Yesterday, the Omaha World-Herald's website had a photo gallery on the infamous grain elevator/boot shop in--where else?--Burress! I don't know if he reads this blog, but Benjamin would remember taking a few pictures there, too. Burress is about 10 miles from where I grew up and has a population of oh, about 6. We used to bike and run there every year for cross-country, when we'd buy candy bars and pop at the boot shop.
Burress is mostly known for nothing having happened there...ever. So it's good to see it get some love from the state's largest paper. The sports section also had a feature on two Husker football players (Tyler Wortman and Todd Peterson) who went to high school together at Grand Island Central Catholic, which happens to be right across the street from our duplex. These are the kind of things that happen when you live in Nebraska.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Teaching through song
On Tuesday night, Dana and I had what might be the highlight of at least our month--a concert by Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. That's the group from Nashville who are taking the words from old (mostly forgotten) hymns and putting them to new lyrics. Dana's church in Lincoln, Grace Chapel, sang a lot of Indelible Grace songs during Sunday worship, and Dana got us hooked on them from there.
While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.
Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)
Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.
What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?
While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.
Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)
Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.
What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The ultimate color line is crossed.
Regardless of which guy you voted for, yesterday was a milestone in American social history. Skip Gates, one of America's leading cultural critics, has a beautifully written, moving essay on what Obama's election means for Black America. You should take a look. I'll never truly understand what yesterday meant for Gates, but I think that his piece has given me a pretty good taste.
Say what you will of Obama's politics (and let's be honest, I know that just about all the readers of this blog voted for McCain), but I'm proud to be an American today.
Say what you will of Obama's politics (and let's be honest, I know that just about all the readers of this blog voted for McCain), but I'm proud to be an American today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
