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September 30, 2006

Talk about...pop music

Rambling, late-night post alert. I think I'm going somewhere useful, stay with me.

Let's start with Mark Batterson, from about a week ago (and yes, all of the emphasis is his - Batterson writes like that):

Listen. We shouldn't be different for difference sake. We shouldn't try to make news to make news. We better do the right things for the right reasons or they will implode and backfire. But we need to buzz.

In the words of Jesus: "Compel them to come in so my house will be full."

Churches that are serious about incarnation need to leverage culture. How do we use the emotional response to music? How do we use redemptive themes in movies?...

Using pop culture isn't pop gospel. Let's call it what it is: incarnation. One of our core values is: irrelevance is irreverence! Jesus used agrarian metaphors. We need to use news, songs, movies, TV shows, etc.

We think of langauge in terms of English, Greek, and Hebrew. But the language of today is pop culture. The language of today is felt need.

I'm up late tonight listening to music with my daughter. It's strange how our musical tastes dovetail. She has no problem with U2. I have no problem with Switchfoot. We're listening to Evanescence right now. Yeah, there are things that one likes that the other doesn't, but there's far more common ground than you'd expect to find in the standard father/daughter musical relationship.

And the fact that we found a lot of this common ground while listening to Trinity United Methodist's "The Power of Love" musical really makes it a powerful tool for us to talk about life. Most musicals that Trinity does takes a good number of popular songs - eight to ten, say - and puts theological context to them. "The Power of Love" would, obviously, be songs about love - how we hear love in the pop culture, how love ought to be, how love can truly change the world. And Amelia has a whole list of new favorite songs from that musical.

I tell you honestly, if you had told me ten years ago that my daughter and I would be having theological conversations over Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars", I would have told you that you were nuts.

My pastor is blogging now. You'll find him over there at the right, under the "BlogKid" heading. (I think this is fair, since I'm Jeff Eaton's blog-kid.) (There is actually a very good reason he considers himself "Chill Pastor".)

After a couple of weeks of testing the waters, he's issued what I think is a very clear statement of intent. I'm right there with him - I grew up on MTV (back when MTV played videos) the same way he did. And I will mock his taste in music, and he will mock mine right back, but he and I are both looking at pop culture and seeing that "felt need" that Batterson was talking about up there. There are so many hearts that, in so many ways, are looking for something deeper from life.

Sometimes the artist knows exactly what they're going for, and understands why they're putting the theology in the song that they are. Sometimes the artist doesn't have a clue how they're getting used by God - all they know is that they feel something passionately, and that passion has to come out in the music. But music - all music, even the cheesiest popular music imaginable - is ultimately God's creation, not ours. And he has all the music we hear in place for a purpose, a purpose in our lives and a purpose in the lives of people around us. If we don't listen and look for God in it, we miss the point.

When I was in high school, one of the first bands I went completely bonkers over was Mr. Mister. And although Welcome To The Real World was the big smash hit album and "Kyrie" and "Broken Wings" were all over the radio, I didn't really connect with that album until later. But when I heard a song called "Something Real" played on my favorite pop radio station, I had to have that album. Absolutely had to have it.

The album is called Go On.... I wore out the tape completely. I found the CD a few years ago. It's on my desk at school. I still cherish that album as much now as I did in 1988. I really have a hard time imagining that it's nearly 20 years old - other music I have from that era sounds completely dated, but that album does not.

(Even if the video effects from "Something Real" are, well, horribly dated. Trust me, in 1988, my brain was breaking at how cutting-edge that video was.)

I didn't love the album because it was the most popular - compared to Welcome To The Real World, Go On... crashed and burned. I didn't love the album because the music was tight - although it was. I didn't even love that album because Richard Page turned out to be a Christian - in 1988, I wasn't sure how good of a thing that was.

I loved that album because it let me know that I was not the only person searching.

Nearly 20 years on, I see so many others searching for the same things.

Everyone's looking for something real
Everyone's taking all they can steal
Brother to sister, look at each other face-to-face
There's something missing here in this human race...

Brother to sister, hold on to each other with all we've got
Our time is coming if you're ready or not, if you're ready or not

(YouTube permalink for "Something Real".)

Posted by Chuck at September 30, 2006 12:41 AM

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