Re: Confessions of a Former Worship Leader

Comments in response to Confessions of a Former Worship Leader
Interesting reflections, but he doesn't even address the way this is just the latest permutation of the age old debate between spontaneous worship and planned worship. You might think of the mic placement as a kind of planned liturgy. It only seems phony in the context of a tradition that presupposes deeper authenticity for "spontaneous" worship and regards planning as manipulation.

Further, you could also see the reading of the law as a use of a new technology, the written word read aloud, used to manipulate the emotions of the people, in the same way some critique the use of video in worship today. His application of Ezra's response is good, but his sense of conflict and manipulation hint at a fairly myopic view of worship. Lets all take a step back out of the microcosms of our communities and look at how worship functions globally, for all humanity, across religious traditions and across history. Only then can we discern what are the key issues for our particular context. Once you recognize that worship is something humans do, on our own terms, by our own imaginations, as a means to reaching out to God, it becomes a matter of pragmatics. What works to help us connect to God and to provide contexts for transformative encounters with God? For some that might be reading the law all day, for others that might mean an emotional crescendo, for others that might mean a tent playing trance music with visuals.

As a low-church baptist this is an easy move for me to make, but I think it's a helpful one if we want to move past worship wars and into asking serious questions about how worship functions and shapes our communities.

Why I Grieve It

Elijah Davidson writes:

And so Bazan wrestles - with himself, with his audience, and with God.

And he grieves what he has lost. At the show Friday night, Bazan and band played the Pedro the Lion song "The Fleecing." The song used to sing,

I could tell you why I doubt it

And why I still believe it

And why I need it

And what the Pharisees don't see

Friday night, Bazan sang instead,

I'd tell you why I doubt it

And why I don't believe it

And why I grieve it

How I was blind but now I see

As he sang these words on the edge of everything in Silver Lake at Spaceland, many present cheered. Many others sighed - in confusion, in commiseration, in love.

///

Elijah, thank you for so carefully explaining the heartbreaking moment when, in changing the lyrics, Bazan stopped speaking for me and started speaking for the guy in the plaid shirt in front of me (pictured here) who cheered and clapped to find in Bazan such a kindred spirit.

I suppose it's only fair I have to share. I've been able to count on Bazan for the last ten years to give words to my own struggles, to the challenge to reconcile faith with the wrongness of the world and the suffering of so many at the hands of the church. And I couldn't want for anything other than the fierce honesty that has made Bazan's writing so strong.  But it still makes me sad to loose him.  I guess that's why my hand shot up when he asked for questions right after the song you quote and I asked: "How do you grieve it?"

"How do I grieve it? How do you grieve anything? You take the process seriously..."

You can only grieve what's lost. If "Curse Your Branches" was Bazan's break-up record with God, then this concert was my "break-up" with Bazan.

I think I'm grieving it.

New Beat, Feat. Zobrist

Zobrist-vs-Lumpkin v2 by mattlumpkin

This is a collaboration with the best drummer I know: Joel Zobrist.  He did the beat, I did the rest. Spot the ukulele and beat-repeater.

Biblifolk

Here is a collection of 5 songs I wrote and recording in about a week as part of an assignment for a class on the first five books of the Bible (aka the Pentateuch).

I wanted to explore the humanity and emotional perspectives of the characters that first come into contact with the God of the Bible and are the first to meet him, in a manner of speaking.  Each song is written in the first person as though they are telling you part of their story.  The recordings are brittle and sketchy, but hopefully the stories on which they hang can bear the weight of repeated listening.

You can stream them in your browser right here (even on your iPhone) or you can click either of the links to download and share them (all of this thanks to the fantastic bandcamp.com).

Thanks to John Goldingay for encouraging me to think beyond Adam; to Melody Lumpkin for encouraging me to write a song; to Luke Wakefield, Jon Damiani and Matt Cleveland for your sympathetic ears and early, positive feedback.

Update (9/15/10):
I heard back from John Goldingay today.  He is the Pentateuch Professor for whom I prepared these for class credit, and quite frankly, one of the best teacher's I've had.  You can read what he had to say below. Needless to say, I'm pleased.

"These were great - A.  I was afraid they were just going to be using the stories as jumping off points for modern thoughts, but I liked the way you kept reflecting things that were there in the text and making links I hadn't thought of before - like Noah and the stench and the wine.  Well done.  And accessing it was very easy, so thanks."

So, in Levar Burton voice, "you don't have to take my word for it!" Check out the songs and tell me what you think, even if you don't give me an A.  

Button Music

Guitarish by mattlumpkin

Music is one of the great joys of my life.  I started playing guitar when I was 12 and I started playing computer a couple of years after that.  I got started with a terrible little multi-track recorder I found online but soon graduated the fantastically powerful Cool Edit Pro (for which I have still not found an equivalent in Mac OS).

I was in a terrible little band in high school and we had fun. But I didn't want to wait around for other people to show up to make music and growing up on a farm in rural Arkansas, there weren't that many people lining up to realize my visions of blending big-beat house with modern guitar rock.  In 1999 I learned to program drums in Fruity Loops and began to genuinely have fun collaging beats and drum sounds I sampled from my own CD collection with found sound from High School and the ubiquitous doom-sayers of the impending Y2K apocalypse.

There's still a big disconnect between the music I make when I play my computer and the music I make when I play my guitar. But if you listen to the track above, you can hear me playing guitar sounds with my computer, (that is, with my budget "monome," button grid interface running a sampling program called mlrV).

Integration is fun!

Guthrie - Jennings - Lumpkin

Folk Set at Matthew Chern's "The Shape of Justice" Homeless Benefit Concert from Matt Lumpkin on Vimeo.

Thanks to Matthew Chern for organizing the event (and opening for me!) way back in February and Joshua Lim for shooting and editing.  I picked three songs that were at least loosely related to the themes of homelessness and justice: Woody Guthrie's "This Land," Mason Jennings' "I'm Goin' Back to New Orleans," and one of mine called "West Coast Blues."

Live Sketching as Meditative Worship: Good Friday

Good Friday Sketch from Matt Lumpkin on Vimeo.

Glenn Molina and Altadena Baptist Church continue to invite me to experiment with live sketching as a practice of meditative worship. Our first venture into this was at Advent. It was particularly significant for me to be able to take part in this Good Friday service since it was last year's Good Friday service that woke me up to the power of imagery as an aid to reflective worship.

The service was simple but powerful. It was organized around five readings from Matthew's narrative of the crucifixion which were each accompanied by brief reflections from our pastors, selections from J.S. Bach's "Matthew Passion" and individual sketches I did in response to last year's service. Finally, I drew the piece above, live, projected on the wall for all to see while Bach's music seeped into our consciousness.

What I enjoy most about this is how it shifts the emphasis from product to process. The process of sketching is paradoxically both fast and slow. It is fast in that one is trying to apprehend and portray the whole form in its most basic and central elements. It is slow in that the sketching (or hopefully in watching a sketch) only one line can be drawn at a time. The necessary slowness of the process means that you cannot look away, as we are tempted to do, especially from the crucifixion.