Tag Archives: Ministry

#168: Praying for You

February 23, 2017 M.J. 1 Comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #168, on the subject of Praying for You.

A number of years ago I was playing quite a few venues and interacting with quite a few other Christan musicians, and something began to bother me. At first it was that we needed to support and encourage each other, and I took steps to do this, connecting venues with artists as I was able. However, I realized that no one had ever mentioned praying for me, and I had not mentioned praying for anyone else in music ministry, and that this was something I should remedy. I sent notes to–well, quite a few people whom I knew were involved in music ministry, and offered to pray for them on condition that they keep me informed of their situation (that’s going to be explained). A very few accepted my offer; one offered to reciprocate. Then over the next year or so they all dropped off the radar, as it were, no longer answering my inquiries about their situation, and today I again have no Christian musicians on my prayer list.

And that just is not right, so this is an attempt to fix that.

On the other hand, I don’t want it to seem as if I’m being exclusive. I have quite a few Christian ministers on my “friends” list who are not musicians, or not primarily musicians, and quite a few who are not involved in ministry but would want my prayers (and some of you are indeed already getting them, whether you want them or not). So I am putting this forward as a sort of “open offer”, that anyone who wants me to pray for him (or her or them) should contact me, and I will put you on my prayer list.

However, I have a few conditions.

The one idea that is not a condition is that you pray for me. I would not feel at all right saying that I will pray for you if you will pray for me–it’s too mercenary, I suppose. I certainly do not object to you praying for me, and if you wish for me to meet conditions similar to those I am about to state here, I will certainly endeavor to comply. Nor is it a condition that you support my Patreon or PalPal.me campaigns–a lot of people who need prayer don’t have money, although I’m sure that people who have a lot of money still need prayer (not something I really know from personal experience). I am certainly grateful to those of you who do support my efforts in any way at all, but I need to assure those who cannot do so or cannot justify doing so that they will not be treated the worse for that.

My conditions are based on II Corinthians 1:11, which in the Updated New American Standard Bible reads

…you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

What I derive from that is the point that God wants us to agree in prayer, and answers prayers when more of us are agreeing, because that way when He answers there are more of us saying thank You to Him for the answer. That, though, means that if I am going to pray for you, I also have to know how God is answering those prayers. So this is how it works.

You must connect with me through Facebook. If we are not already “Friends” send a “Friend Request”, and I’ll approve it and ask how we’re connected. Just tell me that you read this post and wanted me to pray for you, along with some idea of who you are (for example, pastor, Christian musician, Christian gamer, reader of my other materials). I am betting that I will already have some notion of who most people who want my prayers are, but I don’t always connect names to people quickly, so at least jog my memory. I do not really do e-mail–every few months I download a few hundred letters, throw most of them away, and see if there’s anything important in what remains. Facebook is the way I communicate.
Tell me enough about your situation that I can pray intelligently. This is not Romper Room (and I pray for Sally, and Jeff, and Mary, and Mark….). If I’m to know how God answers these prayers, I have to be praying for something particular enough that you can tell me about the answer. I have a theological objection to those “unspoken” requests which I should probably discuss somewhere sometime, but as Paul says about people who pray in tongues in public meetings, if I don’t know what is being prayed, how can I say “amen”?
Which of course brings up the final condition. Probably about once a month I’m going to get a reminder to drop you a note to ask what is happening. That’s so you can tell me what good things God has done and I can give thanks for them, and so you can update me regarding what I ought to be praying. If I miss a month, don’t worry–I’m still praying. If you miss a month, don’t worry, I’ll keep praying for a few months without hearing anything. However, after a few months I’ll decide that you’re not answering and I’ll drop you from the list. I can’t very well give thanks to God for answers to prayers on your behalf if you don’t tell me what God has done on your behalf. You are, of course, welcome to drop me notes between my reminders, either to let me know about God’s answers or to redirect my prayers. I do not want your impersonal newsletter; I want to interact with you directly, to hear from you what God is doing. If it’s not worth a few minutes to do that, you don’t really want my prayers.

So that’s the offer. I should caveat that the only people for whom I pray every day are my wife and myself (she because she deserves it, I because I need it); how often I pray for you will depend on a lot of factors including how many people ask for prayer, how serious I perceive your need, and the limits of the program that manages the prayer list. Obviously I am offering to pray for individuals, but the offer also extends to individuals who want me to pray for a ministry they represent, such as their band, who thus are promising to keep me informed regarding the band. I also don’t promise that I won’t give you advice if I think you’re asking for prayer about something with which I can help; it’s free advice, and you can decide whether it’s worth as much as you paid for it without offending me. You can also ask me to stop praying for you (which I assume you would do if my monthly queries are irksome) and I’ll take you off the list.

I think that covers it. Any questions?

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Law and Politics, Music

#166: A Ghetto of Our Own

February 16, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #166, on the subject of A Ghetto of Our Own.

This is not about Christian music. It is about race and discrimination and prejudice and segregation. It only happens to start with Christian music. That doesn’t mean that what it says about Christian music is not true or valuable; it only means that it’s not the point here, and if you’re not interested in the Christian music field you should read that part anyway, because it’s the example.

When I started in Contemporary Christian Music, there was no airplay for it. The Christian radio stations in the northern parts of the United States considered The Bill Gaither Trio daring and progressive; those in the south played The Speers and Doug Oldman and other artists who were called “Southern Gospel” which meant country that sang about Jesus and avoided any of those modern rock-‘n’-roll tropes–The Imperials went too far, and particularly when they incorporated black singer Sherman Andrus in a “white” gospel band. “Black Gospel” was also out there somewhere, but mostly in paid programming on Sunday mornings broadcast live from a local “black” church. The dream of Christian “rock” fans was to have “our music”, Larry Norman, Love Song, Andre Crouch (although some would have niched him as “Contemporary Gospel” rather than “Contemporary Christian” or “Christian Rock”–already the fans were fragmenting) played on major secular radio stations–which in New York generally meant AM Top 40 like WABC or FM Rock like WNEW.

Denzel Washington, two-time Academy Award winner nominated again in 2017

There were a lot of reasons why that wasn’t going to happen, and there is solid evidence that radio station programmers were resistant to including any songs that mentioned God or Jesus in a positive context–but then, there were other reasons as well. I have the greatest of respect for the artists of those early years, and believe that their abilities were second to none. However, that was an era in which successful artists in the secular field were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a record, and those amounts were not available in the Christian market. Besides, the segregation of Christian music was already established–you never heard Southern Gospel on Country radio stations save perhaps on Sunday mornings, and stations that played Tony Randall and Frank Sinatra did not also play similar artists singing hymns. What we got instead, the big success, was our own radio stations–mostly small stations in the suburbs who could not compete with bigger city stations in the crowded metropolitan markets looking for a niche that would create an audience and sell advertising time. With the rise of the Jesus Movement, this was at least potentially promising, and such stations could also sell airtime to preachers in quarter-hour blocks to help cover the bills. They began appearing in the early mid seventies.

It wasn’t only in radio that Christian artists felt excluded. In 1969 the Gospel Music Association launched the Dove Awards, in essence Grammy Awards for Christian artists who couldn’t win real Grammies because of the perceived secular bias of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, although market share undoubtedly had a big part in that. Since some of the record labels producing Contemporary Christian artists had also been producing (and were continuing to produce) Inspirational and Southern and Black Gospel artists, the Dove Awards soon had categories for Christian Contemporary and Rock genres.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The expression Preachin’ to the choir refers to anyone delivering a message to people who already know it and agree with you. Politicians do it all the time: in the main, candidates for office are not trying to persuade you to their position, they are trying to convince you that they already agree with your position so you should vote for them. However, the Christian Contemporary music of the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by evangelistic music–songs whose focus was on persuading unbelievers to turn to Jesus–and the venues where you could hear these songs were all frequented almost exclusively by believers, people who had already embraced the message. (This is less true today, but more in the first part than the second: a substantial percentage of Christian Contemporary music is intended to deliver messages to believers, pastoral/worship and teaching music ministries, with only a small part being evangelistic.)

A guitarist/singer-songwriter named Mark Heard might have been the first to object to this situation in the music field. In the early 1980s he said that in America we were creating a Christian ghetto, that we were isolating ourselves from the secular world with Christian radio stations, Christian bookstores, Christian decorations, Christian television, all of it sold to Christians and ignored by the world. Heard took his music to Europe, where there were no Christian venues and the radio stations were all state-run, and focused on competing in the secular market there so that he could reach the secular audience. Then-major Christian artists Pat Terry and (band) Daniel Amos supported this and followed suit, attempting to create work that would break the Christian mold. However, there was very little crossover from Christian artists to the secular market, limited to people like Dan Peek whose first solo album had the boost in secular markets that he had been one of the principles in the Pop vocal band America, and his hit song All Things Are Possible was not so clearly a “Christian” song as others on the album. The Oakridge Boys had managed to crossover from Southern Gospel to Country, but only by abandoning all music with a Christian message becoming effectively a secular band, and when it was announced that Contemporary Christian superstar Amy Grant would be making a secular album (from which she did put a single on the Top 40 charts) there was an explosion of controversy among Christians who did not want to support her in “abandoning her faith” (which she clearly never did despite her rocky marital history).

Part of their argument was certainly that Christians talking to each other do not thereby reach the world, but there was another aspect to it. In creating our own ghetto, we compete with ourselves but inherently avoid competing with the rest of the world. On one level the Dove Awards and Christian Charts are a wonderful way for Christians to recognize the accomplishments of each other. On another level, it’s an admission that we are not good enough to compete in the world, to win Grammies or reach the top of the Top 40 chart–and possibly a decision that we are not going to try. We give awards to the best Christian musicians, and in doing so say that we do not need to be as good as secular musicians. We praise ourselves for being second-rate.

Perhaps now that I’ve put that forward, you can understand why it bothers me to see the racism expressed by programs like The American Black Film Festival Honors. Blacks and Hispanics in the United States have created awards to honor people who perform well but not well enough to earn Oscars, Emmies, Grammies, Tonies, and other awards that are not racially limited. Those who present the awards no doubt have the honest motivation of a belief that their people, “we”, are being snubbed by “them”, the people who nominate and choose the winners of those other awards. However, this “ghettoization”, these awards that exclude anyone who is not one of “us”, screams that “we” are not good enough to win awards without excluding those “others”. It’s like the women’s sports leagues–where there is at least some justification, in the fact that male upper body strength and greater average size give unfair advantages in many sports and co-ed contact sports can be at least uncomfortable. Yet when Maggie Dubois says that she is the women’s champion fencer and The Great Leslie easily disarms her and responds that it would have been impressive if she had been the men’s champion fencer, it expresses an attitude inherent in sexually segregated sports: women are not good enough to compete with men, and if they are ever to win they must exclude men from their competitions. So, too, racially-segregated awards have inherent in them the expression of the attitude that members of this race are not good enough to compete with everyone else, and so must have their own recognition ceremonies for “us” that exclude “them”.

Such awards are definitively racist, that is, inclusive/exclusive based on race; they are excused because they favor “minority” races. If there were an American White Film Festival award, there would be protests in the streets, but the fact that such programs as do exist favor blacks or Hispanics does not make them less racist. Worse, they create that same kind of creative ghetto, where members of a minority group are satisfied with being good enough to win these awards that don’t require them to compete with everyone else.

Incidentally, of the twenty actor nominees for the 2017 Oscars (Best and Best Supporting Actor and Actress Motion Picture Academy Awards), six are black–thirty percent. Given that the United States Census Bureau makes the black population of American less than half that–thirteen percent–that’s an excellent showing. Blacks do not need their own ghetto awards. It makes you look racist, and it makes you look inferior. You are not the latter, and should not be the former.

Bible and Theology, Music

#163: So You Want to Be a Christian Musician

February 9, 2017 M.J. 2 Comments

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #163, on the subject of So You Want to Be a Christian Musician.

I have been a Christian musician–performer, composer, arranger, founder and/or director of bands–for near half a century now.

It might be argued whether that alone puts me in a position to give advice on the subject. After all, although I have recorded an album, it would be debated whether I was ever a “successful” Christian musician. I am not in much demand on the circuit and never have been. However, from the time I was in high school, later in college, and then during five years as first a disk jockey and ultimately program director of a major Contemporary Christian Music radio station I talked to dozens, possibly scores, of successful Christian artists, and nearly always asked them that question: what advice do you, as a successful Christian musician, give to anyone who wants to do what you do. I asked such people as Noel Paul Stookey, Dan Peek, Phil Keaggy, Scott Wesley Brown, Glad, Brown Bannister, Chris Christian–well, I don’t even remember everyone I asked, let alone what they all said. However, four of them I do remember, and I will give you something of the gist of what they said for your consideration. I will also comment on that advice, because I think it worth contemplating. I also think, in retrospect, that it is probably good advice for anyone who knows what he wants to be or do, and particularly for those who want to pursue artistic endeavors.

Larry Norman, perhaps the original nationally known self-identified Christian rock musician

I will mention Barry McGuire first–probably the first truly prominent secular musician to become a leading contemporary Christian artist, who had been with The New Christie Minstrels, starred in the Broadway production Hair, and soloed with the hit Eve of Destruction, but whose signature song following his salvation was Happy Road–mostly because I do not think I can articulate what he told me. What I remember is that the concert somewhere near Boston had ended and he was out among the audience, mobbed by people, but he heard my question and focused his entire attention on addressing it, addressing me and the rest of the audience, as if the question genuinely mattered. What he said, and perhaps what he did, caused me upon returning home to write a song entitled Mountain, Mountain, about being what God made you to be instead of trying to be something you perceive to be great. That actually is a good starting point for this, but we will return to it.

I was one of several reporters interviewing B. J. Thomas at Creation ’83. At that time he was probably the most successful secular artist to turn to Christian music as an entertainer, his song Home Where I Belong introducing the singer of Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and I Can’t Stop This Feeling to a Christian audience, and he had a hard time in the Christian music field precisely because he was an entertainer, not a minister. What he said, though, was don’t think you missed your break, or that you are still waiting for your break to come. If you are diligent, many breaks will come to you, and if you are good you can make one of them work for you, and if you miss it, another will come.

Ted Sandquist was probably the original contemporary Christian worship leader, with songs like Eternally Grateful, All That I Can Do, and Lion of Judah. I’m afraid that when I caught up with him after a concert, his answer could have been a wonderful book, delivered orally in under a minute. He spoke about things he called scope and ministry, and to a large degree was the first person ever to get me thinking of some of the things I discussed recently in the music ministry series–along with whether your calling is to be nationally known or simply serve in a local congregation. In short, his advice was to think in terms of ministry, whether you are called to it, and what is the nature and extent of your calling. If you follow this web log, you have already seen the extensive materials I have written on that.

Finally, I caught up with Larry Norman after one of his concerts at Gordon College. Larry is probably the original nationally-known Christian rock musician, best known for I Wish We’d All Been Ready, Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation, and the album title Only Visiting This Planet. The intensity of his response was overwhelming, and the focus of it was in the question, why do you want this?

Before I address that further, I should mention two things about Larry that I learned separately from that. One is that he was known for a gift of discernment, that he could see things about people that they often did not recognize about themselves. It may well be that he would have given different advice to someone else, but that this was what he thought I needed to hear. The other is that he had a very hard life as a Christian rock musician. Often he would play a concert and after the fact be informed that “apparently the Lord did not provide” enough money to pay him. He was then criticized for subsequently insisting on signed contracts for concerts that could be enforced against those who did not pay what they agreed, and quite specific terms concerning what his hosts would provide such as accommodations. He rubbed shoulders with people like Paul McCartney, but he did not find the life at all glamorous or enriching. That might have impacted his view as well.

However, I think that there is a level to that advice that we all need to hear: Do not want that; it is not something to want.

It came to me recently, as I had again heard a story of some Christian band that had been formed to provide music for one event who then found themselves propelled to the top of the Christian music charts and sent on national and international tours. The famous story is that of Amy Grant, who at sixteen spent a bit of money on some studio time to record a song for her mother’s birthday, and the recording was heard by Christian record producers Brown Bannister and Chris Christian, who quickly signed her to a major Christian label recording contract and propelled her to stardom–perhaps the first contemporary Christian recording artist to crossover into secular success. God clearly sometimes chooses some people to be “successful” Christian artists who had made no effort to be that; it makes sense that He has a hand in choosing those whose success appears to be built on years of hard work. There are equally many stories we do not hear, of people who worked hard to achieve what never came, and of people who hoped maybe that one day lightning would strike, as it were, and they would be propelled to success, to whatever level of fame is found in Dove Awards and Christian music chart-toppers. If God wants you to be there, He will get you there; it may be that He wants you to work hard at your music and stay where you are, and it should be sufficient motivation for the work that God is pleased with it.

It is also the case that this is not something to want. The work of a “successful” Christian musician is hard work–constant travel, brief stays in strange places, one performance after another. I have seen how tired such people often are, but this is what they do, and they will do it again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It wreaks havoc with family life, as either you take your family with you to hotels or more commonly in a camper, or you leave them behind while you travel for weeks or sometimes months without them, sleeping in the “bus”, a modified camper shared with the rest of the band. Those who make it work either managed to reach a high enough level of success before marriage that they were able to do very short tours and fly to most events, or have other jobs frequently as pastors such that they finish concerts Saturday night and are in church Sunday morning. And the money is not all that good–better, perhaps, than it was for Christian artists a few decades back, but the entire music industry is changing, in a sense collapsing, so that even the major stars do not make what they once did.

Of course, it is not so much the money as the recognition, that you are on stage, people are listening to your songs on the radio and the Internet, you are traveling the world singing. That is also called fame. But then, fame in the entire music industry is not what it was–if you heard a list of the twenty most successful musicians in the world today, it is likely that you would not recognize several of the names simply because styles have fragmented, and no one is truly informed about rock, rap, country, Christian, and the wealth of other genres that command substantial but discrete audiences. Take it from me. I might not be a “successful” musician, but I am world famous–as a role playing game author and theorist, defender of hobby games, time travel theory writer, and general writer–and it has almost no cash value and very little impact on my daily life apart from that I have to do the work. Or hear Paul Simon. He tells a story of a night when he and Art Garfunkle were sitting in a car in a park under one of New York City’s many bridges, and a song came on the radio–their song, Sounds of Silence, which the disk jockey announced was now the number one song in the country, by Simon and Garfunkle. At that moment, Art Garfunkle said to him, “Gee, wherever those two guys are right now, it must be a real great party.” Being at the top of the chart doesn’t mean nothing, but it doesn’t mean much.

Of course, get enough fame, and you have to reorganize your life to insulate yourself against the crowds. You are not going to get that kind of fame doing this, and the admiration you do get will perhaps bring a smile to your face from time to time, but it’s going to prove to be much less than you imagined.

More on point, though, and connecting what Barry McGuire said to what Larry Norman said: this is not something you should want. What you should want is to know God, to become what He made you to be, and to seek to do what He wants you to do in life. If that includes being a famous or successful musician, He will bring you there; He won’t lead you where you want to go, though, only where He knows you will become the best you He made you to be. One thing I needed to learn over the years was that had I been a successful Christian musician early in my life I never would have been any of these other things–I never would have written the role playing game or become involved with the hobby gamers whose lives I have in some small way touched, never would have undertaken to write about time travel, never would have studied law or written about politics, never would have become chaplain of an international online organization, never would have done most of the things for which I am recognized. There was so much of who I am that I never would have discovered, that no one would have known, had God moved me in a straight line to what I always thought was the only thing I could do well–music. He wanted me to become the teacher, the writer, the influence that I am. I might have been a great musician, but I would never have been anything else.

Peter Hopper was the drummer in a band called Rock Garden, who played their penultimate concert at Carnegie Hall. I never talked with him despite having a more than passing acquaintance with the band’s rhythm guitarist Dennis Mullins, but a few weeks after that concert, after they had played their farewell concert, I heard him speak about it. It was what he had wanted all his life, and as he sat on stage playing for the crowd he looked around and said, is this really what I wanted? Why did I want this? He told us that God promises that if we seek Him He will give us the desires of our heart, and said that in his experience God had done that, given him what he had always wanted, so he would be able to see how empty it really was, and how the only thing worth desiring was God.

So don’t want this. Don’t want to be a musician, or anything else for that matter. Want to know God, and to find His path for you. That’s the only desire in life that is guaranteed to be fulfilled and to satisfy. It is also the only path that will bring you anywhere worth being.

Bible and Theology, Law and Politics

#159: To Compassion International

January 26, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #159, on the subject of To Compassion International.

Compassion International is shutting down all of its operations in India because the Indian government has been objecting to aid coming from outside India for relief efforts. There is evidence that it is because Hindu nationalists are trying to shut down Christian ministries; India is now 15th on the Open Doors’ list of places where it is hardest to be Christian.

Someone has said that when God closes a door, He often opens a window. I’m sure that the organization has long honed its methods, and has a clear idea of how to do what they do to make it work–but now it is not working in India, and they may have to rethink their approach there. The words “creative financing” and “creative accounting” sometimes have an “iffy” sense to them, but I think in the present situation the organization needs to be creative in how they deliver their aid to those children.

I would like to make a suggestion that might get them thinking in a workable direction.

India certainly has a tourist industry. We know that people travel to see the Taj Mahal and other sites within the country. At present they are turning away aid connected to a Christian ministry–but it is doubtful whether they would ever be turning away tourist dollars. I am thinking that if Compassion International set up facilities in India modeled on hotels or restaurants or other tourist services, then said they were part of the tourism industry but listed the rooms at exhorbitant prices, such a model might work. Couriers could bring money into the country and “pay” the hotel, which could then use the money to “purchase” supplies at low rates from an international supplier (Compassion International). Native workers for the organization would become employees of these facilities, and the children they wish to help could be listed in any of several ways so that they would receive the benefits–employees, dependents, stockholders, whatever method works under Indian law.

Let us suppose that we list the children as employees of the hotel. A courier arrives, checks in as a guest and stays overnight, paying the thousands of dollars that would otherwise have been spent on child care to the hotel perhaps by electronic transfer from the organization’s account to the hotel’s account, which might be in an international bank (depending on Indian law). The hotel then spends most of that to buy food and supplies from its suppliers, and pays the children an official wage. The children would be required to do the work of attending school (one of the benefits currently provided by Compassion International to its children), and school attendance would include free meals for the school day, and the employee benefits package would include fully-paid medical care. “Uniforms”, that is, free clothing, would also be provided for school and work. Some of the older children could be given tasks related to running the operation, such as working in the kitchen or cleaning the facilities, so that there is actual labor being performed by the employees. Sponsors who currently are seen as donating money to provide benefits for individual children would be recouched, in legal terms, as providing for the salary and benefits of individual child employees. In the United States they would continue donating to a non-profit charitable organization; that organization in turn would be, on the books, investing capital in a for profit corporation in a foreign country that is operating at a constant loss. In doing this, the organization manages to deliver its care, much the same care as it is currently delivering, and the Indian government cannot prevent that care from being delivered without creating a lot of laws that are going to severely negatively impact its tourism trade.

Certainly the system would incur taxes and tariffs, but how serious can we be about wanting to help these poor people if we are unwilling to deal with such government regulations and costs? There might be official industry standards to meet, but we deal with those problems in our own country–soup kitchens and homeless shelters are required to meet commercial facilities standards in order to deliver services to the homeless, and while it is an impediment to meeting those needs it is one that we overcome regularly.

I am not on the ground in India; I don’t know how severe or complex the problems actually are. I think, though, that we are looking at some of the poorest people in the world, and I understand it is one of Compassion International’s largest national efforts, so I am hoping that if they give it some consideration they can find a way to continue delivering aid to these starving children within the strictures being imposed by the government and whatever other opponents they face.

I pray that they will find a way.

Law and Politics

#158: Show Me Religious Freedom

January 21, 2017 M.J. 1 Comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #158, on the subject of Show Me Religious Freedom.

It appears that Missouri has become a battleground for issues of church-state relations. During the election we noted in web log post #126: Equity and Religion that there was a ballot issue related to a cigarette tax to fund childhood education which included controversial language permitting such funds to go to programs sponsored by religious institutions or groups. The measure was soundly defeated, incidently (59% to 40%), but whether that was due to opposition to the almost unnoticed clause about funding religious groups or to the near one thousand percent increase in the cigarette tax can’t be known. The state is back in the news on the religion subject, as a lawsuit between the state and a church school is going to be heard by the United States Supreme Court this year.

The case is Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Pauley, and SCOTUSblog nicely summarizes the issue as

Whether the exclusion of churches from an otherwise neutral and secular aid program violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses when the state has no valid Establishment Clause concern.

But perhaps that will make more sense if we put some detail to it.

Missouri runs a program that collects used tires and recycles them into playground surfacing material, providing schools and other facilities with a durable but softer play surface. The program is funded by a surcharge on new tires–technically tax money dedicated to the purpose of handling scrap tires. Trinity Lutheran Church runs a school which has a playground used by the students but also by neighborhood children. They applied to the program to resurface that playground with the safer materials, but were refused on the grounds of a church-state issue.

Some would argue that the “separation of church and state” is on the state’s side in this, but that is not in the Constitution. The Establishment Clause means only that the government cannot show favoritism between various religious and non-religious organizations; it can’t promote any specific religion, nor can it oppose any specific religion. It will be argued as to whether providing playground surfacing materials to a church-run school might be promoting that church, but that is not all that is at stake. Missouri is one of thirty-eight states which have what is known as a “Blaine Amendment”, after Maine Senator James G. Blaine who in 1875 proposed an amendment to the United States Constitution along these lines. The Constitutional amendment proposal failed, but the majority of states adapted the concept to a variety of state constitutional amendments which were adopted and are still the law in those states.

The mindset of the nineteenth century was so very different from ours today that it is difficult to grasp. If ever the United States was a “Christian nation” (I do not believe such an entity ever has or even can exist), it was so then. Protestant denominations were separated from each other in friendly competition, and often worked together in evangelistic outreach; we had come through two “Great Awakenings” from which the vast majority of Americans, and particularly those who were neither Jewish nor recent immigrants (such as the Chinese in California), were Christians in Protestant churches. However, those new immigrants–particularly the Irish and the Italians–were predominantly Roman Catholic, and Protestants still feared Catholicism, and not entirely unreasonably. The fear arose because in countries dominated by Catholicism governments were perceived as following the dictates of the church–a fear which remained in this country until then Presidential candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy made his September 1960 speech on the subject. As a result, Blaine was the tip of an iceberg of an effort to prevent Catholicism from conquering America through the democratic process, perceived as in effect making the Pope our de facto emperor. (We see similar efforts today reacting to the fear that Islamic immigrants will conquer by democratic process and impose Sharia Law on America.)

The word used was “sectarian”, and we might find that word inappropriate for its meaning. After all, even at the dawn of the 1960s public school classes were opened with prayer and a reading from the Bible. However, these were Protestant prayers, prayers that would have been embraced by every denomination from Episcopalian to Lutheran to Presbyterian to Baptist to Pentecostal. They were thus viewed as non-sectarian, not preferring any one Christian denomination over any other. Up until Pope John XXIII, Catholicism regarded all Protestants as condemned heretics (and it was more recently than that that the church has reached the position that there might be salvation outside the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches). That was seen as the divisive position; the Protestant’s rejection of that was not seen as divisive, because Protestants were otherwise united and respected each other’s beliefs, at least in this country.

Blaine’s effort was attempting to prevent state money from going to Catholic education (“sectarian schools”). Missouri’s version is considerably more strict. It reads:

That no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion, or in aid of any priest, preacher, minister or teacher thereof, as such; and that no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made against any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship.

Arguably, read strictly this would prevent underpaid teachers in private religious schools from receiving food stamps or Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or prevent unemployed ordained ministers from getting welfare or social security. No one has made that argument to this point; such programs were then not even imagined.

So this is what the First Amendment actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The sense is that the government will not interfere with the opinions of the people, or the expression thereof. In a sense, the government has to be “opinion blind”–it can’t decline to give food stamps to a member of the Libertarian Party, or refuse to hire someone who previously worked for a Catholic charity, or decide whether someone can speak at a public meeting based on whether he was once Boy Scout or Mason or Gideon.

It would also seem to mean that the government cannot decide that an organization cannot receive public funds for a strictly secular purpose based on whether it is a religious organization.

Let us for the moment take the name out of this case. Let us suppose that the plaintiff is the Columbia Community School. It happens to be run by the Columbia Community Fellowship, but is incorporated separately as an educational institution. Thus the application for materials from the program says that the applicant is “Columbia Community School”. The question suddenly becomes whether the people who make the decision have the right to ask whether “Columbia Community School” is a religious organization–which under our hypothetical it is, but you would not know that from the name on the application. Would it be a violation of the first amendment for the government to inquire whether the school is a religious organization? Two points should by raised. One is that it is established that the playground is used by children in the neighborhood who have no connection to the school; the other is that many public and private schools rent or even lend their facilities to groups for meetings some of which use these facilities for religious worship services–a use which the courts have agreed is legitimate, and indeed that it would be unconsitutional to forbid such use solely on the basis that publicly owned properties are being used by private individuals for religious purposes on the same terms that they are being used by other organizations for other purposes. It thus seems that it would be illegal to ask the question, and the only reason the issue exists here is that we assume an organization with the words “Trinity”, “Lutheran”, and “Church” in the name is a religious organization. While that seems a safe assumption, it is as prejudicial as assuming that someone with the given name “Ebony” or “Tyrone” must be black.

Let us also consider this aspect of the separation of the organization from the purpose. Brigham Young University is clearly connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons). It also receives government grants for scientific research. Should the fact that the school was founded by a religious organization for religious purposes disqualify it from receiving such monies? If so, should the same rule apply to schools like Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame? Patently it is legitimate use of government money to support academic research in secular fields, even if performed by religious persons at religious institutions.

It appears that the only sane conclusion here is that the government cannot discriminate against religious persons or institutions in the disbursement of aid for secular purposes. We might argue that there is a fungible resources issue, that the money the church does not have to spend on playground resurfacing is money they can use for religious purposes, but ultimately the only use that this paving material has is to create safer play surfaces for children, and the only way the church can get that material is through the government program, so denying it would be making “a law respecting an establishment of religion”, clearly forbidden by the Bill of Rights.

The Blaine Amendment, at least in the form it has in Missouri, is unconstitutional.

We’ll see whether the Supreme Court agrees with that later this year.

Bible and Theology, Music

#151: A Musician’s Resume

January 1, 2017 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #151, on the subject of A Musician’s Resume.

I am a musician–always have been, a music major in high school, my kindergarten teacher dubbed me her “little songbird”, and I tell people that English is my second language. I am good at it (I do not believe God intends for us to denigrate our abilities by lying)–but I don’t get as many opportunities to do something with it as I would like.

I belong to several online Christian musician groups, and periodically I see notices seeking someone for a band. I am always a bit hesitant as to how to respond to these. For one thing, I am particularly bad at self-promotion and do not like to do it; for another, I have sometimes been rejected without explanation or, worse, completely ignored, and that hurts. (Rejected with an explanation is always better, even if the explanation is offensive.) Beyond that, well, when you have as much experience in the Christian music field as I have, you also have a lot of questions going into just about any opportunity. Sometimes I think that the people trying to form bands haven’t really thought through any of it, and the questions confuse them. So to resolve all of these matters, I decided I would put details about my experience, abilities, and hopes here, and in future refer people here who want to know more about me.

This is something of a confusing and oversized page, because it really is attempting to accomplish three different goals:

Convey something of who I am to to anyone seeking musicians for solo appearances;
Open the door to musicians who might be interested in becoming part of a reformed Collision;
Communicate my availability to any band looking for someone with one or more of my talents.

While those goals are not completely compatible, they overlap sufficiently that three separate pages would be highly redundant. Thus there is much here that is of no interest to persons in connection with any one of those, but hopefully everything that any of them would want to know is here.

It seemed best to begin with a list of bands in which I have been a member, and what my part in it was. I am undoubtedly omitting a number of them, but the list is extensive even so. I fronted [1] for all of these, but always shared the position with other members of the band.

Band Experience

The Last Psalm, evangelism pop-rock band; founder, director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and second lead guitars, keyboards.
The Agape Singers, Luther College official ministry and promotional ensemble; student director, soloist and supporting vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, contributing composer/arranger.
Jacob’s Well, pop-rock band with unfocused ministry for playing local coffeehouses; contributing composer/arranger, lead and supporting vocals, bass guitar.
Aurora, formed to support evangelistic outreach meetings; contributing composer/arranger, supporting vocals, bass guitar.
Topsfield Fair Evangelism Band, semi-official Gordon College ministry band formed for evangelistic support; contributing composer/arranger, lead and supporting vocals, bass guitar.
TerraNova, evangelism pop/rock band; director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and second lead guitars, second bass guitar, saxophone.
Cardiac Output, teaching ministry band; founder, director, arranger, composer, lead and supporting vocals, electric rhythm and lead guitar.
7dB, unofficial worship band at the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Shiloh which was exploring other ministry directions; co-founder, co-director, arranger, contributing composer, supporting vocals, third guitar (rhythm, lead, and impact), second bass guitar, keyboards, flute.
Collision, evangelism rock band arising from 7dB dissolution; co-founder, director, arranger, primary composer, lead and supporting vocals, instruments as 7dB but eventually moving to bass guitar only.
Silver Lake Community Church Worship Band, not ever really given a name, I was asked to help the worship leader organize musicians for leading music in services; directed as a vehicle of teaching him to direct, supporting vocals, bass guitar, rhythm and lead guitars, piano.

I have also done a substantial amount of solo work [2], and filled in as requested in other bands, most recently on lead/rhythm guitar or bass guitar for several of the monthly Relentless worship services at the Bridgeton Assembly of God church.

Notes on Musical Abilities

As a composer, I have written hundreds of songs in many styles, from choral to rock to country to jazz. Dozens of these are still in my repertoire. I tend to write when I have the opportunity to perform, crafting songs to fit the available ensemble.
I generally have avoided doing covers without a good reason (I consider audience participation a valid reason), and so as an arranger I have always found a way to make any song significantly different from the original. I am particularly good with vocals, having worked with as many as six parts or as few as two.
My vocals are tenor–I was first tenor in New Jersey All-state Chorus twice, and have had voice classes and lessons including a session with one of the top voice teachers in the country; I have coached voice. My comfortable range runs from low C (middle of bass clef) to high A (middle of treble clef); my effectively useful range extends maybe a minor third above that, a fifth below it. I am very good on pitch and blend, and can keep a part well enough that if someone else loses theirs I can jump to it to put them right and then return to mine.
Some people rave about my bass guitar playing; it seems easy to me, except when I have to play a complicated part and sing a different complicated part at the same time. I manage. I have played several different kinds of bass guitars over the decades, but currently own a Carlo Robelli six-string which I tune to B Standard; I probably have access to a four-string acoustic bass guitar if needed.
I am an excellent rhythm guitarist who can name any chord you can play and probably play any chord you can name. I finger pick and chord frill easily and understand how the position of the chord can impact the flavor of the music. I am a passable lead guitarist who prefers to let someone else do the lead work and coach them if they need it, providing second lead support for double leads, back-and-forths, and similar passages. I have never been able to find (or afford) effects boxes that I liked/could use, but I have done some cry off the guitar itself, and designed and built a channel changer box I use to switch to a louder channel on the amplifier as needed. I have or have access to several electric guitars, none of them noteworthy, and one non-electrified acoustic guitar.
I consider my keyboards playing passable, useful for a band that doesn’t need a full-on keyboard player but wants keyboards for occasional use. I’ve taught beginner piano and coached more experienced players in understanding different keyboarding styles; I write keyboard parts when necessary for a particular player to capture a particular sound. Some of my songs were written on and for the piano as the primary instrument.
As to other instruments, flute and saxophone have been mentioned, and there are a score of others I have played and could play again. My saxophone is badly in need of repair, but I have access to flute, violin, viola, ocarina, dulcimer, and probably other instruments I’m not remembering.

If you hand me an instrument I’ve never seen before, within an hour I will play you a song I wrote for it. I’ve done it with the fife, tin whistle, recorder, dulcimer, and several other instruments. I am no longer very good at tuba and don’t have one, and my trumpet playing has never been good and the trumpet needs repair, but if you’re looking for someone who can fill in with odd instruments, I probably fit the bill.

Equipment

As mentioned, I have or have access to a six-string bass, a couple of six-string guitars, a flute, and several other miscellaneous instruments; I also have access to a midi keyboard (seventy-six keys). I have several amplifiers and quite a few speakers, a few low-end microphones, a sixteen channel mixing board, and miscellaneous equipment such as cables and mic stands.

I also have a sound guy who will probably come with me (Hi, Mike) who has a fair amount of equipment as well, and knows people from whom he can borrow more.

Minstry Considerations

I have written extensively about the relationship between music and ministry in previous entries on this web log; I have included a list of relevant articles at the end. My own ministry is specifically that of teacher. Although I would hope that would be integrated into whatever is ahead, I have long considered evangelistic bands very important and have worked with many, and I have also worked with pastoral/worship ministry bands. If I’m joining your band, I’m supporting your ministry.

All of the previously mentioned bands were ministry bands. I have undergraduate degrees in Biblical Studies from Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts (formerly) in Teaneck, NJ, and Gordon College in Wenham, MA (plus a Juris Doctore from Widener University School of Law, and a lapsed membership in Mensa). For about the past two decades I have been the Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild, an international interdenominational Christian organization; I have published several books on Christian life, most famously Faith and Gaming about integrating our leisure activities with our Christianity. I taught Biblical Studies at a fledgeling Bible College in Pitman [3], and continue to do so online through the auspices of the Christian Gamers Guild.

I was an on-air personality on one of the nation’s leading Contemporary Christian Radio stations [4] for half a decade, where I interviewed many artists and others in the Christian music industry, taught Bible online, and otherwise ministered to the listeners.

My Hopes and Expectations

I have done a lot of solo work, and am certainly willing to sing and play solo anywhere that wants me. It is not what I prefer for two primary reasons. The more important is that it is so limiting, because there is only so much one person who is not able to use computer-generated musical accompaniment can do alone on stage. The lesser is that I don’t like to feel like I’m putting myself forward, so I insist on sharing the stage and the spotlight with others. I have long told my band members that everyone in the band is there to make everyone else in the band look good, not to worry about how they themselves look because that’s the responsibility of everyone else in the band. It’s easier to do that if there’s actually a band, and I’m not alone in the spotlight. When I do solo appearances, I try to include some time teaching, because that is ultimately my ministry.[5]

If I “had my druthers, I’druther” reform Collision. For one thing, the band has a name and a following including an extant album. For another, I like the concept, the minstry purposes, the goals. But I’m not wedded to this, and if someone is interested in including me in whatever ministry they are doing, that’s something I will seriously consider.

The vision for Collision is to be the band people tell other people they need to hear, to do music that is on the rock side of contemporary, and to use it to proclaim the gospel as an evangelistic outreach. My expectations are that everyone plays an instrument; I’d like several vocalists, but understand that not everyone can sing. The ideal instrumentation was conceived as lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums, and a “fifth instrument” that floats between keyboards and other instruments as needed; at our height we replaced the rhythm guitar with keyboards quite well, and lost the fifth instrument, but ran two voices (we were adding a rhythm guitar/vocalist just before we started losing people). Again, though, it’s flexible: if the Lord provides a different collection of musicians, that’s what we will use.

I expect that any Christian band will have some ministry purpose, and will have some understanding of what that purpose is, sufficient to articulate it to me.

My Limitations

I am getting old and have had two hernia operations; I can’t easily roadie the heavy equipment anymore, although I do have a hand truck to help with that. I also struggle with asthma, and so have to avoid smoke, dust, and pollen as much as possible so I can keep breathing. It also limits my physical exertions somewhat, but not as much as it might.
I am terrible at self-promotion. I am not a salesman.
I do not have a space for a band to practice. Collision practiced in my living room when we did not have a drummer, but with the drummer we had to set up on the front deck, which is very much weather-sensitive. Whatever we do, we will have to practice somewhere else.
I am located just outside Bridgeton, New Jersey (Hopewell Township), a stone’s throw from the Delaware Bay if you’re Sandy Kofax. I can get transportation, but probably can’t travel much farther than an hour for weekly rehearsals, less for more frequent ones. Otherwise, my schedule can be kept fairly open, and I can almost always be where I promise to be (e.g., barring medical emergencies and transportation failures). I expect that I would be able to arrange to tour, if the tour was going to pay for itself.

I have worked with seasoned professionals, and have trained rank amateurs, and am open to discussing options with anyone who thinks I might be good for whatever they are doing, or that they might like to work with me.

My Questions

Where and when do you expect to practice?
What kind of music are you doing, and are you open to including compositions by the members?
What is your sense of your ministry, your ministry goals?
What are your hopes for the band’s future–are you wanting to stay local, hoping to go national, or what?
How is the band organized–is there one person who makes all the decisions, or two or three people who are in charge jointly, or is it the theory that all the members participate in all the decisions? Or indeed, are different aspects overseen by different members–one musical director, one financial manager, one booking agent, and so forth?

So if you think I’m your guy, be ready to answer those questions and get in touch with me.

*****

Here are those hopefully helpful articles about Christian music and ministry:

#75: Musical Influences considers the artists who have had the most impact on my style.
#95: Music Ministry Disconnect prefaces a series on music ministries by explaining that not all Christians who are musicians are necessarily in music ministry.
#97: Ministry Calling discusses how to recognize whether you are called to ministry.
#98: What Is a Minister? explains the five types of ministries listed in Ephesians 4.
#99: Music Ministry of an Apostle explains what apostolic ministry really is, and how music might fit into such a ministry.
#101: Prophetic Music Ministry attempts to compile what we know about New Testament prophets and how that might relate to the use of music.
#102: Music and the Evangelist Ministry shows how music is used by evangelists.
#103: Music Ministry of the Pastor describes the pastoral use of music, with some attention particularly to worship music.
#106: The Teacher Music Ministry, my own calling, is explained with reference to the use of music.
#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries concludes the series with a discussion of how music might be used to minister outside of these callings.
#109: Simple Songs talks about why worship music tends to be simplistic, as part of the purpose of that ministry.

*****

Footnotes:

1 I use the word “fronted” to mean that I would speak to the audience, such as introducing songs and band members; it also usually included sharing some teaching or testimony.
2 When I perform solo I usually play an acoustic guitar and/or an acoustic piano if one is available on site; I sometimes play an electric guitar and/or electric piano.
3 The school was named The Institute of the Great Commission, and was started by a local church named The Rock; I taught one term, but then a church split undercut the funding and the school laid off half of the four-member faculty.
4 WNNN-FM, licensed to Canton, NJ, with studios in Salem. Sometime in the late 1970s it was reportedly number twelve on a list of such stations, and when I was program director I was informed by one of the major label radio relations people that we were one of the fifty stations she contacted every week. It was sold and pirated for parts a few years after my departure.
5 My teaching is readily available on many posts on this web log, but #121: The Christian and the Law is particularly significant as an example of a teaching from a concert, and #88: Sheep and Goats as something I taught at a service which was not a concert.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Elections, Games, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning, Music, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

#150: 2016 Retrospective

December 31, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #150, on the subject of 2016 Retrospective.

Periodically I try to look back over some period of time and review what I have published, and the end of the year is a good time to do this. Thus before the new year begins I am offering you a reminder of articles you might have seen–or might have missed–over the past twelve months. I am not going to recall them all. For one thing, that would be far too many, and it in some cases will be easier to point to another location where certain categories of articles are indexed (which will appear more obvious as we progress). For another, although we did this a year ago in web log post #34: Happy Old Year, we also did it late in March in #70: Writing Backwards and Forwards, when we had finished posting Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel. So we will begin with the last third of March, and will reference some articles through indices and other sources.

I have divided articles into the categories which I thought most appropriate to them. Many of these articles are reasonably in two or more categories–articles related to music often relate to writing, or Bible and theology; Bible and politics articles sometimes are nearly interchangeable. I, of course, think it is all worth reading; I hope you think it at least worth considering reading.

I should also explain those odd six-digit numbers for anyone for whom they are not obvious, because they are at least non-standard. They are YYMMDD, that is, year, month, and day of the date of publication of each article, each represented by two digits. Thus the first one which appears, 160325, represents this year 2016, the third month March, and the twenty-fifth day.

Let’s start with writings about writing.

There is quite a bit that should be in this category. After all, that previous retrospective post appeared as we finished posting that first novel, and we have since posted the second, all one hundred sixty-two chapters of which are indexed in their own website section, Old Verses New. If you’ve not read the novels, you have some catching up to do. I also published one more behind-the-writings post on that first novel, #71: Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One 160325, to cover notes unearthed in an old file on the hard drive.

Concurrent with the release of those second novel chapters there were again behind-the-writings posts, this time each covering nine consecutive chapters and hitting the web log every two weeks. Although they are all linked from that table-of-contents page, since they are web log posts I am listing them here: #74: Another Novel 160421; #78: Novel Fears 160506; #82: Novel Developments 160519; #86: Novel Conflicts 160602; #89: Novel Confrontations 160623; #91: Novel Mysteries 160707; #94: Novel Meetings 160721; #100: Novel Settling 160804; #104: Novel Learning 160818; #110: Character Redirects 160901;
#113: Character Movements 160916;
#116: Character Missions 160929;
#119: Character Projects 161013;
#122: Character Partings 161027; #128: Character Gatherings 161110; #134: Versers in Space 161124; #142: Characters Unite 161208; and #148: Characters Succeed 161222.

I have also added a Novel Support Section which at this point contains character sheets for several of the characters in the first novel and one in the second; also, if you have enjoyed reading the novels and have not seen #149: Toward the Third Novel 161223, it is a must-read.

Also on the subject of writing, I discussed what was required for someone to be identified as an “author” in, appropriately, #72: Being an Author 160410. I addressed #118: Dry Spells 161012 and how to deal with them, and gave some advice on #132: Writing Horror 161116. There was also one fun Multiverser story which had been at Dice Tales years ago which I revived here, #146: Chris and the Teleporting Spaceships 161220

I struggled with where on this list to put #120: Giving Offense 161014. It deals with political issues of sexuality and involves a bit of theological perspective, but ultimately is about the concept of tolerance and how we handle disagreements.

It should be mentioned that not everything I write is here at M. J. Young Net; I write a bit about writing in my Goodreads book reviews.

Of course, I also wrote a fair amount of Bible and Theology material.

Part of it was apologetic, that is, discussing the reasons for belief and answers to the arguments against it. In this category we have #73: Authenticity of the New Testament Accounts 160413, #76: Intelligent Simulation 160424 (specifically addressing an incongruity between denying the possibility of “Intelligent Design” while accepting that the universe might be the equivalent of a computer program), and #84: Man-made Religion 160527 (addressing the charge that the fact all religions are different proves none are true).

Other pages are more Bible or theology questions, such as #88: Sheep and Goats 160617, #90: Footnotes on Guidance 160625, #121: The Christian and the Law 161022, and #133: Your Sunday Best 161117 (on why people dress up for church).

#114: St. Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles 160917 is probably a bit of both, as it is a response to a criticism of Christian faith (specifically the Roman Catholic Church, but impacting all of us).

There was also a short miniseries of posts about the first chapter of Romans, the sin and punishment it presents, and how we as believers should respond. It appeared in four parts: #138: The Sin of Romans I 161204, #139: Immorality in Romans I 161205, #140: Societal Implications of Romans I 161206, and #141: The Solution to the Romans I Problem 161207.

Again, not everything I wrote is here. The Faith and Gaming series and related materials including some from The Way, the Truth, and the Dice are being republished at the Christian Gamers Guild; to date, twenty-six such articles have appeared, but more are on the way including one written recently (a rules set for what I think might be a Christian game) which I debated posting here but decided to give to them as fresh content. Meanwhile, the Chaplain’s Bible Study continues, having completed I & II Peter and now entering the last chapter of I John.

Again, some posts which are listed below as political are closely connected to principles of faith; after all, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are inextricably connected. Also, quite a few of the music posts are also Bible or theology posts, since I have been involved in Christian music for decades.

So Music will be the next subject.

Since it is something people ask musicians, I decided to give some thought and put some words to #75: Musical Influences 160423, the artists who have impacted my composing, arranging, and performances.

I also reached into my memories of being in radio, how it applies to being a musician and to being a writer, in #77: Radio Activity 160427.

I wrote a miniseries about ministry and music, what it means to be a minister and how different kinds of ministries integrate music. It began by saying not all Christian musicians are necessarily ministers in #95: Music Ministry Disconnect 160724, and then continued with #97: Ministry Calling 160728, #98: What Is a Minister? 160730, #99: Music Ministry of an Apostle 160803, #101: Prophetic Music Ministry 160808, #102: Music and the Evangelist Ministry 160812, #103: Music Ministry of the Pastor 160814, #106: The Teacher Music Ministry 160821, and
#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries 160824. As something of an addendum, I posted #109: Simple Songs 160827, a discussion of why so many currently popular songs seem to be musically very basic, and why given their purpose that is an essential feature.

In related areas, I offered #111: A Partial History of the Audio Recording Industry 160903 explaining why recored companies are failing, #129: Eulogy for the Record Album 161111 discussing why this is becoming a lost art form, and #147: Traditional versus Contemporary Music 161221 on the perennial argument in churches about what kinds of songs are appropriate.

The lyrics to my song Free 161017 were added to the site, because it was referenced in one of the articles and I thought the readers should be able to find them if they wished.

There were quite a few articles about Law and Politics, although despite the fact that this was an “election year” (of course, there are elections every year, but this one was special), most of them were not really about that. By March the Presidential race had devolved into such utter nonsense that there was little chance of making sense of it, so I stopped writing about it after talking about Ridiculous Republicans and Dizzying Democrats.

Some were, of course. These included the self-explanatory titles #123: The 2016 Election in New Jersey 161104, #124: The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions 161105, #125: My Presidential Fears 161106, and #127: New Jersey 2016 Election Results 161109, and a few others including #126: Equity and Religion 161107 about an argument in Missouri concerning whether it should be legal to give state money to child care and preschool services affiliated with religious groups, and #131: The Fat Lady Sings 161114, #136: Recounting Nonsense 161128, and #143: A Geographical Look at the Election 161217, considering the aftermath of the election and the cries to change the outcome.

We had a number of pages connected to the new sexual revolution, including #79: Normal Promiscuity 160507, #83: Help! I’m a Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body! 160521, and #115: Disregarding Facts About Sexual Preference 160926.

Other topics loosely under discrimination include #87: Spanish Ice Cream 160616 (about whether a well-known shop can refuse to take orders in languages other than English), #130: Economics and Racism 161112 (about how and why unemployment stimulates racist attitudes), and #135: What Racism Is 161127 (explaining why it is possible for blacks to have racist attitudes toward whites). Several with connections to law and economics include #105: Forced Philanthropy 160820 (taxing those with more to give to those with less), #108: The Value of Ostentation 160826 (arguing that the purchase of expensive baubles by the rich is good for the poor), #137: Conservative Penny-pinching 161023 (discussing spending cuts), and #145: The New Internet Tax Law 161219 (about how Colorado has gotten around the problem of charging sales tax on Internet purchases).

A few other topics were hit, including one on freedom of speech and religion called #144: Shutting Off the Jukebox 161218, one on scare tactics used to promote policy entitled #80: Environmental Blackmail 160508, and one in which court decisions in recent immigration cases seem likely to impact the future of legalized marijuana, called #96: Federal Non-enforcement 160727.

Of course Temporal Anomalies is a popular subject among the readers; the budget has been constraining of late, so we have not done the number of analyses we would like, but we did post a full analysis of Time Lapse 160402. We also reported on #85: Time Travel Coming on Television 160528, and tackled two related issues, #81: The Grandfather Paradox Problem 160515 and #117: The Prime Universe 160930.

We have a number of other posts that we’re categorizing as Logic/Miscellany, mostly because they otherwise defy categorization (or, perhaps, become categories with single items within them). #92: Electronic Tyranny 060708 is a response to someone’s suggestion that we need to break away from social media to get our lives back. #93: What Is a Friend? 060720 presents two concepts of the word, and my own preference on that. #112: Isn’t It Obvious? 160904 is really just a couple of real life problems with logical solutions. I also did a product review of an old washing machine that was once new, Notes on a Maytag Centennial Washing Machine 160424.

Although it does not involve much writing, with tongue planted firmly in cheek I offer Gazebos in the Wild, a Pinterest board which posts photographs with taxonomies attempting to capture and identify these dangerous wild creatures in their natural habitats. You would have to have heard the story of Eric and the Gazebo for that to be funny, I think.

Of course, I post on social media, but the interesting ones are on Patreon, and mostly because I include notes on projects still ahead and life issues impeding them. As 2017 arrives, I expect to continue writing and posting–I already have two drafts, one on music and the other on breaking bad habits. I invite your feedback.

Bible and Theology, Logic and Reasoning

#114: Saint Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles

September 17, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #114, on the subject of Saint Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles.

You probably have already heard that the woman known to most of us as Mother Teresa is now officially Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

The first I saw it was in an article critical of the Roman Catholic Church, in the Salt Lake Tribune. My initial glance at the piece noted that it somehow connected the canonization of this world-respected woman to the issue of pedophilia among the priesthood, and I thought it was going to say that an organization which so poorly handled that situation had no business making people saints. I was musing on that, but I hate it when people criticize my articles without having read them, so I went back to read it completely and discovered that his complaint, while I think just as wrong-headed, was much more subtle.

It is of course rather easy to criticize the church for its handling of these pedophile cases, but difficult to see from their perspective. After all, they’re older and larger than most countries, consider their priests something like diplomatic envoys to everywhere in the world, and have a long history of handling their own problems internally. Add to that the necessity of balancing justice with mercy, the concerns for the sinners as much as for the victims, and the awareness that the quickest way for an ordinary parishoner to remove an unwanted priest is to make sexual allegations against him, and you’ve got a very difficult situation. It is thus easy to say that they handled it poorly–but not so simple to be certain that any of us would have handled it better. That, though, was not what the article was addressing.

It is also a mistake to think that the Roman Catholic Church “makes” people Saints. Canonization is rather more a process of identifying those who are. There are few people in the world, perhaps of any faith, who would say that Teresa was not a saint. She certainly fit the standards most Protestants hold: she loved Jesus so much that she abandoned all possibility for a “normal” comfortable western life in order to bring the love of God to some of the most impoverished and spiritually needy people on earth. Many ordinary Catholics were pressing for the Vatican to say officially what they believed unofficially. The problem was that the Roman Catholic canonization process has a requirement that to be recognized officially as a Capital-S Saint an individual must have performed miracles. At least two must be certified by Vatican investigators.

As one of my Protestant friends said, she should be credited with the miracle of getting funding for so unglamorous a work, and probably also for doing so much with what she had. Those, though, are not the types of miracles considered; there has to be an undeniable supernatural element involved. The author of the critical article is unimpressed with the two that they certified, but his argument is rather that miracles do not happen, and the events cited in support of her canonization were not miracles. He then argues, seemingly, that if miracles really did happen, if God really did intervene in the world, then certainly God Himself would have acted to prevent those priests from abusing those children. No loving father could have permitted that kind of treatment of his own children; how can the Church assert that God is a loving Father, if that God did not intervene on behalf of these victims?

We could get into a very involved conversation about why the writer supposes the conduct of these priests to have been “wrong”. Certainly it was wrong by the standards of the Roman Catholic Church. However, the Marquis de Sade wrote some very compelling arguments in moral philosophy in which he asserted that whatever exists is right. On that basis he claimed that because men were stronger than women, whatever a man chose to do to a woman was morally right simply because nature made the man capable of doing it. The same argument would apply to this situation, that because the priests were able by whatever means to rape these children, their ability to do so is sufficient justification for their actions. I certainly disagree because, like the Roman Catholic Church, I believe that God has called us to a different moral philosophy. The question is, on what basis does our anti-God critic disagree? If he asserts, as he does, that there is no God, why does he suppose that it is wrong for adults to engage in sexual acts with children? It seems to be his personal preference; the Marquis de Sade would have disagreed, as would at least some of the men who do this. To say that something is morally wrong presupposes that that statement has meaning. We fall back on “human rights”, but the only reason Jefferson and the founders of America could speak of such rights is that they believed such rights were conferred (endowed) upon every individual by the God who made us. No, they did not all believe in the Christian God (many were Deists), but they did found their moral philosophy on a divine origin.

However, let us agree that the conduct of those priests was heinous. We have a solid foundation for holding that position, even if the writer who raises it does not. The question is, why did God not stop them?

It is said that during the American Civil War someone from Europe visited President Lincoln at the White House. During his visit, he asked whether it were really true that the American press was completely free of government control–something unimaginable in Europe at that time. In answer, Lincoln handed his guest that day’s newspaper, whose lead story was denigrating the way the President was handling the war. It was obvious that such an article could not have been written if the publisher had any thought of the government taking action against his paper for it.

If God is able to work miracles, why does He not miraculously silence critics like the op-ed piece in the Salt Lake Tribune?

Perhaps the writer thinks that even God would not interfere with the freedom of the press in America. Why not? There is nothing particular about the choice to write something which is offensive to God that would make it less objectionable than the choice to do something which is offensive to God. God could perhaps have prevented many atrocities–the development of the atomic bombs that devastated two Japanese cities, the rise of the regime which exterminated nearly six million Jews and even more Poles plus many other peoples, and we could fill the rest of this article with such acts. Yet these are all choices made by men, and just as God chooses not to prevent one writer from criticizing Him in the Salt Lake Tribune, so too He has not prevented billions of other hurtful actions by everyone in the world. He allows us to make our own choices, and to hurt and be hurt by those choices. If he prevented all of them, there would be no freedoms whatsoever.

Two footnotes should be put to this.

The first is that we do not know and indeed cannot know whether God has limited human wickedness and disaster. We can imagine horrors that never happened. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union never “went hot” into a nuclear battle despite the many fictional scenarios describing how it might have happened. We do not know whether God prevented nuclear war, or indeed whether He will do so in the future; we only know that it did not happen. Our perspective of the “bad” that happens in this world lacks perspective because, apart from horror stories, we measure it against itself. Be assured, though, that if the worst thing that ever happened in the world was the occasional hangnail, someone would be asking how God could possibly allow the suffering that is the hangnail. We complain of the worst wickedness in the world, but do not know what might have been or whether God saved us from something worse than that.

The second is that God, Who is the only possible foundation for any supposed moral law to which we could hold anyone accountable, promises that He is ultimately fair and will judge everyone. He has made it His responsibility to see to it that everyone who has caused any harm will be recompensed an equal amount of harm, and anyone who has been harmed will be compensated an appropriate amount in reparations, so that all wrongs ultimately are put right. The writer of the article does not want there to be ultimate justice, but present intervention. However, I expect were we to ask if what He wants is for God to remove from the world the power to choose what we do and have our choices affect each other, he would object to that as well. There will be ultimate justice, and may God have mercy on us all. Meanwhile, we are given freedom to act in ways that are either beneficial (as Saint Teresa) or baneful (as the priests), so that we may then be judged.

How there can be mercy and justice at the same time is something I have addressed elsewhere, and is much more than this article can include. It is perhaps the problem that the Catholic Church has in handling its errant priests. The bishops are not God, and neither are we, and we all do the best we can, which often is not as good as we might hope. We all also fail, hurt others, and need forgiveness and correction. God offers that, and that is the true miracle.

Bible and Theology, Music

#109: Simple Songs

August 28, 2016 M.J. 2 Comments

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #109, on the subject of Simple Songs.

I find myself in the awkward position of defending a practice I don’t particularly like. Someone criticized Christian record companies. I think that there are serious problems with Christian record companies, but I don’t think that the particular problems suggested in the supposedly satirical video were the real problems. I will probably write more on this subject, but first I want to talk about the problem of simple, that is, simplistic, music. The video (undoubtedly facetiously) suggested that record companies demand that all Christian songs use the same three chords. That’s not something record companies ask or expect. What they expect is that songs be marketable to the people who are expected to want them, and for a certain kind of Christian song that inherently means simple.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not impressed by simple songs and I do my best not to write them. I had an argument with a piano player who insisted that the B# I wanted him to play (in a G# major chord with a minor sixth added–I know, ugly chord, but the song needed it) did not exist. I cringe sometimes at the fact that so many of the songs I wrote on the piano when I was in high school and college are so similar, and eventually made a point of not writing songs on the piano unless I could do something really different. I could probably be a lot more prolific if I weren’t so insistent that every song had to be distinct.

I also remember being horrified when I was in high school when someone I knew casually told me that he had been baptized in the Spirit on Friday night and over the weekend God had given him five hundred songs. I approached skeptically, and discovered that he knew three chords, stopped the music to change between them, and sang very nearly monotone. There is nothing wrong with the miraculous happening in connection with the Holy Spirit; this I don’t think was that.

The temptation is to think that all the musicians who write such “simple” three-chord songs with simplistic melodic lines are like my high school friend, unable to do better or even to know they are doing poorly. The fact is they are not doing poorly; they are writing the kind of songs needed for their ministry. One thing that helps me not judge other ministries is understanding what they are actually trying to do and why, and how that is different from what I am doing, and why that different objective requires different methods.

We talked extensively about Christian ministries. Of particular relevance here, the 1960s and 70s were dominated by evangelist music ministry, which meant music that would catch attention of unbelievers and cause them to listen to the message. It was frequently interesting, often intricate, always performance-oriented material. Today, we noted, the dominant stream in music ministry is pastoral, music that benefits the sheep, with participatory worship music at the top of the list.

Don’t misunderstand. Many great professional composers from Michael Praetorius and J. S. Bach through Charles Ives and Randall Thompson have written some great worship music to be presented by professional musicians, and there is a worship experience in which the worshipper listens and is overwhelmed by the beauty of the music and the presence of God. However, that is not participatory worship. When men like Luther and Wesley wanted to get people involved in worship, they took simple songs that their audience knew–usually from singing in taverns–and wrote Christian words to them, because the majority in the congregation are not musically literate and can only sing simple songs that they know or can quickly learn. The typical congregant can’t handle complex melodic lines, intricate syncopation and time signature changes, modal and key transitions; those are for professional musicians. Thus songs for participatory worship are best if they are simple.

Further, when someone records a song intended for worship, the expectation is less that you will listen to the recording–which is certainly part of the intention–but more that churches throughout the world will learn to play it and use it in their worship. Johnny Smith who got a guitar for Christmas and has been trying to teach himself to play has to be able to stand in front of Little Country Church and lead half a dozen worshippers in a song they might never have heard. If it isn’t simple, it isn’t going to succeed.

There is complex and interesting Christian music out there, because there are still musicians doing non-pastoral ministry, and pastors using music for aspects of their ministry that go beyond corporate participatory worship. The primary forms on Christian radio though are songs of worship which ordinary people can learn easily and sing along while driving; the primary songs that get played in churches are the simple songs of worship which the congregation can embrace quickly. They are the kind of music most Christians are buying; they are important in the scheme of music ministry; they are not the totality of it.

Returning to record companies–well, I probably have more to say about the recording industry, but for the moment to give them their due, they have to be interested in the bottom line, in producing recordings that people will buy. That means songs that will be played on the radio and sung in churches. That means, primarily, simple worship songs. Sure, they produce more than that, but since songs for participatory worship are the most popular in the Christian market, they dominate product.

If you want to do something different with your music, that’s a good thing; just understand that you are not looking to reach the present core Christian market if you aren’t doing simple worship songs, not because of the record companies but because of the audience.

Bible and Theology, Music

#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries

August 25, 2016 M.J. Leave a comment

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #107, on the subject of Miscellaneous Music Ministries.

This continues our miniseries on what it is to be “called” to “music ministry”. Our first installment was #95: Music Ministry Disconnect, making the point that most Christians are not what we call “ministers” and most musicians are “entertainers”. In #97: Ministry Calling we examined how to know whether you are “called” to be a “minister”, based largely on who you are, what motivates you and how you relate to others with needs. Following this we identified five specific “ministries” in #98: What is a Minister?, and addressed each of these individually in its own article.

Someone is undoubtedly saying that I missed something, because he knows that he is called to music ministry but does not fit into any of those.

It is certainly plausible that there are ministries Paul did not happen to mention in that passage; he does not specify that it is an exhaustive list of possible ministries. On the other hand, they do provide comprehensive coverage of most of what we can identify as the spiritual needs within a congregation. If you have a spiritual ministry, what does it do? Does it bring the gospel to people who have never heard it and launch churches, as the Music Ministry of an Apostle? Is it focused on bringing God’s specific direction, timing, and confirmation to His people when they need it, and thus a Prophetic Music Ministry? Is it about bringing unbelievers to faith, an Evangelist Ministry? Are you drawing believers closer to God and each other, the Music Ministry of the Pastor? Are you enabling believers to understand the truths they have embraced, as a Teacher? If you are not doing one of these five things, what are you doing that constitutes spiritual ministry?

On the other hand, there are other positions in the church, and we speak of other kinds of ministry today. The Ephesians list gives us a rather sweeping collection of spiritual servants, but as we previously noted there are other kinds of service within the church, and our use of the word “ministry” has been in a sense selective for our purpose. You might serve by playing the organ, conducting the choir, singing the liturgy, and be quite correct that God has put you in a place where you are using your gifts for His service. Some of those ministries have names; the degree to which music can be involved depends very much on how the position is understood.

In some ways the simplest of those named positions is the previously mentioned diakonos or “deacon”. In Acts 6 there was a problem concerning the distribution of food–members contributed food to the church which was delivered to widows, among the poorest with the worst prospects at that time. The Apostles decided to have the church choose seven people to become “servers”, to deliver the food fairly to the women. Paul later discusses in letters to Timothy and Titus how to select such “servers” for the local church, and we assume that they have much the same function, of overseeing the in-house charitable assistance. We have expanded on that, but our expansions have gone in two distinct directions. In one direction, deacons have become the business managers of the church, because they handle the assets and spending; in the other direction, deacons (and particularly deaconesses) have become the charitable arm of the church, because their original assignment was to attend to the poor. Because of the tension between these two in some ways disparate objectives, the office has tended to become whatever the particular denomination or congregation wanted it to be, or even what the appointed individual made of it.

It should be noted that being a server does not preclude being some other kind of minister. The Philip named among the seven servers is the one we discussed as Philip the Evangelist. It is also certainly possible that music can be incorporated into service as a deacon, as for example entertaining in a mission or soup kitchen, or at a concert to raise money for and awareness of the homeless or otherwise impoverished.

The “presbuteros” or “elder” is more difficult. We know that there were elders in synagogues, and they were quite simply the old men who had been in attendance for many years. They had learned much and accumulated some wisdom, and so were sought to provide insight and direction. Nowhere are we told how they are selected or identified, but in I Timothy Paul suggests that they are in charge of “ruling” the church, and that they get paid for this (“double honor” refers to what we would call an honorarium, money given as thanks, and that it is “double” for those laboring in preaching and teaching suggests that those “elders” who are not preaching and teaching are still paid for “ruling” the church). He also suggests that some of them are involved in preaching and teaching–but that some are not, and thus again we have the suggestion that some elders also have other kinds of ministries, and also that some who do not have ministries of the sort we equate with standing in the pulpit are still very much involved in serving the church as leaders. That might sometimes include using musical gifts at church gatherings of one sort or another.

Also unclear is the office of “episkopos”, a word compounded of “atop sight” giving us the concept of “overseer”. It is often rendered “bishop”, derived indirectly from the Greek (Greek “episkopos” becomes Latin “ebiscopus” becomes English “bisceop” and eventually “bishop”). We know that there is a selection process and qualifications; we don’t know what these people did. The title has become part of the hierarchy in many denominations, ranging from the head of a local church to the head of a denomination. It has something to do with ruling and caring for the house of God, but whether that means financial management or spiritual oversight is pretty much a guess. It thus also makes it difficult to suggest how music might fit into service in so uncertain a job.

Some speak of a “healing ministry” and identify some persons as “healers”. The nearest word for that in the New Testament is “iatros”, which properly means “healer” but is almost always rendered “physician”. In most occasions it is used rather generally or often metaphorically about medical doctors. (The familiar metaphor is “Physician, heal thyself,” which is more poignant when we replace “physician” with “healer”.) The only specific individual ever said to be “iatros” is Luke (in Colossians 4:14, in passing as a way of identifying him). It is not impossible that Luke was a “healer” in the sense intended by those who use the term, but tradition has always maintained he was a medical doctor, and his writing supports this contention in several ways.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting exegetical issue in I Corinthians 12:9. It is in the middle of a list of gifts the Spirit gives, immediately after “faith” and before “effecting of miracles”. We are very uncertain what many of these gifts are, but the quirk with healing is that it doesn’t say “healing” as a gift, but lists the gift as “gifts of healings”, as if perhaps this person received a package from God that contained healings he was to distribute to those who needed them. This person is not really exercising a gift of being able to heal people; he is working as a deliveryman who has been given these healings to give to others. That does not make it not a position of serving God and the church; it does significantly alter our perception of it. Yet as important as such physical healing is, our perception is that healings in the New Testament were always connected to bringing people to God. Thus those who have gifts of healing are probably also exercising one of the Ephesian ministries, enabled by these gifts, whether apostolic, evangelistic, pastoral, or one of the others. If music fits the “healing” ministry, it will be because it fits in the way that is appropriate to the ministry which the healing is supporting.

Music is part of life, and has been from the early chapters of Genesis. It has been used in worship and in ministry, but was not invented originally for that purpose. We can have Christian entertainment, which is good, and we can use music in many ways within the church.

I hope this series has been helpful to your understanding of ministry and the place of music within it.

mark Joseph "young"

Tag Archives: Ministry

#168: Praying for You

#166: A Ghetto of Our Own

#163: So You Want to Be a Christian Musician

#159: To Compassion International

#158: Show Me Religious Freedom

#151: A Musician’s Resume

#150: 2016 Retrospective

#114: Saint Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles

#109: Simple Songs

#107: Miscellaneous Music Ministries

A generalist: learning less and less about more and more, one day to know nothing about everything.