Tuesday, March 02, 2004
I love music.
I'm especially fond of Christian rock. Now I know in some circles it seems to be chic to bag on Christian musicians but every time I hear the opening chords of Jesus Freak a chill goes down my spine. It's an awesome feeling. We are a few months away from one of my favorite things in the world. Creation East. The first thing I ever did in ministry was take a group of kids to Creation and it touched my life. I've been going there every year since. There's something so awesome about praising God with 80-100,000 other people.
A really cool thing happens at Creation as well as a lot of other festivals and concerts. The excitement of live music, the interraction with the band and the rest of the people around you creates an interest in the music that goes beyond hearing a song on the radio or CD player. The music turns into a multisensory experience. The sense of hearing is engaged, the lights the color the video, touch is engaged as you feel the beat (and maybe the folks in the mosh pit (no moshing at Creation) if you're into that sort of thing), there are smells of food wafting in from the food concessions and taste (especially at Creation where the food is "off the charts" good). My kids really latched on to bands that they saw first at Creation. The people on the CD player became real people to them, people they liked, people that interested them, people that they wanted to know more about.
For years when I left Creation, I would feel what I began to call the post creation let down. It was always about the same, after coming off some of the amazing worship experiences I had at the festival, I returned to normal life. Life where my whole focus was not God. Worship that was good and well thought out but mostly for my ears. I began to wonder what would happen if worship would engage all our senses. What would happen if worship really were to interract with God. A.M.O.K. was born out of that.
Another ministry I have to give props to in all of this is Interlinc. That resource allowed me to combine my teaching with music and video and helped to cement the ideas I was teaching into my student's minds. The bottom line is this, Christian musicians need to use their gifts to serve others, but so do Christian artists and Christian film makers and Christian writers and Christian actors and directors (okay all Christians) all need to use their gifts to serve others. If we do that, we will be fulfilling what we were created to do, and God will be worshipped in awesome ways that at this point we can't even conceive. All the senses will be engaged, we will truly be loving the Lord with all our hearts and souls and minds, we will finally be the living sacrifices that the Lord desires and worship will return to being about Him.
I'm especially fond of Christian rock. Now I know in some circles it seems to be chic to bag on Christian musicians but every time I hear the opening chords of Jesus Freak a chill goes down my spine. It's an awesome feeling. We are a few months away from one of my favorite things in the world. Creation East. The first thing I ever did in ministry was take a group of kids to Creation and it touched my life. I've been going there every year since. There's something so awesome about praising God with 80-100,000 other people.
A really cool thing happens at Creation as well as a lot of other festivals and concerts. The excitement of live music, the interraction with the band and the rest of the people around you creates an interest in the music that goes beyond hearing a song on the radio or CD player. The music turns into a multisensory experience. The sense of hearing is engaged, the lights the color the video, touch is engaged as you feel the beat (and maybe the folks in the mosh pit (no moshing at Creation) if you're into that sort of thing), there are smells of food wafting in from the food concessions and taste (especially at Creation where the food is "off the charts" good). My kids really latched on to bands that they saw first at Creation. The people on the CD player became real people to them, people they liked, people that interested them, people that they wanted to know more about.
For years when I left Creation, I would feel what I began to call the post creation let down. It was always about the same, after coming off some of the amazing worship experiences I had at the festival, I returned to normal life. Life where my whole focus was not God. Worship that was good and well thought out but mostly for my ears. I began to wonder what would happen if worship would engage all our senses. What would happen if worship really were to interract with God. A.M.O.K. was born out of that.
Another ministry I have to give props to in all of this is Interlinc. That resource allowed me to combine my teaching with music and video and helped to cement the ideas I was teaching into my student's minds. The bottom line is this, Christian musicians need to use their gifts to serve others, but so do Christian artists and Christian film makers and Christian writers and Christian actors and directors (okay all Christians) all need to use their gifts to serve others. If we do that, we will be fulfilling what we were created to do, and God will be worshipped in awesome ways that at this point we can't even conceive. All the senses will be engaged, we will truly be loving the Lord with all our hearts and souls and minds, we will finally be the living sacrifices that the Lord desires and worship will return to being about Him.
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