Passé Light Rock Bands Resurrected As Christian Acts - Lark News

“Our songs still have life in them. So you tweak a few lyrics, memorize some scriptures, get yourself a testimony, and viola, you’ve got a fan base again.”

In a victory for nostalgia and Christian Contemporary Music, light rock acts of yesteryear are finding new life in church venues.

“We wanted to keep playing,” says Air Supply's Graham Russell, one of the band’s longtime leaders. “Our songs still have life in them. So you tweak a few lyrics, memorize some scriptures, get yourself a testimony, and viola, you’ve got a fan base again.”

For years, bands like Air Supply and REO Speedwagon plied the county fair circuit, playing old hits and trying to pump up dwindling audiences. But as competition for county fair slots increases, and older bands fade further into the past, more are finding success playing churches, youth conventions, even acoustic sets at prayer gatherings.

Lighting and sound can be iffy, but bands use their arena-rock skills to keep the energy level up, kicking their legs into the air, jumping around the platform, clutching their hearts during ballads.

“You haven’t seen an altar call until you’ve seen it to REO Speedwagon’s ‘I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore,’” says Sam Durabian, 25, youth pastor at Second Baptist church in Boise, which hosted the band last year.

Bands have experienced a “church bounce” as album sales creep up the back-catalog charts. And with more bands re-uniting to exploit the trend, marketspace is getting squeezed.

“We tried to book a Presbyterian church in Buffalo for Fourth of July, but they’d already booked Mr. Mister,” says Air Supply’s Russell “I guess the secret is out.”

The full article is available here

The New Story - Jim Hall at Inward/Outward

Living the new story in the midst of a very powerful old story involves considerable risk. If we are in pursuit of Jesus, we will be always moving from our own self-serving story to a self-giving story.

We are living in a time when all around us old stories are dying and new stories are struggling to be born.

New story emerges in many ways - as we let go of the old story and attend to ancient wisdom and as we try to live it out in the midst of the old story still around us.  

This process is often filled with risk and conflict.

Our smaller stories are embedded in and shaped by the larger stories around us; our stories evolve over time. Hopefully they evolve, as Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has put it, from “life is about us” to “we are about life.” Over time we are invited into larger and larger stories.

Jesus lived a new story in the midst of the old. Into a story about obeying religious rules and keeping commandments in order to please God, came a new story: the rules are God’s gift to us, not our obligation to God. Jesus goes beyond structure to essence. Structures exist to serve essence.

Jesus chose to act out his own authentic story, one about self-giving love and compassion. Living the new story in the midst of a very powerful old story involves considerable risk. If we are in pursuit of Jesus, we will be always moving from our own self-serving story to a self-giving story.

The full article is available here

Christian Music: Why Is It So Terrible and What Can Be Done? - Alan Atchinson at Patheos

If American Christians are eating up what the CCM is putting out, why would it fix what i$n’t broken? Until the industry decides that it loves money less, we’ve still got a long way to go.

A lot of what I see coming out of the church in terms of Christian music unfortunately deals in probably the most spiritual 2% of life.  If music truly is the universal language of the world, then this sort of production just isn’t going to cut it.

What would it look like if Christians ripped down the fictional sacred/secular divide and took notice of what so many artists around us are screaming about regarding the messed up state of our culture?

So it’s no wonder when people look at Christian music, that they see Christianity as this one-dimensional, irrelevant worldview to life that only deals with transcendent moments of worship and the afterlife. 

Despite much of Christian music’s lack of depth or authenticity, the Contemporary Christian Music industry is continuing to thrive financially. Can it really be considered a coincidence that most CCM artists tend to churn out the same soft, fluffy messages?

If American Christians are eating up what the CCM is putting out, why would it fix what i$n’t broken? Until the industry decides that it loves money less, we’ve still got a long way to go.

The full article is available here

Time For Musicians Who Are Christians To Step Up Creative Game - Chris Queen

"We can find a few exceptions, but for the most part, the Christian music industry produces substandard art."

These days I can’t turn on Christian radio without turning it off almost as quickly. Christian radio fills the airwaves with cliche after cliche – vapid Jesus cheer leading and bland scripture reading put to poor quality music. Again, we can find a few exceptions, but for the most part, the Christian music industry produces substandard art.

It seems like there’s a lot of mediocre art of all kinds out there with the “Christian” label on it. Why do we believers let that happen? Why do we let so much make the cut that wouldn't make it anywhere else? Why should we as Christians sacrifice excellence for content?

If we serve and love such a creative God, we should be creative people. Christians who are artists should realize that all of their lives belong to God and that they honor Him through excellence, not through how many times His name is mentioned or how many scriptural truths are shown or quoted. I believe that art that purports to bear the name of Jesus Christ but is mediocre is no art at all and that anything a believer does that is less than excellent does Him a disservice.

It’s high time for Christian artists to up the ante on creativity, and it’s time for Christians to demand creativity from musicians.

The full article is available here

See also ...
5 Reasons to Kill "Christian" Music

Creative = In Love With Life - Osho

Call to Worship: All Are Welcome (based on Isaiah 56:6-8)

 

Come as you are. God's love is open to all people. Here, all are welcome; outsiders and insiders, newcomers and long-timers, the young, the old, and everyone in-between.

So come and worship. Open your hearts as we give thanks for God’s boundless love.

Benediction: May God's Love Soften Our Hearts (based on Ephesians 4:1-6)

In our lives, may we reflect the overflowing and bottomless love of Jesus. May we be humble, gentle, patient and gracious; using our words and actions to be conduits of love and truth.

We are hardwired for relationship and connection, which we can build by being Jesus' hands and feet to each other.

So let's allow God's unconstrained love to soften our hearts. May we live in love, as Jesus modeled, to sustain each other. May God's Spirit move us towards ever deeper and richer community and the peace that is found in walking life's road with fellow travelers.

Good Marginal Thinking - Brian McLaren at Christianity Today

Every system and community is in continual need of renewal, which almost always comes from the margins.  The community that excludes those at the margins cuts off the resources of growth while building resistance to the renewal that it needs.

Being, thinking, looking or acting differently from the majority can push one to the margins. Reflective Christians; those who doubt what everyone else takes for granted, feel different pretty often in churches and therefore feel marginalized pretty often.

 It is a process that can be wounding and stigmatizing. Reflective Christians dwell in a tension between remaining silent, which feels dishonest and frustrating, and raising questions, which often makes them feel like an "other" or "outlier."

Throughout institutional church history, Reflective Christians have often found that they had no place or future in the church of their time. Two of the most transformational figures would be Martin Luther, who doubted what the church taught about indulgences, and Galileo, who observed that a heliocentric universe contradicted the church's paleocentric teaching. Both were marginalized in their time by forces seeking to control the church from the top-down.

 More recent examples would include Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu, Dorothy Day and Wendell Berry.

Every system and community is in continual need of renewal, which almost always comes from the margins. The community that excludes those at the margins cuts off the resources of growth while building resistance to the renewal that it needs.

 Reflective Christians should be listened to attentively and given space to be who they are. They need leaders to visibly stand between them and their most vocal critics, the reactionary forces of boundary maintenance and exclusion.

If communities amputate their margins, they commit the same error that the chief priests and scribes did when a needed, new voice of renewal spoke the truth to power from the margins.

The full article is available here

I Wanna Be A Clone - Steve Taylor

"Their language, it was new to me but Christianese got through to me.
Now I can speak it fluently, I want to be a clone."

I'd gone through so much other stuff, that walking down the aisle was tough.
But now I know it's not enough, I want to be a clone.
I asked the Lord into my heart, they said that was the way to start.
But now you've got to play the part, I want to be a clone.

Be a clone and kiss conviction goodnight.
Cloneliness is next to Godliness, right?
I'm grateful that they show the way 'cause I could never know the way
to serve Him on my own, I want to be a clone.

They told me that I'd fall away unless I followed what they say.
Who needs the Bible anyway, I want to be a clone.
Their language, it was new to me but Christianese got through to me.
Now I can speak it fluently, I want to be a clone.

Send in the clones. I kind of wanted to tell my friends
and people about it, you know. You're still a baby, you have to grow,
give it twenty years or so. 'Cause if you want to be one of his
you gotta act like one of us.

So now I see the whole design, my church is an assembly line.
The parts are there, I'm feeling fine, I want to be a clone.
I've learned enough to stay afloat but not so much, I rock the boat.
I'm glad they shoved it down my throat, I want to be a clone.

Everybody must get cloned

Hands That Heal and Bless - Billy Graham

On The Side Of The Strong Against The Weak - Howard Thurman

Spiritual Awakening: A New Economy and The End of Empire - David Korten at Tikkun

"It is essential to our collective future that our religious institutions refashion themselves as centers of spiritual inquiry and community building. As religious communities go public with the truth of our Spirit affirming messages, they help to expose as fabrications the false values of Empire that hold us captive."

In the global market economy, a basic question that isn't being asked is, "What purpose do we expect the economy to serve." This is because we fail to see that our economic crisis is just as much spiritual as it is financial.

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus is giving his Sermon on The Mount and states that, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." In the global market economy, wealth has become an object of worship. Since 2008, we having been dealing with the consequences of this idolatry. The false gods of Wall Street have been given the power to decide the values by which we live and take make decisions about who will prosper and who live in desperation.

Jesus scholar Marcus Borg famously said, "Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your politics."

The Patriarch Model that has been traditionally intertwined with the Abrahamic faith traditions has resulted in a hierarchy of domination. It has led to the individualistic politics of separation and favors seeking wealth accumulation by means of exploitation and predatory resource extraction. It has even led to some theological frameworks saying, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the rich and powerful are necessarily God's most-favored people.

The Spirit Model more accurately recognizes the face of God in every living being and every part of the universe. It leads to a politics of shared purpose, shared community and mutual service. Everything in creation is seen as the manifestation and agent of a greater spiritual intelligence.

Already, a spiritual awakening is underway. Most often, it is occurring beyond our religious institutions. It is essential to our collective future that our religious institutions refashion themselves as centers of spiritual inquiry and community building. They need to be dedicated to drawing from the whole of human knowledge and experience to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the larger whole of Creation. As religious communities go public with the truth of our Spirit affirming messages, they help to expose as fabrications the false values of Empire that hold us captive.

The full article is available here