How To Pastor Or Befriend Those With The Artistic Temperament

At my church Sojourn, we use a tool called an Enneagram to help staff members and pastors understand ourselves and our peers. Church planters within Sojourn Network also undergo Enneagram assessment through CrossPoint Ministry. An Enneagram is a tool (like Meyers-Briggs or StrengthsFinder) which gives insight into an individuals personality.

The Enneagram discovers both the strengths and weaknesses of your personality, and identifies nine basic personality types. When staff members first took the assessment test in 2010, we quickly discovered that staffers in the arts (predominantly Sojourn Music and Visual Arts) generally scored highest in  “The Originalists,” or “Romantics” area … the artistic personality.

This came as no surprise to any of us, just as it came as no surprise to find our Executive Pastor fit the “Effective/Achiever” temperament.

So what did we learn about each other, and what can you learn about how to befriend, pastor, mentor or live as a spouse with a Romantic/Originalist/Artist?

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: General Characteristics:

We’re creative and sensitive, with a strong sense of beauty and an intuitive grasp of moods and feelings.

We’re expressive, not just in our chosen field of art but often in our choice of clothing, hairstyle, home decor and other corners of life. Most of us are intensely aware of our weaknesses, even if we don’t admit them. We want to do things our way, and we deeply desire to be treated as one of a kind, special. We may try to hold our “suffering” as a badge of honor, because if we can’t feel special for our accomplishments, then we can feel special in our suffering, in feeling misunderstood, in melancholia.

We have intense longings. We can overreact to present conditions, even as we have trouble “living in the moment” rather than an idealized past or a preferred future. We may be melancholy or high strung, but we’re dramatic either way. At our worst, we hold long grudges, and nurse old wounds, because our “deadly sin” is envy. We don’t like it when another artist is doing better than we are, which is unfortunate because there is always someone else doing better. Even artists who become “legends” feel inadequate or mistreated in the presence of a new “chart topping sensation.”

The underlying harmful emotion for this artistic temperament is a feeling of shame. It goes beyond “My work isn’t good enough” to “I’m not good enough.” This is exacerbated by the pervasive attitude among even Christian artists that “I am my art.” When we wrap our whole sense of being in something we create (our art) rather than something God created (us), then we set ourselves up for failure and grief.

The Cure For A Sense Of Shame: The Doctrine of Adoption

In Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem defines adoption as “an act of God whereby he makes us members of his family” (p. 736). We who believe in Christ are now children of God, joint-heirs with Christ of God’s Kingdom. This goes much deeper than what we do; this is who we are. When another artist feels shame (“I am worthless”) we must say “No, you’re a child of God.” Whatever the merits of an artist’s work, this work is just what they do, not who they are.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. – Romans 8:14-17

This is a foundational truth that the artist must understand. Once this understanding is in place, we can look at other concepts and strategies that artists can use to help themselves, as well as strategies that pastors, spouses and all fellow believers can use to help artists overcome sinful tendencies and their underlying struggles with envy and feelings of inferiority:

The Artistic Temperament Needs:

Should Songwriters Count Syllables Or Just Listen For Accents?

When songwriters learn about hymn meter (also called poetic meter) it can seem like rocket science. But meter is simply built on the natural stresses of words. Look at these opening lines from William Cowper’s The Lord Proclaims His Grace Abroad:

The Lord proclaims His grace abroad!
“Behold, I change your hearts of stone;
Each shall renounce his idol god,
And serve, henceforth, the Lord alone.

Each line is eight syllables, known in the world of hymns as Long Meter. When you say these words aloud, you will naturally put more stress on some syllables than others. Look at the first line. The most natural way to pronounce it is:

the LORD proCLAIMS his GRACE aBROAD

So this is an iambic line — a line in which the stresses fall on the even syllables. Once Cowper establishes this pattern, we will hear each line that way even if he slightly varies the pattern. So the second line, most naturally, would sound like:

beHOLD I CHANGE your HEARTS of STONE

Although, having caught the iambic pattern in the first line, we would end up singing the line this way (unaccented “i”):

beHOLD i CHANGE your HEARTS of STONE

Accentual Meter

Along with the term “iamb/iambic,” units of metric feet can be trochee/trochaic (DUMdum), spondee/spondaic (DUMDUM), pyrrhus/pyrrhic (dumdum), anapaest/anapaestic (dumdumDUM) or dactyl/dactylic (DUMdumdum). But let me ease your mind about all these terms. Most likely you already know what all these terms mean. This isn’t a matter of learning new concepts so much as learning how to put a name to the things you instinctively feel when you hear a line of music. For instance, even if you don’t know that the word “quietly” is dactylic, you know it is pronounced “QUIetly.”

If you have a good ear for music,

3 Ways Hymn Meter Transmits Meaning Regardless Of Words Used

In Poetic Meter And Form, Paul Fussell, Jr. explains three ways in which meter can “mean,” by itself, apart from the meaning imparted through the particular words of a metrical poem, and apart from the melody, rhythm and musical arrangement of a hymn:

Meter Is A Ritual Frame That Points To Something Beyond

Imagine a hymn’s meter as a picture frame – an artifice that reminds us we are not experiencing a real object (the actual story or teaching that the lyrics describe) but are experiencing the real object “transmuted into symbolic form.”

In this way, hymns point to something larger than themselves: the truth of the gospel. “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts drives us to the story of the cross in the Bible, and our own feelings about it. It does so through the utilization of Long Meter (lines of 8 syllables each). One look at the text tells us we are getting the story of the cross and one man’s response to it, in a format that breaks each line off at the same length as the other lines. We instinctively know there must be more to the story than can be contained in those chiseled lines.

Meter Is A Force That Allows For Variation, Which Provides New Context

Great writers frequently break “the rules,” but what separates these writers from amateurs is that they know the rules, and they have developed a feel for when, why and how to break them. Too much metrical precision can produce to a “greeting card” sing-song effect. Variation, in the right place, creates powerful emotional effects.

As I write in my Modern Hymns page, Stuart Townend and Keith Getty’s “In Christ Alone” does this by shifting the syllabic emphasis on even-numbered lines. The odd numbered lines deliver a truism in a stately fashion that begins with an unaccented syllable and crescendos to an accented final syllable at line’s end (we call this an iambic line). Then the even lines provide a pattern (called “trochaic“) that breaks those stately bonds and exclaims further truth from the very first syllable, which is strongly accented:

Then BURsting FORTH in GLOrious DAY
UP from the GRAVE He ROSE aGAIN!

Getty’s music carries the pattern of Townend’s lyric (I believe Getty wrote the music first).

A Given Meter Transmits Certain Meanings Regardless Of The Words Used

This is why a limerick is a bad choice for a song about the cross:

A Treasure Chest Of Online Music Marketing Advice For Indie Artists

Berklee Music‘s Director of Marketing Mike King teaches about online music marketing and social media. In the video below, he answers questions from indie bands and singer-songwriters on topic like:

• Engagement
• Giving away music and other freebies
• “The curse of the independent artist is anonymity, not piracy”
• and whether or not indie artists should use companies such as Spotify, CD Baby, Tunecore, SoundCloud, Topsin, iTunes and other players in the digital music & promotion world

Other aspects of the music business he talks about: why bands should have their own website, the importance of live touring, and subjects like distribution, retail and radio airplay.

Get Your Free Songwriting Critique Form & Checklist Form Here

In the early days of Sojourn’s songwriting workshops we developed a couple forms to help worship songwriters edit their songs and critique each other’s work.

• Download the long Songwriting Analysis Checklist Form PDF here
• Download the short Songwriting Critique Form PDF here (it is 2-up per page)

If you’d rather not download these free forms, here is the Songwriting Analysis Checklist Form:

OPENING QUESTIONS

What is the intended use/audience (congregational singing, large or small group gathering, recording, coffee house, club, etc.)?

If corporate worship, how and when could it be used during a worship gathering (Call To Worship, Communion Song, etc.)?

FORM/ STRUCTURE

What is the form or structure of the piece: verse/chorus/verse, hymn-style (may or may not have a chorus, set metrical pattern), does it have a bridge, a pre-chorus, etc.?

Does the form suit the piece?

In a verse/chorus format, is the chorus the logical conclusion to the verses?

Does the bridge (if existing) add a

This Is How We Met: a tale of two sojourners who fell in love

One of my favorite personal blogs is Hopeful Leigh, by Leigh Kramer, “in which a Yankee girl purposefully transitions to the South on a quest for more adventure, fried pickles, and deeper faith.” Leigh blogs about the writing life, faith, friendship, community and her journey through life. She also hosts a series called This Is How We Met, in which guest bloggers share the story of how they met their spouse and fell in love.

I was honored to contribute my story of how I met Kristen, including how I used our shared passion for songwriting to insert myself into her life. Who cares about downloads and royalty checks — I got my wife through songwriting.

Read the story of how Kristen and I met here, at Hopeful Leigh.

You Can’t Sing Praises With All Your Heart Unless …

David begins Psalm 108 by audaciously declaring that “My heart is confident in You, O God; no wonder I can sing Your praises with all my heart!” As I read this just now, I had to pause and reflect on times when I’ve been “worshiping the Lord” or leading others in worship while my heart was less than confident in God, and thus inhibited in praising Him with all of my heart.

Our sincerest worship of God makes a bold statement just like David’s:

“My heart is confident in You, O God! Not in myself! My hope is in YOU, Lord, the maker of heaven and earth! I trust and worship you with all of my heart!”

Does this mean we should not praise Him if our hearts aren’t confident in Him? No. Our practice of worshiping God — declaring who He is and His mighty acts of loving-kindness toward all mankind — encourages and deepens our confidence in God. As we declare the truth about Him our hearts and minds will grow more confident in His steadfast love and faithfulness, and His Spirit will help us worship Him in Spirit and in truth with all of our hearts.

If we’re struggling to have confidence in God as we worship with songs that declare the truth of who He is, we should:

• Stop and reflect on the words we’re singing rather than go through the motions.
• Take time to consider the character and the works of God, and all the other reasons that He’s worthy of all of our praise.
• Ask and rely upon the Holy Spirit to teach us as we sing and confidently trust the Lord.
• Preach the gospel to ourselves and remember how and why we are saved from sin and death!

And if our hearts

Kristen & Bobby Gilles Interviewed At Scripture To Music Collective

Today ScriptureToMusicCollective.com is featuring an interview that Caroline Cobb conducted with Bobby and me. You’ll learn:

• Our songwriting process
• How worship music should affect the Church
• How we balance life, ministry and music
• Our songwriting role models
• How the power of Story relates to our writing

and more. Thanks to Caroline and the Scripture To Music Collective for this interview. We hope you all enjoy it.

Read Bobby’s interview with Caroline Cobb here

What Does The Way Your Church Offers Communion Say About Your Worship?

At our church Sojourn, we take the Lord’s Supper standing up, filing forward in lines as the worship band plays a communion hymn. In turn, each Christian tears off a piece of bread while the volunteer holding the bread recites “The body of Jesus, broken for you.”

Then the Christian dips his bread in one of two cups that another volunteer holds, one filled with wine and one filled with juice (each person chooses one or the other, as his or her conscience permits). While the Christian dips his bread in the cup, the volunteer says “The blood of Jesus, shed for you.”

We like the symbolism portrayed in the common cup, and in each Christian actively leaving their seat to come forward. But of course this isn’t the only “right” way to do communion. The important thing is for pastors and worship leaders to think through it and to know why you do it the way you do it.

The volunteers are church members. Most often, we pair up teams of men and women (husband and wife serving together, in the case of married volunteers), so that one holds the bread and one holds the cups.

Here are some good thoughts about the two most common ways of doing communion, from The Work Of The People: What We Do in Worship and Why, by Marlea Gilbert, Christopher Grundy, Eric T. Myers and Stephanie Perdew.

Regarding The Shared Communion Cup:

“A shared common cup has a long history and origins in early Christian practice. Even more important, a common cup allows us to enact our unity in Christ; we share the same cup, the same covenant, and the same blessing. Whether we drink from a common cup (which is the practice in many churches, and which carries minimal health risk if wine is used) or use instinction (the act of dipping a piece of bread in the cup), we physically demonstrate our participation in that common blessing, just as tearing a piece of bread from a common loaf demonstrates our participation in the one body of Christ.”

Regarding Individual Communion Cups:

Self-Promotion Versus Christian Humility

One of our readers recently suggested we write an article about the tension between the self-promotion of independent artists and Christian humility. For instance is it okay for a Christian singer-songwriter to promote his music through social media? If so, what about biblical commands like Proverbs 27:2 –

Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
a stranger, and not your own lips.

First, promotion and praise are not the same. If I send out a message on Twitter/ Facebook/ LinkedIn/ Google+ that says:

“Download The Whole Big Story by my wife Kristen Gilles for free. It features 4 worship songs we wrote together”

That’s entirely different than:

“Our EP The Whole Big Story is the greatest thing since spray-on sunscreen. Get it now because it’s the best worship record of the year.”

Further, it is possible to write longer messages (blog articles for instance) that highlight the benefits you believe people will get from listening to your music — whether deep theology, good dance beats or something else. The key here is what branding strategists call

Coherence: When your message aligns truthfully with your product.

This is not the same as the saying “It ain’t bragging if it’s true.” Saying “I’m the best” is always bragging, even if 100 authorities also say you are the best.

Promotion is simply the act of letting people know you’ve created something that you believe will benefit them. If someone has subscribed to your social media account, then they expect you will promote your music. If this isn’t what they counted on, or they grow tired of it, they are free to unsubscribe.

But How Much Promotion?

This is tough, because it is subjective. In my Social Media Marketing For Independent Music Bands & Artists I wrote that you shouldn’t go overboard with social media promotion. For me, that means that if you look at my Twitter feed in a given week, the number of tweets that promote our music, blog posts and even tweets relating to things at my church Sojourn (where I am employed) will be far less than tweets relating to other blog links that I think would be of interest to my followers, as well as retweets and personal reflections that have nothing to do with promoting our “goods and services.”

Some social media experts have suggested an 8-1 ratio, meaning that for every tweet about your music, you’d send eight tweets about other things. I don’t think there is a magic number or ratio, but I agree with the principle that your promotional tweets should not outnumber non-promotional tweets, especially if you tweet multiple times per day.

Band Accounts Are Different Than Individual Accounts

Earlier this summer I took over the