On Saturday we had a Music Ministry Training Day at church. This was our name for the
Twist Conference that a team from St.Ebbe’s Oxford runs every so often. We had about 40 attend from several churches around town. It was led by Philip Percival (pictured) who is Director of Music at St.Ebbe’s.

We spent a little time looking at the few New Testament references to singing in the church:

• 1 Co 14.26
• Col 3.16-17 – deals with both the “up, down and across” of singing: between us and God, and to each other too. I also liked Phil’s line that “singing gives emotional training to be thankful”
• Eph 5.18-20 – the Holy Spirit as well is driving our singing and ‘embedding’ the truths of it into our lives

Philip also noted that songs often appear in the Bible that explain what’s going to happen. Importantly songs fuse theology (what God is doing in the world) and human emotional response.

We then had a “band masterclass” which to me was the most fascinating part of the day. Philip based this on his view that you can break all music down to these four layers:

• Bass – not just string bass or electric bass, but a drum kit’s kick drum too
• Melody – flutes, violins etc. plus the less obvious cello
• Rhythm – normally drums and guitars
• Harmony – guitars, pianos and other instruments that play chords

(We immediately see that pianos and keyboards are going to need some thought, as they can provide any or all of these. We’ll come back to that thought …) We also (mostly) concluded that the single best ‘instrument’ to lead a congregation is a voice — not a piano or keyboard.

After lunch we split into 3 workshops – either rhythm+bass, keyboards or leading singing.

In the rhythm + bass one, we did some practical work on building up the bass and rhythm and guitar harmony parts. This was a good exercise in starting simple. There we decided the second-most important instrument to add is still not a piano or keyboard, but the bass, which gives the root, and by implication some of the rest of the harmony.

Some particular thoughts I took away were:

• Traditional hymns when played by bands need less harmonic progression (ie, fewer chord changes per bar).
• Playing in 3/4 time is particularly difficult for drummers. The simplest dum-cha-cha rhythm just sounds cheesy; instead they suggest playing 6/8 half speed. Or variants on dum-cha-dum. These can also be good for guitars.
• Some suggest ‘I’-based songs are bad; Phil suggested that these can be OK. But we should be avoiding ones which go for the this-is-what-I’m-going-to-do-for-You-God line. It’s better if they start from God’s perspective, or a whole congregational one.
• In Phil’s view, the most important thing we can do when teaching a new song to the congregation is to have the band fully practised and confident. Makes entire sense.
• If a congregation isn’t ‘getting’ a syncopated rhythm don’t force it. It could be a sign that the songs aren’t very suitable.

If we’d had more time I’d have liked to have discussed one of Philip’s throw-away lines in rather more detail. He noted that too much of our worship material can actually reflect too much of the Old or First Covenant — ie, the temple worship of old Israel.

Overall, this was the best training day for church musicians I’ve attended (and I’ve been to quite a few). More than the others it had a good mix of the theological, the practical and the musical. It’s just a shame a few more musicians from St.Matts and other churches in the town didn’t attend.

It was also very encouraging to me personally, as I don’t think they suggested anything different to the things I do when leading my band, or aim to do with them in the future. But it was very good to see more experienced people demonstrate some of the principles, and that lots of people all saw it together. This should make it easier to improve our instrumentation more quickly than otherwise.

For my benefit, and the others of us who were there, I’ve done a list of the new songs they covered, and links to recordings, videos or sheet music.

The St.Ebbe’s group covered the following songs, which were new to most people:

• Come people of the risen king [Stuart Townend] – video of recording
• Come hear the angels sing (Hear the heaven’s shout) [Michael Morrow, 2006]

– music scores

• Nothing but the blood of Jesus [Michael Morrow, 2005] – music scores
• You never change (Light of the world) [Rob Smith, 2009] – MP3 download and sheet music
• This life I live [Michael Morrow, 2009] – music and MP3 for download
• O great God of highest heaven [Bob Kauflin, 2006] – music and audio sample

I’ve added links to resources, including where possible, a video or MP3 of the song. We’re finding these a good way of helping the musicians learn new material, and Philip and co suggested it too.

From Rev. Chris’ blog:

… Jesus came to announce the end of religion (humanity’s attempt to find God) and the arrival of love (God’s attempt to find us). And loves means reserving judgment, walking in humility and being very long on compassion, which is in stark contrast to what rule-making can do to us. In what ways do we put rule and ritual before basic love for ourselves and others?

h/t Maggi Dawn

The best session at New Wine 09 for me this year was led by Dan Browne. No, not the author Dan Brown, but a mid-30s guy who’s been leading humanitarian work in Afghanistan for the last 8 years. He’s deliberately bringing a Christian presence into a land where 99.9% are Muslims — so praying is more obviously necessary than here in the UK.

It’s also a land in conflict, and stuffed with soldiers and militants. So he was intrigued to find that “the Psalms are full of warrior language”. He also found that many great Christians through the centuries have written books on praying the Psalms. The one he particularly recommended is Answering God: the psalms as tools for prayer, by Eugene Petersen. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, there are 5 Psalms listed each day in the daily office.

Here are some of the comments that struck me:

Prayer is a battlefield walkie-talkie

Out of conflict heroes arise

In 2 Sam 23, Eleazer’s sword “became one with” his hand – should be like us and the Bible

War and trouble turn people to pray

Prayer is primarily about relationship
What matters is not whatever we want to pray, but what God wants us to pray. (Bonhoeffer from The Psalms: the Bible’s Prayerbook) So go look at the Psalms.

Jesus quoted Psalm 22, 31 as part of his last words

So often Complaint from the psalmist turns to Praise: it’s OK for us to do the same

Psalm 95 effectively starts with “God get away from me” – God knows how we think and react, and is big enough to deal with it

The nasty Psalms (eg 137?) are best viewed in the life of Jesus.

In Psalm 42, 63 King David feeling God is far off, and searches for Him.

Our prayers have as their final destination praise

Learn to meditate – this is what Psalm 1 is about

Couple ACTS (Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication) to a Psalm

Psalm 5.1 “consider my sighing” – don’t need intelligible words

He also recommended Derek Kidner as the best 2 volume commentary on the Psalms.

(Drawn from Maggi Dawn’s blog)

40 years on from the first manned moon landing Commander ‘Buzz’ Aldrin remembers a little-known event:

It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.

Read more …

Stuart Townend is one of the UK’s leading song and hymn-writers. So I was intrigued to see what he had to say when interviewed by Cross Rhythms. (In the intro CR points out that 14 of the current most used 500 songs and hymns were written or co-written by him.)

Here are the take-away comments for me:

At a time when “stadium rock” seems to be the dominant sound of recorded worship music, I wanted to explore [on his new album] an acoustic sound that would work with any size of congregation; where small and large churches would hear the album and think “we may not be able to recreate all fiddly bits played by the violins and whistles, but we can create the feel of the recordings without having to turn the guitar amps up to 11.”

I like playing and listening to music in the “stadium rock” style (indeed I’d like to get the band I’m in to get a more like this), and I know that a lot of people like it. But I know that many don’t. And one of the major criticisms I have is that often it’s written for (and by) experienced and somewhat talented singers, not the average congregational member, some of whom feel very self-conscious at the idea of singing at all. So I loved reading

95 per cent of the time my focus is on writing songs that congregations can sing. So I’m bearing in mind the dynamics and the limitations of the average congregation, and, yes, I’m thinking “will this work in church?” – although occasionally more performance-type songs do slip on to albums, just to add a little variety… The focus on congregational usage of the songs can make recording albums a bit of a difficult balancing act. You want an album to be interesting and musical enough for people to listen to just for the sheer enjoyment of it. But at the same time these songs were created to be sung in church, so you want the recording to inspire musicians and congregations alike to think, “We could do this at our church.”

What a great aim! No wonder he is so much of his material is used so often. More than once I’ve heard people say “It’s by Stuart Townend, so it must be good.” I certainly can’t remember ever having to ignore one of his songs, because a congregation wouldn’t be able to learn it and sing it easily. And I’m regularly doing that with other new material.

The album (Creation Sings) deliberately has more of a folk feel. His reasoning is interesting …

It’s a style of music I’ve always loved, and it’s great to see how people like Kate Rusby have succeeded in recent years in bringing folk music to a wider audience. But I also think that folk music provides some interesting parallels with the ethos of worship music: it’s not age-restricted, it uses strong melodies, it often plugs into a story-telling tradition, it lends itself to different combinations of instruments (and different abilities of instrumentalists) without being musically dull, and – perhaps most important – at its heart are songs not meant to be sung by performers but by “the people.”

I shall definitely be definitely giving it a very close listen – at least after my upcoming birthday …

Continuing the rather random nature of Greenbelt life, here are 3 other things I or we did.

Firstly, some ethical shopping, picking up a very nice cotton shirt for me from From the Source. Apparently all their items come from Laos using natural dye techniques.

Next up, I listened with Alister and Heather to Rt Hon Douglas Alexander, Minister of State for International Development. Quizzed by Simon Mayo, and a few from-the-floor questions, he didn’t get to cover aid/development much, other than to say it must be about the only ministerial job where lots of foreigners continually say “thank you”.

He was mostly making the case for people to be involved in party politics at local level, arguing that the letterbox stuffing was the necessary local component of national-level politics that can and does land up making a difference in this country and abroad. I wasn’t completely convinced by his arguments.

But I did see the question about Scottish independence (and other nationalist movements) in a new light after one of his comments. He pointed out that core belief of Nationalists must be that they believe they’re better off apart from some greater country. In our time, he continued, surely this sends the wrong signal. WIth a shrinking planet through globalisation and facing planet-wide issues, the imperative must be to work together not try and be separatist. It’s a similar argument that he uses to support Europe – better to work together on things that will affect us all.

And, last, but no means least, we listened to Philip Yancey affirming that with faith you should also expect to find times of doubt. All fairly standard stuff to me, but he is a very able communicator. And here’s a silhouette of him speaking just for the sake of it …

Time for Sunday’s update.

After the damp communion service, I stayed swaying to the beat of the Bombay Baja Indian Brass Band as they played in the Arena. Very funky rhythms, and catchy tunes. No wonder they’ve played all across Europe.

I listened to Aradhna play again, this time lying on the floor in the Centaur with Martha. Some wonderful wonderful music, this time from their 5 piece (which added tabla and female vocals to guitar, sitar and violin who I heard yesterday). Their website says:

Aradhna means worship. The group captures the beauty and dignity of india’s bhajan devotional melodies with music that blends east and west.

This is what Greenbelt excels at: reminding us how narrow our view of Christianity often is, and showing what else is around. There must be millions of Christians (Anglicans even!) in India and around that region who no other than music with some of the same flavour.

On a completely different note, the culinary find of the festival was the distinctly upper crust pieminister: pies served with posh mash, gravy and/or mushy peas. My favourite was the “PM Pie”, which was their name for a steak and kidney pie. Yum yum. So much yum yum that we decided to buy some fresh ones to stick in the freezer at home to enjoy later. We had to promise (according to their website where you can also buy them) to “to love your pie, enjoy him, cherish him and above all cook him properly”.

Greenbelt has started Here’s a very small part of the 500-strong queue for the first session I went to (a panel discussion on “What kind of church is emerging?”). It was an authentic Greenbelt experience: long queues, damp grass to sit on, thankfulness that I’d remembered to bring a mat to sit on, different accents from the panel (German, American, Northern Irish, London, Manchester …), some insights and some disagreements. But they were pleased to have disagreements, because it is there that they find deeper reflection and growth tend to come. Not unlike our Bishops were finding in Lambeth’s indaba groups perhaps?

Later I heard the Indian-inspired music of Aradhna in the CMS tent. Simple, it also struck me as complex and soothing at the same time. I’m going to checking out their CDs …

My evening finished with a Marimba Recital by percussionist Gerard Rundell. He played a mixture of traditional and modern marimba music, as well as throwing in a snare drum piece and one for drum kit. Impressive stuff, even if sometimes the musicality suffered under his speed of sticking.

Ernie Rea was chatting wiht some Muslim experts the other day on ‘Beyond Belief’ (heard via the R4 podcast). They were supposed to be talking about Madrassas, but I wasn’t connecting with it, until they talked to a Pakistani arts festival director, who was a strong Muslim believer as well.

(I can’t quote directly as I don’t have the podcast any more as iTunes has been too efficient.) He said that the Prophet Mohammed said that the struggle (jihad) with others is over; the remaining struggle (jihad) is with ourselves, to make ourselves pure. It was following the Russian invasion of Afghanisation that religious leaders declared the war against the Russians to be a jihad, and it has been applied progressively more since then.

But good to see a point of similarity with Christians – acknowledging that our lack of purity (could say our ‘sin’) is the main problem, not other people. I think I detected a difference as well, though. For the Muslim, it is indeed a personal struggle; for the Christian it can be (and should) a struggle but with the aid of God the Holy Spirit, as often we are almost powerless to change our characters.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. [Romans 8.26]