Outer Rim Territories

Musings, ramblings, and nonsense from the fringe of space and time
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Musical Mush - Amusing Ourselves to Death

BreakPoint: Musical Mush, 2/6/2006 - 2/6/2006 11:00:19 AM

When church music directors lead the congregation in singing some praise music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We had been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called, "Draw Me Close to You." The song has zero theological content and could be sung in a nightclub, for that matter. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed at us and said in a cheerful voice, "Let's sing that again, shall we?" "No!" I shouted loudly. Heads all around me spun while my wife cringed. I admit I prefer more traditional hymns. But even given that, I am convinced that much of the music being written for the Church today reflects an unfortunate trend—slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book.
When I did my internship for Delta Records, Lou Everett, the owner gave me a copy of Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death." This book single-handedly stopped me from taping live concerts and LISTENING to them. Chuck Colson isn't the person I would expect to make this statement. It is a welcome statement on the integration of culture into worship potentially leading from worship to entertainment.

Posted February 9, 2006 by Christopher Gillespie 
Feb 08, 2006
Phil said...
Nice to see someone putting their foot down and drawing a line. Love the phrase "amusing ourselves to death". Makes me think that just because I like something, doesn't mean others will. Need to keep our sensibilities to others about ourselves.
Feb 08, 2006
Tom B. said...
This was a nice article to forward to my pastor and the other deacon, since after last Sunday's contemporary service Daina made a comment about how she could have sung one of the songs to me as a love song.

I didn't quite understand your change in behavior with regard to taping and listening to concerts - can you elaborate?

Feb 08, 2006
Christopher Gillespie said...
Sure! I suppose it was a bit of a side comment... Part of the Postman thesis is that we allow media to substitute for knowledge and memory. As you know most of reality cannot be captured adequately by any or all medias. They all serve as perspectives.

When I was bootlegging concerts (not taping for pay), I would be so focused on the recording of the event, I'd actually not even listen to the event live. I'd miss a good portion of the sights, smells, people, and even the sound of the acoustic.

This is the dilemma of recording. You can never adequately capture a live event. Most talented recording engineers have thrown off the holy grail of realism and understand recordings as perspective. So they try to give a musical perspective of the event. Maybe not even an acoustically accurate one and perhaps even a better-than-real-sounding one.

It's taken me a long time to get to this point. I often throw off the headphones and just listen to the event, leaving the system on autopilot for the commercial recordings I do.
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In response to Phil,

This is a difficult concept for the homileticians to agree on. A sermon can't be all things to everyone. I have intentionally pursued three different approaches to my first three sermons. This has yielded three different sermons. The second received no comments. The first was not unanimously accepted. We'll see how the third goes.

Communication is a delicate art and not one which can be simplified into 3 easy steps (or the 26 we have learned it class.)

Chris