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As artists, we love art. We love going to concerts, exhibitions, reading books, listening to music. Having created our own art, we are aware of the thought processes and techniques that often lie behind art created by others - so we are equipped with analytical tools that allow us to carefully critique and experience art in great depth. We love immersing ourselves in the creative realm of life.

Then there is the art we create. When you are in the middle of creating, the energy is flowing, the momentum is building, and you know something great is lying just over the horizon, the feeling is amazing. It is truly enjoyable. It's exciting. It brings a thrill and a natural high like nothing else. And it often brings those who are creating together in a truly unique way. Seeing the piece of art finally completed is the ultimate reward - and seeing it being appreciated by others is an added bonus. Over the course of our lives, we long to create a body of work - our 'life's work' - that will say something about us, and capture the imagination of others.

Of course, art and creating can be all-consuming. Art often engages our senses in a way that other things in life don't. It can seem like our whole being is being channelled into experiencing or creating that piece of art. It's often that very focus and attention to the smallest of details that makes experiencing art so enjoyable, and creating art so rewarding.

But the thing is, art can take over. The pursuit of excellence in creating can fill every little gap in our minds so that there is no room left for other things. Even the pursuit of experiencing art can do the same - we go to so many concerts, read so many books, listen to so many albums, that we have no headspace left for other things. Relationships slip down the list of priorities. Bible reading and prayer time suffers.

Without realising it, by sheer virtue of the amount of time and headspace we dedicate to art, we find ourselves worshipping creation, and not the Creator. We would not go so far as to deny God - we still deeply desire to follow him and serve him. It's just that by filling our minds with so much other stuff, we have, in reality, neglected him.

In 'Art and the Bible', Francis Schaeffer challenges us to think differently. He writes: "... there is a very real sense in which the Christian life itself should be our greatest work of art. Even for the great artist, the most crucial work of art is his life." (p49).

And of course our lives are to be viewed not just as a work of art, but as an act of worship. As the Apostle Paul writes - we are to offer our bodies as "living sacrifices" to God as our "spiritual act of worship" (Romans 12:1).

Certainly, art and creating are wonderful gifts from God, the one true Creator. Seeking to create a body of artwork throughout our life is a great thing. But what will we prioritise each day? Will we prioritise creating our 'life's work' in art? Or will we humbly acknowledge that as we seek to follow Jesus, our 'life's work' should quite literally be a lifetime of work on our life itself? Will our life's work - work that says something about who we worship, who we are, and captures the imagination of others -  actually be our life itself?

GC

If you have ever created a piece of art - be it a painting, a piece of music, a written work - you will know that it takes work. Lots of work. Occasionally pieces of art may be fuelled by flashes of inspiration and almost complete themselves... but then there is the finishing of the work, the touching up, the refining, and so on.

If you then go on to create more and more works of art, you will know that the work load increases substantially, that it almost seems to get harder and harder the longer you work as an artist. Sure, you are getting better and better at your craft, but for that very reason you are raising the standard of what you expect of yourself, and others are raising the standard of what they expect of you. And then there is the challenge to innovate, to produce something different to what you've done before.

What's more, art by its very nature is seeking to make a statement, and that often attracts criticism, criticism that hurts... And yet there is something inside of us that knows we have to create - we are continually drawn back to creating. This is not a mere coincidence - God has gifted us with creative skills and abilities and it is a wonderful thing to be using them for him.

Although we may not think of it this way, we are creating works of art each time we prepare music for church. Someone else may have written the hymn or song, but we are creating through interpreting the music in our arrangements and playing.

The thing is, creating is hard work. Amongst the busyness of life, it's a struggle to find space for a rehearsal - in both your calendar and in your mind. Then you need to make sure all your musical equipment is in order. Then there are the slight frustrations you may have with the playing styles of other band members  - they play slightly differently to the way you do, so the sound isn't gelling. And then you realise you need some new musical equipment before Sunday, so you have to find time to get to the music store. Then you need to find time to practice yourself before the service. And after a long day at work, it's hard to be disciplined and remove distraction, in addition to spending good time loving and caring for your family. And then after all that, you play music at church that Sunday, thinking it went really well and that it was a huge achievement to have overcome all the challenges in the week. And then you receive some unpleasant feedback on how it sounded. Then you brace yourself to do it all again next week. Sometimes it all just seems too hard.

In his book Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer challenges us refocus and remember why it is we are creating. As Schaeffer writes: "[t]he man who really loves God, who is working under the lordship of Christ, could write his poetry, compose his music, construct his musical instruments, fashion his statues, paint his pictures, even if no man ever saw them. He knows God looks upon them." (pp 37-8)

When the work in creating seems hard, and the comments from others about our art seem too disheartening to take, we can pause, take a deep breath, and know that our sovereign God (ever-present and all-knowing) has heard and seen our art - art that has come from the abilities he has graciously given us. And that alone is more than enough reason to make the struggle worth the struggle.

A dear friend asked me today whether I could put together some thoughts on positioning the band off the stage (lowering the altitude) in order to stop people giving them too much attention.  

I’m aware that at many churches there has been a push to shove the band off stage – out of sight, out of the limelight, thus reminding the crowd (and, I suspect more pointedly) the musicians that it’s not about them. I think this comes from a beautiful desire for equality in the gathering – not wanting to exalt guitar playing members of the band above punters in the pews. In my time as a church musician I’ve been moved to the side of stage, moved to the back of the stage, moved behind the stage, moved below the stage, moved to the side of the crowd, and (even!) moved to the back of the auditorium. ‘It’s not a rock concert!’ was the rationale. Sure. I guess that’s true.

I’ve always dutifully complied with these requests from those over me in the Lord, and if you’re a musician and you’re told to go, and you can’t gently persuade your leaders otherwise, then there is no question: you should go. However I think the idea is practically and pastorally misguided, for a couple of reasons.

Pastoral Reasons:

First, out of sight means the band is unable to lead the congregation effectively. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the preacher should preach from behind the crowd, for the simple reason that people look to the people up front for leadership and communication, something which is hard to do without the possibility of eye contact. It’s no different in music – through body language, verbal cues, attitude, and movement every member of the band who stands up front is a leader. The choices are lead well or lead badly; not leading is not an option.

Paul encourages the Corinthians to imitate him, and to learn from him via Timothy of his good way of life. (1 Cor 4:16-17). Therefore if you love your church then put good role models on stage!

Second, if the attitude of the musicians is a problem (i.e. if they really are getting a big head because they’re up the front) then you should address their attitude. Spend the time actually pastoring your musicians, rather than trying to train them like you would a puppy (‘outside! Outside!’). If they are egotistical maniacs, then you’ll need more than a stage layout to fix that. You don’t solve the problem of an egotistical preacher, bible reader or prayer by making them preach in funny positions. If leading singing is a word ministry (and I hope our message is getting through on this...it is!) then Godly character should be a pre-requisite for service.

(But it’s worth adding that in my experience musicians are rarely the egotistical stage-hogging maniacs that non-musicians project onto them – more often I find they are perfectionistic, sensitive, depressive personality types, who are easily wounded by criticism and tragically often have a low sense of self worth. But you don’t know that unless you actually bother to know them and care for them as people.)

If after getting to know your musicians you're still worried about their vainglory, then (rather than trying to make an upfront job into a behind the scenes job), why not give them a truly behind the scenes job (like cleaning, filing music, doing sound, etc)?

Practical reasons:

Third, messing about with stage layout creates a challenging musical environment which is beyond most of us. Teaching musicians to communicate with each other through eye contact and signals is hard enough without shoving them all into awkward positions. A number of times in church band training we’ve helped the rhythm section lock in more tightly simply by fixing their positioning on stage, only to be told that when Sunday comes they’ll have to go back to square one.

Fourth, messing about with stage layout is a disaster for acoustics. Unless you have a state of the art foldback system and you’re playing in a football stadium, chances are most of the sound is being generated by acoustic instruments and on-stage amps, with reinforcement from the PA for the vocals and piano and acoustic guitar. Strewn all over the room, the sound is coming from multiple sources, with uneven balance, making it impossible to create a good mix for the crowd. You might as well give up trying to teach musicians to manage their on stage volume to create a good stage sound, because you’ve made the stage environment so unnecessarily complicated. 

So please if you think you have an attitude problem in your crowd, or (worse) in your band, leave the altitude alone - and focus on the attitude. Good leading, from a humble heart, in full view of everyone will build up your church far more than bad leading, from a proud heart, somewhere to the side of stage. But whatever you do, whether in full view or out of sight, do it all for the glory of God (1Cor 10:31).

Okay, work with me here on this analogy. I recently got my bath fixed which is great news for everybody. I'm reminded that there's an art to running a bath - not too hot, not too cold. The temptation when you realise that the bath is going to be too cold is to slam on the hot water, but of course that just makes the opposite problem. Getting the optimal temperature requires small adjustments, not over-reactions.

By analogy, it seems that improving worship music is an exercise in balance. Usually when something goes wrong in church, it's not that people have set out trying to be destructive. It's usually that we were trying to improve in another area, and just got things out of balance. Perhaps we wanted to bring in new songs to keep our repertoire from being stale, but brought in too many too quickly and now people can't sing along. Perhaps we wanted to raise the quality of our music to the Glory of God. But instead we put too heavy a load on our already busy musicians. It's all about balance. 

But so often when we realise something is wrong, we express it in terms of absolute criticisms, not relative criticisms.

Karl Barth, one of my favourite German theologians, writes about this in relation to the subjective/objective question in worship. He describes how people responded to the overly subjective wishy washy hymns which started dominating in some protestant circles in the 17th century. They criticised 'I-hymns' as being overly subjective, and insisted on 'we-hymns' or 'he-hymns'. They made absolute their criticism. But as Barth writes 'it is obvious from the presence of the I-Psalms in the Bible...[that this] can only be a relative and not an absolute criticism. It cannot try to eliminate or suppress altogether either the I-hymns or the I-piety' (Church Dogmatics, IV.63.I p755). You can't eliminate 'I' from our worship, because the wonder of the gospel is that what God did he did for me.

I think there are many areas of contemporary thinking about church life that need us to be more relative and less absolute - in many areas it's a question of balance, not blanket statements.

So the challenge (for me) is to try to approach disagreements about how to do church music as if we're running a bath. If I think that a church service is getting too cold, before turning off the tap completely I need to ask whether the way I intend on going is going to get too hot if we're not careful. This helps too when taking criticism - normally when someone raises a criticism they are not just being nasty - there is so longing or desire behind their complaint. If they hate contemporary music, then what is it about hymns that they love - perhaps I can learn to share their love as well, and we can run a more balanced bath?

Really interesting article this month from Eternity magazine on Hillsong's lyric vetting process. I remember being quite surprised talking to Hillsong songwriters about how hands on their pastors are in the songwriting process.

Senior associate pastor Robert Fergusson writes:

“It’s a huge act of trust and submission, for someone who writes international award winning songs to submit their songs to us … it’s a great act of humility. I’m constantly honouring people like Darlene Zschech and Reuben Morgan who are happy to do this.”

It's a reminder to us here at Garage Hymnal (who are by no means international award winning songwriters!) to make sure we're humbly seeking feedback from godly people on our lyrics (thanks to Mark Peterson, Rob Smith, Philip Percival, Bart VandenHengel, Cedric Tang, Dave Parker and others who have offered suggestions on our last few albums). [update: I very carelessly left Peter Rodgers of this list, many apologies!]

http://www.biblesociety.org.au/news/inside-hillsong-music-120202-1 

I read this story recently about a man who travelled to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona to experience one of the most famous rock formations. Thisistrue.com reports (via RC/Arizona Sun Daily) that the man took out a spray can and began to graffiti his name on the rock. Tourists standing nearby screamed for someone to intervene, and before the man had finished his name park rangers had found him. He was arrested and faces charges for damaging government property.

Explaining his actions he said he wanted his kids to be able to see his name 20 years from now.

It's fair to say, this is not the way that you draw your kids' attention to the wonder of creation. Next to the Grand Canyon, an attempt to draw attention to your name is an annoying distraction (worse, vandalism!) People don't come to the Grand Canyon National Park to see some idiot's name spraypainted on a rock.

And it's a good analogy for how we draw people's attention to Christ in worship. If we try to stamp our name on what we do, if we try to draw any attention to ourselves during worship, we will just embarrass ourselves (and our kids!).

It's a consistent struggle for many people in different types of ministry - pride and vanity. Vanity is needing the approval of other people for what you do; pride is when you don't even need other people to tell you you're great...you know it!
But the Christian musician will seek to serve without concern for themselves, like Jesus. Phil 2:3-4,

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

The key to humility is not to put yourself down. When somebody comes and says 'you are good at music' our first instinct may be to deny the statement. This won't work. When we sense that our musicians are enjoying the limelight a little too much, we may suggest moving them to the side of stage, or off the stage, or humbling them with some harsh criticism. This won't work either.
The trick, says C.S. Lewis, is not to think less or ourselves, but to think of ourselves less. Don't be embarrassed by the gifts you have, but think of how those gifts could serve others.

The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and the sky) instead’
Letters of CS Lewis