same music as he was. He was wrong, but only because I had never heard anything like it before. Terry had an extensive knowledge and collection of alternative Christian noise from such labels as Frontline, R.E.X. and (my own personal choice of the mid to late 90s) Tooth & Nail. It was a revelation to hear these bands playing music more to my tastes, and singing about their faith in a way that resonated with my bruised and growing soul. Take, as a random example, a simple verse from The Prayer Chain‘s song, Dig Dug:

Can you hear my heart beat?

Do you even know my heart?

When I hold the doubts of Thomas

As hard as I hold your promise?

I never heard anything like that sung on a Sunday morning, but it was exactly the sort of honesty that I was desperate for at the time. Although I am no longer the angsty teenage nightmare that I was then, I know that a lot of the music I listened to during that time has supported me through my difficult journey over the years, and still provides the foundation for my own personal expressions of worship. I might write a bit more in the future about specific albums and songs that have been meaningful to me (hopefully with fewer  distracting hyperlinks…), but I’ve wanted to write something like this for a while; partly to share something that has been influential and might give a bit of insight as to why I write the way I do, plus also as a belated thanks to Terry for first exposing me to those particular noises that sounded so good.

James’s Blog: Musings on Faith, Reason, Experience, Colouring-in and Worship.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Musings on Faith, Reason, Experience, Colouring-in and Worship.

It’s been one of those years – the kind of year that was meant by the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in Interesting Times.”

Here’s a couple of things I find interesting about these Interesting Times. The first is that, through following up on Tweets and stuff, I learned that in America three of the top five best-selling non-fiction Christian books of 2016 were adult colouring-in books.  After what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I don’t know what to say.  I understand that some people find them helpful, but really?  Three out of five? Read more

James’s Blog: A Lesson in Humility.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , ,
James’s Blog: A Lesson in Humility.

When it comes to me, most worship leaders are up against it from the start. I have no musical talent myself, and therefore little appreciation of the skill required to play the handful of chords that most worship songs seem to employ. Neither am I a big fan of the contemporary worship style – on the whole, I like my music to have a little more edge. Furthermore, I’ve suffered over six years of formal theological training, so find myself hyper-critical of and disappointed by the content of most lyrics. Finally, many more years of hard yards in following Jesus, and trying to help others to follow Jesus, has resulted in me having nothing but contempt for the shallow, I-feel-pretty-good-about-God-right-now sentiment of many worship songs.

However, whenever I find myself drifting too far down the path of seething rage, I remember what C.S. Lewis said. He too struggled with the church music of his time, considering it fifth-rate poetry set to sixth-rate music, but he also wrote, “I realised that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”

Hard as it is to believe sometimes, not everything is about me.

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