{"id":1001,"date":"2008-11-24T23:36:52","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T07:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/11\/24\/everybody-sing\/"},"modified":"2008-11-24T23:36:52","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T07:36:52","slug":"everybody-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/11\/24\/everybody-sing\/","title":{"rendered":"everybody sing!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in May, Scott Aniol posted Leading Music at the Conference on the Church for God\u2019s Glory<\/a> on his site, Religious Affections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the article, he commented on the music at the Together for the Gospel conference he had attended earlier in the year. Among other things he said this:<\/p>\n

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Although every hymn choice for that conference was in and of itself conservative, and although the accompaniment was simple in theory, a completely different underlying philosophy bled through. The leader of the singing, who led from the piano, was a master at emotional manipulation<\/u> stimulation. How he accompanied the hymns moved and swayed the audience in certain emotional directions. He constantly shouted out unintelligible exclamations that further roused the audience. And the audience did respond. Hands waving in the air, enthusiastic shouting, vigorous singing, and even some jumping around.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would recommend you read Scott’s entire article. There is some discussion following, but the article is the main thing. Now, I don’t have the time, the $$$, nor the interest to attend such conferences. I didn’t really have a full picture of what Scott was describing, but I had an idea what it was like. Now you can get a sense of exactly <\/em>what Scott is describing…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yes, Together for the Gospel Live!<\/a><\/em> is about to be released. You can listen to clips of some of the singing at the conference. You can even download three of the songs free. That should be more than enough to understand the scene Scott describes here, and analyzes further on his blog.<\/p>\n

A few comments from me… not a musician, but a pastor with a desire to make disciples of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

I think the musician who lead the music in this conference is a sincere Christian man, but badly misguided by false theology (charismatism) and a worldly philosophy of music. (To examine his musical philosophy further, simply check out some of the other Sovereign Grace offerings.)<\/p>\n

I think Scott’s word ‘manipulation’ is the correct assessment here. (He has it as a ‘strikethrough’ font on his blog, I can’t seem to produce that on mine…. I underlined it for you.) There seems to be something of emotional self-indulgence in the musical style… both in the piano accompaniment and the ‘unintelligible shouting’ as Scott describes it. There also seems to be a disconnect between the actual tunes sung by the congregation and the accompaniment – a little dissonance for a real pomo feel, eh? It seems that the instrumental accompaniment does not match what the men (mostly men it sounds like) are singing, especially on the more familiar and older pieces.<\/p>\n

Speaking of disconnects… What is it with Fundamentalists making a regular practice of attending these meetings? How does this really further their own ministries and the cause of Christ? Should we affirm the goals of the ‘Togetherness Boys’ as fundamentalists? Is the music of SG ministries the direction we want our people heading? If we consistently support ‘Togetherness Gatherings’ won’t our people be open to the musical offerings produced? Is this really where we want to head?<\/p>\n

See my earlier articles on Bauder’s lectures. If there is a significant difference<\/em> between us and the Conservative Evangelicals, shouldn’t there also be a significant distance<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the difference isn’t as significant as some would have us believe? Or is it?<\/p>\n

It’s all very confusing.<\/p>\n

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Back in May, Scott Aniol posted Leading Music at the Conference on the Church for God\u2019s Glory on his site, Religious Affections. In the article, he commented on the music at the Together for the Gospel conference he had attended earlier in the year. Among other things he said this: Although every hymn choice for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[84,71,60,44,67],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-g9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}