Oooh The Times, They Are a Changing

I re-read and then listened to Dylan's '64 recording of "Times they are a changing" again this morning.

off key vocal, bangin 6/8 acoustic quarter notes, harmonica that filled a void for 3 bars between verses and that's about it. BUT, prophetic and glorious in all that nakedness and form it was:)

Like the raw quality of that classic song, Nashville always had a thing about the guitar/vocal demo that bugged me. Writer/Producer Chips Momen used to say to me that if you cant' sell a great lyric and melody with a guitar and a dry voice, then it would never be worth cutting for anyone else. For those like me who LOVE production AND songwriting, that was a pretty deep cut into our musical ideology, but he was pretty spot on and I can still struggle with covering sloppy with synth layers in my basement demos. hmmmm. bad confession. (more cowbell).

The ebb and flow of business and how it gets done from year to year infects and dis-infects all the creative people it has to touch to get the dollar moved from one pile to the other.

Modern Church and Worship have been hit hard in this flow the last decade.

Owners of Publishers, Record Labels, and all lic. groups have one purpose: To make profits for their private or public shareholders or owners. Well,when it comes to ministry, we don't want to look behind that massive curtain, nor do they want us to.

It would appear to be best if we on the creative side would just go about our creative business, seeking God's face, asking for divine inspiration and revelation for new songs, lyrics and melodies to lead the body of Christ into His presence, and let God deal with those at the top of the food chain who take the creative to the masses and who's intentions are really dollar driven.

It's a two edge sword. Kind of like the artist,athlete,actor,pop-culture figure who lives their life in the bubble, hoping that their management doesn't spend all their money and they wake up penny less in a million dollar lifestyle one day. They remain happy so long as there is money in an account, but don't want to wreck their personal life party to look at numbers and evaluate systems and reality. We in the creative side of things have sure screwed ourselves into the table of a commodity not a producer.

We must, in worship, be diligent, look at the systems, be aware of the trends and traps and to what God calls us to do with eyes wide open, or the pot holes will run us off the road without solutions and send us into the junk yard of broken dysfunctional worshipers looking for another job and not wanting to go back to church as we knew it. And in that wake we leave 10's of thousands of worship volunteers broken and looking for leaders with vision and new churches with vision. Short term win for our adversary. Ministry leaders do not need this stuff to get get broken, sin, fall or get chewed up and spit out. We can do that just fine by ourselves without any help from church, but church structure or lack of it compounds the issues immensely.

I currently believe today that much of corporate worship is running 60 mph in a car not designed for the roads with drivers not equipped to keep it together and a pit crew that knows what the buttons and dials mean but cant hardly change a tire if something breaks.

How did this happen so quickly in 10 or so years and who's fault is it?

Much blame to pass around everywhere, but all of us in our human nature want to pass the buck. So, with one of my titles being a worship pastor/director/leader, I'd say I fail miserably in

1) teaching those lateral and above me in this position, that worship is not to be used and treated as pop-culture for the churches gratification.

2) not finding (in and outside the church) and mentoring/developing enough young leaders to learn their musical and technical skills and equip them in all the necessary styles and areas needed to help them succeed with what the church will do to them between Sunday morning and Sunday morning in modern worship. How many worship leaders know how to wire or repair an unbalanced or balanced cable? (buy a new one... that's the answer). Or handle set up of a sound system from scratch and set up a band with multiple monitor mixes or inears with powered or unpowered monitors and in ears, or run a sound check, drum check, mic check, properly. or change an EQ setting or compression setting on an analog board set up. THESE ARE BASIC 101 THINGS, and the church has no idea that someone actually as a volunteer is supposed to know all of these areas to BEGIN to make worship work in a modern setting.

I put volunteers in place and try to help them learn, but in reality, if it's not their passion and they do not have the desire to really learn on their own, I'm setting them up for failure, because this modern system is not really designed for volunteers with low levels of musical/technical understanding, and they will fail and it's my fault for letting it happen.... I'm sorry to all the volunteers who's served under me and felt like they failed. There should have been a professional alongside you always, teaching and mentoring you along this path so you could succeed when and if you were ready to go it alone and become the teacher..

3) Not teaching the church body through dialogue what worship really is and how to enter it and adapt to the changing styles and find ways to enter in regardless of form and function.

4) Not fighting hard enough with corporate leadership that if you want modern worship, and worship arts, you will have to pay for it. And the cost will be large in dollars. LARGE.... And it will not end. It will ever be changing and upgrading. And you must make that commitment or you will fade away slowly thinking you are with the times, while losing worship leader after worship leader who cant race at Indy in 2011 with a beautiful 1990's version Indy car and a volunteer crew (but it looks and runs just fine, they say. Just needs a few cheap tweaks and upgrades)....

How did much of this happen in the last 10 years?

I think radio changed much of it all with the advent of modern worship recordings taking over CCM Radio beginning with Smittys "2001 Worship" live record in Louisville Kentucky after the GMA's that year.

CCM Radio used to be Artist Driven till then, and the only thing from it that your church would do would be a cool offertory or special or new Easter / Christmas tune you might hear and learn from an artist that released an artist tune that crossed over from Artist to Corporate worship. (pretty rare till 10 years ago).

Remember when just a few years ago, if you didn't use Denomination Books or Celebration Hymnals, you used overhead projectors and you went to the Holy Spirit Conference or to large venues or Festivals to hear a new worship songs that seemed to work, that you could incorporate into your "book" of worship tunes and hymns on overhead sheets. And that was about the only thing on local FM radio around the country that you could use in a worship service; were good solid "artist tunes" for an offertory or a "special". You perused the "worship" section of Vineyard and then Hillsong and Integrity... looking for a new tune at your local book store hoping to find a "gem" now and then.

Overseer, Elder Boards, Sr. Staff and congregations were not interested in the latest or greatest songs, but what ministry happened during worship time. Who got prayed for, who got healed and set free, who's needs got met in the very presence of the Holy Spirit.

Well, Worship leaders have become rock stars to keep a failing record industry from sinking further in their bottom line sales and yada yada yada. All the artists become worship artists now.

It's no longer CCM artists in bold letters " Amy, Phelps, Sandi, White Heart, Chapman, MWS,

it's become "TOMLIN, REDMOND, BELOCHE, WALKER, JOBI, HILLSONG UNITED, GATEWAY WORSHIP, CROWDER and on and on. Is it the worshiper writers making themselves larger than life. Of Course Not..... It's the nature of business.

Well now (contemporary Worship Music) CWM. on the radio seems to have moved back to (Contemporary Christian Music) CCM artist driven music and the church and a generation of young ill equipped worship leaders are in a major quandry. (Where do we find songs now - they are not on the radio... How do we pick a good song for content? What is a good song and song form and melody and key for corporate singing?) How do I write one of those songs?

Church got used to having all their new songs spoon fed to them on the radio for 10 years to the point that when W.Leaders would introduce a new song, the congregation would have already known it for 6 months from the radio, and the natural learning curve for a church body on a new song was taken away.

This has made it even harder now to introduce anything new to the church that is original or from a non radio driven source. If we don't know it, or haven't heard it on the radio, it makes us uncomfortable and we cant "worship"....

I think also the artist writers are a new generation of non-schooled writers who are ardent worshipers but don't under stand musical form and function. With new media forms pushing songs on personal networks, we have a whole new group of worship music being written with melodies that change from vs to vs. and ch. to ch.and they are done in artist keys not worship keys, so the church can't learn the songs forms and melodies or sing them in the dbl octave forms now being written so often. Sssssoooo, mainstream worshipers call the music bad, they push against the worship dept's through the church back doors of structure, asking them to do more hymns and older songs that they know and can sing with. (I smell yeast)...

I keep telling the kids I mentor to just find the great worship chorus in these songs and scrap doing the vs's in many cases because the body just struggles to much to learn them since they are not on the radio 50 times a day anymore to teach it to them....

Wonderfully, the advent of guitar lead worship has come back and there are so many good leaders out there, but again the U2 driven tunes are developing young worship players with shallow musical skills so that if a real chart is put in front of them they are totally lost on how to arrange a song between instruments and make anything musical not just worshipful.

Yes, the top 40 worship charts hamster wheel is wobbling and the church in it's efforts to stabilize it's numbers continues to under fund and under staff worship while asking for the latest and greatest in styles, music and technology to be accomplished by wonderful volunteer church members.

The burn out of gifted and passionate worship leaders is going to be larger than ever before, and hopefully those leading young groups today will equip them and not placate them as they prep for leadership in music ministry..

All of us with hearts of worship who desire the secret places found there, and know what happens when a group can enter that place and space, are and are becoming broken 45's on the road called (Sunday Morning Worship Jukebox). Kick it if it skips on ya or doesn't have "it's all about me"located at button i16.

As a very mortal and broken worship writer, writing within the demons of his own failings wrote" Through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God".

And there it is. After all is said and done. God will inhabit the praises of his Children, if they will just open up and mean it when they worship Him. All the rest we do and don't do to try to make it happen for His names sake becomes meaningless when He hears a heart cry " I love you lord and I lift my voice to worship you my God and King".....