Turn Creativity Into Real Productivity With This New eBook

Stephen Altrogge of Sovereign Grace Ministries is a versatile guy. And as a pastor, author, songwriter, worship leader and blogger at TheBlazingCenter.com, he knows more than a thing or two about creativity and productivity.

This is fortunate for all of us because Stephen has just released a new eBook, Create: Stop Making Excuses And Start Making Stuff. It’s short enough for you to read in an hour, although you may want to take it a few pages at a time, marinating in its wisdom. You’ll not only learn how Stephen finds the time to create art in multiple formats, but you’ll learn from other skilled creatives as well.

Stephen doesn’t teach you how to be creative — he convinces you that you are. From there, he teaches you how to harness and hone your creativity, turning the ideas in your mind to finished work that can inspire, encourage, equip and admonish others.

The best thing about it is his biblical approach, from start to finish. Create begins in Genesis, then shares scriptural wisdom throughout each stage of the process. Along the way, you’ll also get advice from Anne Lamott, Douglas Wilson, Stephen King, Bryan Chapell, Donna Tartt and Charles Spurgeon.

Indelible Grace & the Re:Tuned Hymns Movement: My Kevin Twit Interview

Sandra McCracken, Chelsey Scott & Kevin Twit of Indelible Grace at Sojourn during an Acts 29 Boot Camp

If there was a Godfather of the Re:Tuned hymns movement, it would be Kevin Twit. Kevin is a Reformed University Fellowship pastor, a musician, and a songwriter. He is also the founder of Indelible Grace, the ministry that sprang from RUF and taught a generation to love and appreciate the often-neglected hymns of the faith.

When I first heard Indelible Grace in 2004, I thought, “This is allowed? We can write new tunes for old hymns?” It is much more common now, largely because of the Indelible Grace albums, their RUF Hymnbook, touring (led by iGrace artist Matthew Smith) and lectures and workshops.

Kevin has taught several times at Sojourn Music songwriting workshops, so I knew he’d be a fantastic guest in the My Song In The Night interview series. And a new Indelible Grace album is on the horizon as well, with a Kickstarter campaign. You can learn about it here, as well as Kevin’s advice on working with hymns and the Indelible Grace writing and recording process:

Bobby Gilles: Before Indelible Grace came along, most “modern hymn” records I heard were attempts to stick with the most well-known tunes for hymns but then just add electric guitars and driving rock rhythm. How and why did you come up with the idea of taking something like “And Can It Be,” “Arise My Soul, Arise” or “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” and come up with a completely new melody?

Kevin Twit: Well, Indelible Grace did not come up with the idea.  It was being done in RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) groups and there were some other examples of this sort of thing, most notably James Ward’s version of “Rock of Ages.”  More specifically, for “Arise My Soul” I wrote a new tune at a World Harvest Mission Sonship Conference (the last one Jack Miller led) after we tried to sing the tune in the hymnal and I felt it was not a good fit with the text.  But many of the other Indelible Grace hymns were texts we discovered in old hymnals that had no tunes and so we needed to come up with a tune to sing these words we had found.  In the early days we sang a lot of texts to Come Thou Fount’s traditional tune – but gradually more and more of the texts we liked and were using regularly had tunes written for them.

Bobby Gilles: Is there a benefit to a church doing, say, both the standard tune and the Indelible Grace tune of a song like “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go?”

Kevin Twit: I believe there is.  I think there are more emotional nuances in a hymn text than any tune can bring out.  Also, sometimes the hymn with traditional tune can cause people to zone out and not really listen to the words.  A new tune can bring a fresh hearing to a text.

Bobby Gilles: As a tune writer, do previous tunes for a specific text influence you in any way? Do you prefer not to know/listen to previous tunes?

Kevin Twit: Sometimes I have written a new tune because I felt the old tune either wasn’t a good fit for the text or felt it would be difficult for us to sing and play with typical RUF instruments like a couple guitars.  I am a Berklee grad, so I can pull off traditional tunes with chords changing on every beat, but that would be asking too much from many of the guitarists who lead worship in RUF groups.  But honestly, I really am trying to find texts that have dropped out of use for the most part and so I am looking for texts in old hymnals without music in them.

Bobby Gilles: You’ve said before that worship is formative, and it matters what we think. What about the argument that hymns are dry, that there isn’t enough emotion or subjective response compared to contemporary praise choruses?

Four Reasons Your Worship Songs Are Like Random Slogans

N.T. Wright, in the current issue of Worship Leader magazine:

“And I worry when the words of some of the modern worship songs seem to me just a random selection of Christian slogans, as it were, rather than actually a narrative of the world as claimed by Jesus and rescued by Jesus in his death and resurrection — songs that recognize that the world is still a suffering place, but looking forward to the new creation. Some worship songs are struggling to say that, but if the narrative is broken then it’s not actually helping the people who are singing it in the way that it should … Scripture gives us a gigantic story and says, ‘Hey guys, this is your story, live in it.'”

This is what Kristen and I tried to be mindful of when writing the songs for her worship EP The Whole Big Story (which you can download for free in the column on your right). The songs all tell a story, and taken together they testify of the one big story of God.

But what are some ways in which all of us worship songwriters can fall into “random selections of Christian slogans”? How do we avoid it? Here are some ideas:

Is Your Favored Rhyme Scheme Working Against You?

As I wrote in Are Inconsistent Rhyme Schemes Destroying Your Songs, the popular AABB rhyme scheme makes it all-too easy to write two-line slogans. If this is happening to you, try writing other rhyme schemes, such as ABAB, or ABCB.

Do You Read The Bible As A Coherent Story?

Many of us grew up thinking of the Bible as a collection of pithy statements, wise proverbs or separate teachings. And we either ignore the Old Testament or see it as a collection of individual moral stories, plus the Psalms and Proverbs. Then we divide the New Testament into the Gospels + advice from the apostles + that crazy stuff in Revelation. If we don’t see the Bible as one central story, ultimately all about Jesus, then of course we won’t write songs that way.

Are You Ignoring Important Templates?

How Should American Christians Observe Memorial Day & Independence Day

Christ calls His people into the Kingdom of God, a greater kingdom than any earthly country (1 Peter 2:9; Hebrews 13:14).

• But does this mean Christian church services should not celebrate the founding of our nation, as we do on Independence Day?
• Does it mean Christians should not observe memorials for servicemen and women who have died in service to America, as we do on Memorial Day?

Kristen wrote an article for our friends at TheGospelCoalition.com called First And Foremost Citizens Of Heaven. An excerpt:

Unfortunately some of the patriotic hymns of the American church contain dangerous teachings, using eschatological language that portrays the United States as the promised New Jerusalem, such as this couplet from “America The Beautiful”:

Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

We must not idolize our nation or forget the multinational character of the body of Christ. He has ransomed his church from every nation, tribe, and tongue. Rather than boast in our national pride, let us boast in Christ alone.

After you read the article, let’s think about this:

• do holidays like Memorial Day and Independence Day provide a chance to for Christians to worship in the spirit and truth of Pentecost, acknowledging the mysterious providence of God that brings life from death, sweet from bitter, blessings from curses?

“The Blood Of The Martyrs Is The Seed Of The Church” – Tertullian, mid-second century

Jesus gave His life so that we might live, surrendering Himself to the forces of evil who sought to kill Him. And He had told His disciples, “If they persecuted me, they’ll persecute you also.” — John 15:18-20

We see how this played out each time we read The Acts of the Apostles. When the Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost and filled those first believers, it set in motion a chain of events that almost immediately led to the persecution, imprisonment and murder of Christ’s followers.

For hundreds of years, waves of persecution ebbed and flowed. Periods of relative calm followed periods of intense bloodbaths, but throughout these first centuries, Christian martyrs were common. Untold thousands of Christians gave their lives rather than deny Christ. The authorities beheaded some of them, stoned them, fed them to lions and murdered them by many other gruesome, cruel means.

But something strange happened.

Chip Stam & The Blessedness of Investing In Others

Chip Stam (far right) teaching at 2010 Acts 29 Louisville Bootcamp at our church Sojourn

It’s natural for any of us to explore relationships with those we perceive to be above us, or at least on our level, whether in terms of fame, skill, wisdom, income or some other measure of success. And we should desire mentors, but God also calls us to a way of life in which the greatest is the servant of all, where we never stop learning or teaching, where every joint in the body of Christ supplies and edifies his and her fellows.

Such was the example of worship leader & professor Carl “Chip” Stam. In many ways, Chip was a man whom Christ could point out as he commands us “Go and do the same.” Here is one of those ways:

I’ve written before about the formative role Chip played in the worship life of our church Sojourn and our Worship Pastor Mike Cosper. But Chip was one of those guys who was everywhere at once, always knowing how to encourage and admonish, sharpen and strengthen.

I joined Sojourn in the fall of 2004. I heard stories of Chip Stam a few times but had never met him. Then Chip emailed this to me in June 2007:

“A friend pointed me to your website. I had a good time listening and reading. Blessings on you. I am at Southern as the worship prof. Have you listened to the lectures by Townend and the Gettys? Let’s get a JAVA together sometime.”

This was before Sojourn had recorded any of my worship songs, before I had met Kristen, before I wrote my children’s book Our Home Is Like A Little Church, and before I joined the Sojourn Church staff. The site he referenced was a webpage of my poorly recorded demos – songs that have since been officially recorded, or discarded, or chopped up to make newer, better songs.

I say this because what Chip Stam did for me — and what he did for untold numbers of people — is something that we’d all do well to imitate. Chip invested and poured himself into people even if they weren’t his students, even if they didn’t have a name, even (and especially) if they hadn’t “arrived.” He didn’t think my song drafts were flawless, that I was going to “change the face of worship,” or anything like that. I guess he perceived a certain base level of talent, along with a desire to offer worship to God and theologically accurate songs to the church. That’s all he needed. His introduction was just a few sentences, but it was a big, unexpected deal to me at the time.

Over the next few years Chip and I crossed paths here and there, and I benefitted from each encounter, no matter how brief. Sometimes it would simply be encouragement; other times he challenged or instructed. We did converse about those Townend and Getty lectures – click that link above to listen to them, as well as lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from Bob Kauflin, Reggie Kidd, Kevin Twit, Michael Card, John Frame, Harold Best and many other worship leaders who came to instruct students at Chip’s request.

In 2009, I rode with Sojourn Music leaders in a van to the yearly Worship Symposium at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A sudden snow storm had grounded flights out of Louisville, so we made a last-minute stop at Louisville International Airport to give Chip a ride. This was a treat for each of us, a couple of whom knew Chip much better than I, and others who met him for the first time on that conference weekend. I recall it now because it resembled every meeting I had with Chip — joyful remembrance and expectation of all God was doing and had promised to do, good-natured chatter, and cut-to-the-quick opinions about what does and doesn’t constitute a good worship song.

Just weeks after Chip’s first email to me, he contracted cancer. On May 1, 2011, Chip died. His long battle with cancer was over, and he left this earth to enjoy forever the One who had redeemed him. Now he is a part of the great cloud of witnesses in heaven.

He leaves behind many who carry on in the work of encouraging, equipping and learning from each other, looking for the city which is to come, and most of all, worshiping God. Chip’s example lingers, and I hope it does for a long time.

• A teacher who is ever a student
• One who imparts knowledge but encourages debate
• A man who delights in finding a fellow traveler on the way home
• Someone with boundless enthusiasm for the gospel
• A leader who lives to duplicate himself, many times over
• An evangelist and an example, about whom these words from Paul are also fitting:

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 11:1

Do You Make This Mistake In Dealing With Criticism Of Your Work?

Ernest Hemingway knew first-hand that writers often let criticism destroy their confidence and ability to create new work. He wrote in Green Hills of Africa:

If they believe the critics when they say they are great then they must believe them when they say they are rotten and they lose confidence. At present we have two good writers who cannot write because they have lost confidence through reading critics. If they wrote, sometimes it would be good and sometimes it would be quite bad, but the good would get out. But they have read the critics and they must write masterpieces. The masterpieces the critics said they wrote. They weren’t masterpieces, of course. They were just good books. So now they cannot write at all.

And Hemingway’s contemporary Thomas Wolfe gave voice to his own inner turmoil in dealing with literary criticism through the fictional experience of his character George Webber in You Can’t Go Home Again:

When his first book had come out, wild horses could not have dragged him from New York: he had wanted to be on hand so he could be sure not to miss anything. He had waited around, and read all the reviews … and expected from day to day some impossible fulfillment that never came … So now he was gun-shy of publication dates, and he made up his mind to go away this time — as far as possible. Although he did not believe there would be an exact repetition of those earlier experiences, just the same he was prepared for the worst, and when it happened he was determined not to be there.

I’m haunted by the phrase “some impossible fulfillment that never came,” and you probably are, too. No matter how many pats on the back you get,

The Christian Music Industry: Should We Love It Or Leave It?

Last week in Why Call It Christian? The Problem With Christian Music, I listed a few reasons that many Christians dislike the terms “Christian Rock” and “CCM,” and why many feel that contemporary Christian music is lower quality than it should be. And earlier this year Kristen wrote about some dangerous theological implications behind the lyrics of many CCM songs.

But are we just talking about symptoms? If none of these reasons and problems existed, would it still be dangerous to have “Christian” radio stations, record companies, publishing houses and individual bands and singer-songwriters? Must these things always constitute what some have called a cultural ghetto, or a “circle the wagons” mentality in which Christian artists are absent from the larger stream of culture? Should the marching order for all artists who are Christians be:

• Become the best you can be
• Reject any kind of “Christian” label or support from Christian industries, and make your mark on the larger culture

Let’s Imagine For A Moment …

A music artist gives her life to Jesus. Aware of the depth of her sin, she is overwhelmed by the gracious gift of life and sacrifice of Christ. And for the rest of her life, Jesus is the theme of her song.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of people out there who have experienced the same life-changing gift of salvation. They don’t make music, but they enjoy listening to music. They hear this singer’s music and they love it because it speaks their language — the story of the gospel. They might still enjoy Hank Williams, the Beatles, Coldplay or Adele, but there are times when they want to listen and sing along to songs about salvation through the cross, and God’s special grace. Every time they hear the words of scripture set to music, every time they hear the name “Jesus,” ever time they hear the story of Calvary, it moves them in a way that no other story does.

Would it be reasonable to expect that these people would want to listen to that singer’s music, and that they’d look for more music by more artists that also overtly told the gospel story? Would it be reasonable to think they’d listen to radio stations or internet playlists that featured these songs? Would they possibly download those songs in iTunes or look for hard copies in physical stores?

If those are reasonable expectations, then you’ve got a music industry based on songs about the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can call it Christian, Gospel, Worship, Church, Sacred or Jesus Music, but whatever you label it (and people will label it, because people label things) you’ve got an industry that propagates songs about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why “Industry”? That Seems Unspiritual

Update On Our Blog This Summer, Tornado Recovery & Baby

The summer season is upon us. We are currently working on some writing projects, and also looking forward to good family time this summer. And as many of you know if you follow either of us on Facebook or follow Bobby on Twitter, I’m expecting a child in October (the due date is October 7th).

With that in mind, we’re going to post a little less often this summer. Our regular article schedule will be Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of each week. A couple exceptions:

• We’ll publish Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday the week of Memorial Day
• We’ll take the entire week off during the week of Independence Day

We hope the three articles per week that we do publish this summer will be a blessing to you. Feel free to subscribe by email in the column on your right, or click the RSS button in the top right to subscribe to our RSS feed.

I’m sure Bobby will continue to tweet regularly during the summer so if you don’t follow @bobbygilles on Twitter, just come here whenever you want to see his tweets — he publishes lots of links to interesting articles on theology, creativity, worship, writing and communications, as well as other updates and quotes. His Twitter feed is in the column to your right, where you’ll find the Email Subscription form and our free worship album The Whole Big Story.

You can also always click the Streampad “Play” button on the very bottom of My Song In The Night to hear an hours’ worth of our songs, including all the songs that Bobby wrote or that I sang on Sojourn Music worship albums.

Finally, thanks to the many of you who have prayed for our family members who lost their home and were hospitalized by the Henryville, IN tornado in March. Thanks to each of you who sent in donations as well.

The children have all recovered and are finishing their school year. Bobby’s brother Darrell is making excellent recovery from his broken bones. He’s had the bands removed from his jaw too, so he can eat nearly anything now. And his wife Trish continues to get better as well. She is still in a wheelchair, since her pelvis was broken. We’re praying she will be out of the wheelchair soon. Also, they should all be in a new house by the end of the summer.

Here is a recent story on their progress, from the Southern Indiana News & Tribune.

God is good.

 

3 Guidelines For Developing A Musical Sound For Your Worship Team

Gospel, country, rock, bluegrass … modern churches have a big palette of musical styles from which to choose. Which one is right for your church? Should you restrict yourself to one? How do you decide?

A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work because churches are all different, with different histories, locales, congregants and musicians.

Your Musicians

What can your team play well? What do they like? What is their background? If you try to make a group of country boys from Birmingham play Seattle grunge, it will come off as inauthentic and perhaps awful. Note that it isn’t just about your location — I’m sure there are good grunge musicians in Birmingham.

Many of us at Sojourn love bluegrass music. It is Kentucky, after all. We’re a four-campus church with five different worship teams on any given Sunday. While it isn’t too uncommon for one of those teams, at one of those campuses, to play a bluegrass set, it’s still a rarer occasion than it might be if we had more bluegrass musicians (for instance, we’ve never had a mandolin player). Here is one of the few bluegrass songs we’ve recorded: Blest Be the Lamb by Jamie Barnes and Rebecca Dennison, adapted from Hymn 29 by Isaac Watts:

Your People

By “people” I mean church members and attendees as well as the music culture of your region. While it’s too simplistic to say that everyone in the south loves country and gospel, or that everyone in Detroit loves Motown and rock, cities and regions do carry certain musical imprints, based on the history, experiences and proclivities of the people who make up that region’s culture. Know about the musical heritage and the current music scene in your town. This is easy for some of you but may take extra work for those of you who move to a different region to take a position as worship pastor. What worked in your old city may not be the best fit for your new one.

This is true even within genres. Delta blues isn’t exactly the same as Chicago blues.

Why Call It Christian? The Problem With Christian Music

Church music has always existed — it is music made with the purpose of praising God and instructing his people while gathered together in a public service. Today it’s often called worship music. This is the music that Kristen and I are called to, and the music we write about most often at My Song In The Night. But today let’s talk about another kind of music, one that is related in terms of lyrical content.

Proponents of Christian music promote it as music that sounds like the latest musical genres favored by a given culture, with lyrics that are edifying for Christians and “safe for the whole family.” It doesn’t have to be as “singable” as worship music, or bound to a certain liturgical function, but is meant to carry a Christian message. And yet many of the most diehard critics of this music are evangelical Christian pastors, scholars, musicians and music critics. What gives?

The discussion is laden with emotion on both sides, largely because one side interprets the other’s argument as “You make/enjoy music that stinks, and it actually hurts the cause of Christ rather than help” (and this is in fact what many on the other side are saying).

Big problems exist with labels like Christian Rock or CCM, and with the creation and marketing of music under these labels. At the same time, some of the arguments people make against them are unfair, simplistic and mean-spirited.

In my article about the potential name change for the Southern Baptist Convention, What’s In A Name, I told you some of my radio experience as a music director and DJ for Southern Gospel and, later, Christian Country music in the early 1990s:

Some suggested “Why not call ourselves “Christian Country, like the Christian Rock industry has done (as opposed to the older term “country gospel,” which carried old-time music connotations the younger artists wanted to avoid)?”

Brooks, Twain and others had caused an explosion in country music sales, concert tickets and radio ratings. So, as artists like Stryper and Petra had piggybacked on the popularity of rock music, maybe we could piggyback on country music.

Christian Country has never approached the popularity of Christian Rock and Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) because many country music fans, DJs, recording executives and artists already think of themselves and the country genre as “Christian.”

Nevertheless, using the term “Christian” to define and promote any grouping of artists and songs is problematic. Many church goers do not support Christian music, and artists themselves often go to great lengths to avoid being labeled “CCM” or “Christian artist,” even if they are Christians, singing songs about Christ.

Others don’t understand why any Christian would be against it. They point to bands and singer-songwriters in the genre who sing well, play well and write well, who have blessed the Church and have played skillfully before unbelievers. So what’s the problem? Why do so many people want to avoid Christian labels? Why don’t more church goers listen to this music?

Regardless of the motives of individual bands, singer-songwriters and others in the music business, many people see the whole enterprise as an inorganic, market-driven approach.

Often, this is not true — sometimes if a Christian band sounds like a secular band, it’s because they love that band’s music and are influenced by them in the same way that any artist is influenced by others. But why are their lyrics different? Because they’ve been redeemed by Jesus and they want to sing about it. It’s the most exciting, lasting thing that ever has or will happen to them, and they want to share this through their art. It’s not a marketing plan. They love Jesus and want to sing about him.

However, the inorganic, market driven nature of Christian music is true enough in the industry’s core and its past. And again, I speak as a former insider, although I was only in my early 20s during my radio programming days. The “behind the scenes” people I was working with in the early 90s wanted to find Christians who could be produced to sound like the top country artists of that time and to market them as “the Christian alternative.” And they were doing so because many of these same people had already done this once, with Christian Rock or CCM in the 1970s and 80s. It’s just the way they thought:

“Find artists who sound like today’s hot secular artists, then guide them into producing an album that sounds like the hot secular albums of today. Then tell people ‘If you like ________, here is a clean alternative.”

What they couldn’t understand is how distasteful and contrived this seemed to many people, who didn’t want anything to do with music that aims to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the gospel medicine go down.

When You Copy Someone Else, You Will Almost Always Be Worse

You can’t out-U2 U2.

No artist creates in a vacuum. We are all (including U2) influenced by others. But great artists are able to