Spontaneous Worship

...isn't so spontaneous.

There's a perception that Spirit-led, free-flow, spontaneous worship is the opposite of highly structured, carefully planned, well-practised worship. While there's a nugget of truth in there, I disagree with that idea. (Note: I'm using "worship" to refer to musical worship only in this case.)

In my experience, I find that spontaneous worship actually requires more practice than regular worship. Getting a band to play together and follow the Holy Spirit's leading is more difficult than following sheet music and the worship leader. And yes, spontaneous worship does in fact require a fair amount of planning.

A skilled musician and singer can, by themselves, lead spontaneously quite easily if they have practised it enough. Even so, they must be aware of chord progressions that they can easily use because the same four chords for twenty minutes won't cut it. The act of choosing where to go in the song is also difficult as the only instrumentalist because they are simultaneously trying to pay attention to any prophetic messages that may be ready or whatnot.

Once you throw in a full band and then spontaneous worship becomes increasingly complicated. If the leader changes keys or chord progressions, how is this communicated to the other band members? While the worship leader may take the majority of the responsibility to "follow the Spirit" when the times comes, the other band members also have this right/responsibility, so how do they exchange leadership roles? Do all members need to be able to play by ear, and how do you accomodate those that cannot play that way?

In the end, the answer to these questions is practice, practice and more practice.

The hardest part of "spontaneous" practice is not, as you might expect, having the Spirit lead. The Holy Spirit is always ready to go places and He isn't just waiting for the "official" worship service. Rather, the hard part is getting people to feel confident about their roles during spontaneous worship. The majority of people I meet are too inexperienced with free-flow stuff so when that time comes, they tend to back or stop playing entirely. That's like cutting out half of the band and then it's not surprising when spontaneous music doesn't seem to have the impact of a planned song. (I could go on about this topic, and maybe I will in another post later.)

Now, spontaneous worship can actually take many forms. The most common version is to use the same set of songs, chord charts and lyrics for a regular worship set. The difference is that these usually come with a plan for the beginning, middle and end. Spontaneous worship will intentionally leave spots where the worship can wander but if the Holy Spirit doesn't do something in those times then you move on. This style is like the Psalms, in which there are "Selah" moments that are actually planned points of spontaneous music.

There are other forms. Some start from nothing, perhaps during ministry and prayer time, and they gradually develop into full-fledged songs. Some follow the Harp and Bowl model, which switches back and forth from reading passages from the Bible and praying to musical responses to those passages and prayers. There are different ways to practice each of these approaches.

I could go on about spontaneous worship, but my main point is that "spontaneous" does require practice and may in fact require more practice than a regular worship set. That being said, I sometimes find it easier to do with other musicians that I often play with. For example, I can usually have a full-on worship sessions with no practice whatsoever with Arial Terry because we have played together for so long. As far as my personal preferences go, I usually like spontaneous worship a lot more but I still regard it as only one aspect of musical worship. It's a great expression towards God but it's not inherently better than other forms of worship.

Caveat: Andrea, my conversation with you recently did inspire this post but this isn't a response to our conversation, it's just a copy of ideas that I've had percolating for a long time. :)

Passion in Toronto (Part II)

E* and I left London at around 2:00 pm on Tuesday afternoon to go to Toronto for the one-day Passion worship concert. After one or two missed turns and a bit of wandering, we managed to find the right place. We arrived more than an hour early and found a group of fifty people already standing in front of the coliseum doors, waiting in the freezing cold.

E* and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we headed off for the giant KFC bucket that we saw a few blocks away. After a few more wrong turns down graffiti-ridden alley ways, we managed to get to the KFC building - only to discover that it was just advertising. We ended up eating a meal at a Williams-style coffee house in the middle of this commercial district. Good times.

We headed back to the line up outside of the coliseum and waited for another hour for the doors to open. Everyone was packed into together tightly to avoid the cold. Who needs personal space, eh? I later learned that my brother was in the initial group that we saw when we first arrived. I was actively looking for him so it's too bad that I missed him then.

The evening itself was great and exactly what I expected. There were two bands that performed two consecutive worship sets. The speaker had twenty minutes or so to talk and then the Dave Crowder Band played the final worship set. They mixed in plenty of small-group prayer for the young adults at the schools in the GTA area.

The speaker, Louie Giglio, was excellent. He kept a nice string of jokes going to keep our interest. His theme was about how big God is, how great His love for us is and how small we are - and yet he knows each of us. The giant screen that filled the back wall of the stage was used to show a long selection of astronomy shots from the Hubble telescope, hence the picture at the top of this post. If God could create all of that with just a few words...and yet would send His son to live with us and die for us...yeah, it had the impact you would expect.

The entire event was completely free because of an offering that was given at the previous Passion '05 conference. The Passion group likes to have one conference pay for another conference in another city. It's a novel approach. They also just started this new blog yesterday and the first post was about their first foray outside of the USA. Cool.

Related Links:
Part 1
Passion Web Site
268 Generation Blog

Passion Worship in Toronto

I'm leaving London mid-afternoon today to go down to Toronto for the one-day Passion event. (Service? Conference? Concert?) Passion is an umbrella title for a group of bands that travel on a worship tour for teens and young adults. It's the kind of thing that frequently has tens of thousands of people attend. I have several Passion CDs and they're excellent.

I'll be driving down with E*, a girl I know from Open Door (or ODCF, if you prefer). There are several other groups going there from London. I know that a busload is going from Northpark church and another one is going with Western students. By coincidence, I learned yesterday evening that my brother is joining the Western group. Is anyone else going? Joel?

Related Links:
Passion '06
Toronto Details

Free Book and Stuff

Did you know that Scott Adams (that Dilbert guy again) has written novels that having nothing to do with Dilbert? He has a book called God's Debris and he is giving away a free pdf version. In his words, it was difficult to market but he assumes that at least a few more people will buy the real book if they read the digital version first. And Mike, I expect you to read this so that we can discuss it sometime.

Here's his synopsis:
Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God's Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.

For those of you that would prefer to have fun instead, here you go.

Here Lies This Blog

Richard and Joel Terry have completed their first mural at Open Doors Church. Richard has further details on his blog. Congratulations to them both and I hope to see more of their work soon.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a blog that he regularly updates. He usually delves into some pretty funny and bizarre topics so you might want to check it out. One of his recent posts from this past week mentions that he was doing research on the debate over Intelligent Design, looking for comic fodder. He's on to Part Two as of this morning. Funny stuff.

As a computer geek, I like to visit most of my blog links several times every day. I also visit the inactive blogs regularly, just in case someone uses them again. Alas, my blog links are somewhat lengthy and therefore useless to people that actually bother to look at them. That being said, I will link to each of the inactive blogs one last time in this post and remove them from my menu bar.

Here lies this site.
It was great but it might
Have run it's course.
Have no remorse.

Catharina Terry
Celia Terry (Original Blog)
Elyse and Sarah's Blog
Elyse's Old Blog
Grace Terry
Laura May
Zachary Timmerman

(Updated: November 18, 2005)

Conversationalist

I recently observed an interesting contrast in my communication style. Two weeks ago, I was visiting a church in Windsor with a group from my church, as I wrote about here. This church, New Song Church, has a community meal every Friday evening and a casual snack-and-service thing every Saturday night. While we were there on the weekend, we were instructed to mix with the people there, start a few conversations and get to know them a bit.

That's never really been a problem for me. I've always been good at leading conversations with complete strangers, even if I'm just giving someone a ride home. My habit has always been to spot young men that look like they could use a friend. If the guy is single and in his late teens or early twenties, we usually find something with which we can relate and it's easy enough to have a half hour conversation with them. Consciously and/or unconsciously, I've always been drawn to developing friendships or starting conversations with people on the edge of group. (Is there something Freudian in that? I'll chalk it up to my God-given desire to disciple people.)

The contrast that I see in my life is that I don't like to start those same kinds of conversations for my own sake. If I'm the one on the edge of a group, I find it much more difficult to break into ongoing conversation and engage some people. This reluctance even seems silly to me sometimes if I hesitate to break into a group with whom I'm friends already.

Upon further review, I think that this contrast may relate to my personality type, as I wrote about here back in the day. I'm about 50-50 melancholy and phlegmatic, which means that I'm a logical introvert and that I'm an easy-going perfectionaist, respectively. The introverted side comes through in my conversational skills and my reticence in that area.

I used to think that I was more choleric, an extrovert, because that was my reputation when I was in youth group back in Wawa and since I've always been the leader of some ministry or worship team. When I first moved to London, it took me a while to figure out that I don't have to be the crazy, outgoing guy just because people expect it. I learned that the extroverted aspect of being a worship leader (in particular) are traits that I picked up out of necessity but I can still appreciate myself as a more introverted guy.

The trick is to allow myself to be introverted without excluding myself from conversations and without shutting out my own friends. I think that I have developed a fairly good balance but once in a while that wallflower in me still takes over. Yeah, it strikes me as somewhat funny.

I Remember

On this day, I remember the sacrifice of those before me. Those who fought and defended our country and other countries in need. Those who dedicated their lives for those of us that enjoy our freedom today.

When my grandfather came to visit us this past Thanksgiving, we went to visit the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum here in London. I went there along with my grandfather, my dad, my sister, the three South Korea boys and my Little Brother.

My grandfather was stationed here during the early 1950's and he fought for Canada during the Korean War. That link will give a little more information, as displayed on the RCR Museum website. The museum had relics and models of various wars in Canada's past along with some video presentations, books and displays of medals. It was an emotional visit for my grandfather and a good experience for me and my Little. The fact that we had three kids with us from South Korea was significant as well.

I want to thank my grandfather, Angus Grant, for everything he did for Canada, for Korea and for what he has done for me and my family. Thanks, Grandpa.

Movie Reviews

My brother arrived at the movie theatre with a group of his friends this past Friday an hour early to see Jarhead. Unfortunately for him, it was completely sold out an hour before the show. They opted to watched Zorro instead. My brother said that the first one was much better than this sequel and since it clocked in at two and a half hours it was a bit tedious.

After church on Saturday night, I hooked up with my brother to go see Jarhead. I got there with plenty of time to spare and I bought two tickets. Unfortunately, I couldn't go into the theatre to save two seats because I had to wait in the lobby to give my brother his ticket. He wasn't able to get there until ten minutes before the show started and the only seats available in the theatre by that time were in the very first row. Opting to save ourselves the neck pain, we exchanged our tickets for the next showing of Doom instead.

Doom is the latest action movie starring The Rock, of course. It's based on the old video game that we know and love. Y'know, the next best game to come out after Wolfenstein 3D. While the plot of the game may be limited, the plot of the movie served the genre well. Think the Aliens series, with monsters chasing people around dark hallways.

It was pretty much a shoot-em-up fight begining to end but it actually spent a little time developing a couple of key characters. That paid off in the climax with some meaningful duels. The use of The Rock's character was excellent, though Karl Urban was the pivotal character. (Look at his bio, you've seen him before.)

The soldiers in the movie referred to their battles as games and used similar phrases, which was a nice reference to the original source without being cheesy. The game was a first-person shooter, of course, and they used that visual perspective towards the end of the movie at a key time so it fit perfectly. An entire movie in first peson perspective would have made me pull out a BFG myself but this was well done. Overall, this was an excellent movie for this genre, though Aliens is still secure at the top.

Since my brother had failed to watch his chosen movie twice in two days, we went back to the theatre on Sunday night with my dad with more than an hour to spare. This time, we finally managed to catch Jarhead. This movie is based on a book by an ex-marine as he describes his time during Desert Storm in the first Iraqi war. It's critically acclaimed and whatnot but the main reason I wanted to see this movie was because Jamie Foxx was in it. I was blown away by his portrayal of Ray Charles in 2004 and I've been a fan of his ever since. (Hence the reason that movie capped my Top Ten List of 2004.)

This movie was all right but I hardly recommend it to anyone due to it's graphic content. I was expecting some visceral blood a la Three Kings but this was actually a character piece about soldiers not fighting, since that Iraqi war ended so quickly. As soon as you have a movie look at boot camp, you're welcoming a barrage of creative swearing from the sargeants. Swearing in that kind of setting is a rule of English grammar. In retrospect, I should have taken a page from Joel's book and found a specific review beforehand but the point was to hang out with my brother so that part was still good.

As surprising as it was to see that Jarhead sold out every viewing this past weekend at the only screen at Silver City, it actually came in second to Chicken Little, 27 million to 40 million. I look forward to bringing my Little to see that movie sometime soon.

What or Who

"I think you're wrong and you have my full support."

What is our role as Christian friends? If we have a friend that is dealing with a "grey area" and they make a decision, should we respond with arguments supporting our own position? Mock them for a silly choice? Support them even though though we think they're wrong?

Aleah had this post one month ago on her blog, outlining her plan to throw away a large part of her excellent CD collection because their content was either questionable or hurtful for her Christian life. Blog comments and conversations tend to become mini debates by their nature and she had the longest set of responses that she's ever had on her blog. Some comments were encouraging, some discouraging, some mocking, some questioning.

After a few weeks, she posted her conclusions about this topic. Based on her comments, the feedback that she received on her blog paled in comparison to feedback from her friends and acquaintances. She recanted her original position and faced the double-whammy of condemnation for having bad music and condemnation for capitulating to peer pressure.

This was a tough process for Aleah, as the emotions of those blog posts show. Why do I bring it up again? Am I making another stab at convincing her of my position? Nope. I think that this was a great learning experience for Aleah that will prove useful to her in the future. Instead, I want to address the issue of who we are as friends.

You know the saying, "Never discuss religion or politics at the dinner table?" While neither of those topics may have any significance to a lot of people, I dare say that music may be such a topic. Judgements about music content can be explosive, challenging and may seem like a slap in the face to some people. We seem to respond in kind sometimes.

As friends, I suggest that we should care for the person and not just the issue. As friends, we should look at the relationship and not just the topic. As friends, we should support personal and spiritual growth and not self-made clones. As I said in one of my comments, we don't realize how often we dissect a topic without noticing that we're dissecting the person along the way. We can make people feel like a frog in biology class, having others open them up and take them a apart - and all in the name of friendship.

In the end, I think that Aleah has probably learned a lot from this blogging experience. I know that I have been on both the giving and receiving ends of these debates and I hope that I've matured because of them. Likewise, I will probably look back on this month when I come across similar situations in the future and I will challenge myself: Do I care about what it is or who it is?

Stories from Windsor: Part II

I wanted to capture a descriptive snapshot of two people that I met while I was in Windsor this past weekend, as I mentioned in Part I. There was one lady named Lynne who was considered the neighbourhood mother. She has lived in this community for years and she knows everyone and everything that happens.

During the more temperate seasons, she tends to sit on one corner in the middle of the neighbourhood. This corner has a cement circle with an iron statue commemorating the industrious nature of the people of days gone by. She can be found there at random times starting from early morning until very late evening. She's just looking out for anybody that needs to talk or that needs help.

Lynne's motto is, "You can't schedule a crisis." Everyone knows where she lives and everyone is welcome to knock on her door at any time, night or day. The people in this community prefer to take care of their own problems rather than bring cops in every day.

One man that we met from the church was having problems when he first moved in with a gang of teenagers in the neighbourhood. His car was stolen, the ignition was smashed and the car was beat up. He had a group of young guys surround his car at one after that and jump on it while he was inside.

By general consensus, if he called the cops then (a) they would have been ineffective in locating a random gang of youth and (b) it would have gotten worse for him. Instead, this guy spoke to Lynne. She knew exactly who each of the youth were and she went off to speak to them. The gang of guys never bothered this man again.

Lynne was highly skeptical of the church when it bought the old bar eight years ago. By her estimation, it took her six years before she even considered becoming a Christian. During that time, she became friends with the pastor and people from the church and eventually she became a Christian because of her relationship with these people. To this day, she has only listened to four sermons and she hated them. And yet, she'll join the worship times, is involved with the food services and is constantly at the church.

I have one more story that I want to fit in here. One of the many people that I got to know over the weekend was a guy Mike. He was about my age, in the mid-twenties. He used to go the University of Windsor. He had been in his third year of electrical engineering and had gotten his first job placement at Ontario Hydro. The motto that they use is that "one mistake can kill."

Talk about pressure. Mike was a third-year student still learning the ropes and, from what I understood, he had a nervous breakdown because of the pressure in his life. Apparently he now lives on welfare and he spends his time programming euchre games in java applets so that he can play a friend in China. He said that he just doesn't see the purpose in working hard for the rest of his life. He started visiting New Song Church (that was the church we were visiting) one month ago and he had been showing up there for their Saturday Night Live session every week. It's a casual short service with songs and snacks and he's been gradually developing a few friendships.

So those are two people that I met while I was there. (See Part I.)

Richard's Blog

Welcome, Richard, to my blogging circle. You were able to hold out for years but I finally broke you. Bwahahaha!

On a more serious note, can anyone tell me where a good look out point is around here? I would like to take my Little Brother on a (short) fall hike to some high point that overlooks London. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Stories of Windsor: Part I

I went to Windsor this past weekend with a team of people from my church. We visited New Song Church, which is located in an industrial area of town. They're surrounded on three side by a river and various factories, resulting in a community that is somewhat segregated from the rest of the city. The area used to be a hot spot for alcohol smugglers back in the day, as this article describes their smuggling tricks into the United States during prohibition.

These days, the area is still a hot spot for illegal trafficing but now it's hard drugs. Last week yet another crack war was heating up between gangs. And I mean that literally - one of the neighbourhood homes was set on fire by suspected arson. Murders are common enough in the area and we were advised that "you get used to it" after the first few. In Sunday morning service, the pastor cracked a joke about how safe we must feel sleeeping inside the church in the middle of this kind of neighbourhood. The congregation thought that was pretty funny.

New Song Church has the motto that they're "a church with the heart of a mission." They don't want to be another mission to the poor. They want to be a church family whose ministry is to care for the poor and whose members are the poor. As a result, they tend to lead the way with regards to this type of ministry, training churches regularly. Sometimes they have groups like us come to visit for a weekend or a week and sometimes it's through annual conferences like the Beggar's Banquet.

We arrived there early Friday evening and stayed until early Sunday afternoon. While there, we participated in the usual tasks that you would expect from a short-term missions/outreach trip. We helped with some of the meals, got to know a lot of the people who visited, painted and cleaned the church and led a couple of services.

On Saturday morning I walked around the neighbourhood with Larissa and Sue, knocking on doors to hand out flyers and invite people to church. I had a few good conversations with people, including one conversation in French as I chatted with a guy that moved there from Quebec.

The church building is actually a converted bar. This building used to have the longest bar counter in all of Canada and is a massive building with five apartment units, two large kitchen areas and one main hall. Many of the members of this church used to live in this area when they were young and they moved back into the neighbourhood after being away for years.

The weekend was a great experience. It didn't strike me as all that different from my visits to Belize back in the day. Granted, the general living conditions are actually better than they were in Belize but the people were still friendly and it was a genuine community working together. I'm not sure what this means for our church as we revisit the purpose and plan of our various ministries but we'll see about that. In the end, we gave a lot to their church and they gave a lot to our church and that's just what we all wanted.

Related: Part II