An Art Project Worth Supporting - Bifrost Arts

When I heard the first Bifrost Arts album, Come, O Spirit, a few years ago, I was excited to hear the wedding of the emerging Seattle-esque, pop-orchestral song style (perhaps made most famous by one of the album's producers, Sufjan Stevens) with historic Christian hymnody and liturgical service music.  It is a truly unique venture.

When I heard Bifrost's commander in chief, Isaac Wardell, share from his mind and heart at the Bifrost Arts conference earlier this year, I came away with an even deeper respect and appreciation for the (quite robust) vision of Bifrost Arts, of which music-making is only a part.  Bifrost's leader thinks theologically and biblically about worship, and God has given him a platform to reach and influence scores of young evangelical worship leaders who need to hear what he has to say.  

When you support Bifrost Arts by contributing to the seed money for their third album, it should be obvious that you're supporting more than a sweet, artsy album.

Please consider supporting this vision by contributing to the Bifrost kickstarter project.  

GO HERE.

If you haven't heard Bifrost's material, here's a free sampler to get you started!

Why Architecture Matters: Our Quest to Unify Organ and Drums for the Sake of the Gospel

Philosopher and liturgical theologian, Nicholas Wolterstorff, recently reminded listeners at the “Liturgy, Music, and Space” Conference hosted by Bifrost Arts this past spring that the architecture around and in your worship space makes theological statements whether you like it or not.  For instance, a tall, raised platform at the front the sanctuary with the Communion table positioned in the very back can make the theological statement that the Lord’s Table is so holy that its access must be limited and guarded.  Or, think of a worship space in which the seating is arranged in a circle or semicircle around the leaders in worship in the middle.  This can make a statement about the unity of the people of God in worship and the tearing down of sharp divisions between the congregation and the worship leaders.  Or, think about the warehouse with a huge stage and lighting structure.  It says, “we’re here to perform for you…sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”  Architecture tells the story of your theology of and priorities in worship.  I want to share with you how we’ve chosen to let some recent changes to our sanctuary’s architecture inform our theology of worship. 

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Experience: Analyzing a Supreme Value of Modern Worship

Any time you want to go deep quickly, I’ve found this question to be one of the most helpful of analytical grids: “What are the values which shape our practice?”  This single question is applicable in so many sectors of human life, and it is penetrating in its findings.

I am a lover of and believer in modern worship.  When the contemporary worship movement began in the 60s, and when it blossomed into what many now call modern worship in the 90s, I believe that the Holy Spirit was behind this fresh wind.  I believe that God was stirring things up in American/Western worship to awaken us to deficiencies, lopsidedness, and overly hardened practices.

However, every human movement is flawed because it is human, and many times these flaws can be traced back to underlying values, either imported from without or manufactured from within, which have unwittingly seized preeminence in the minds and hearts of people.

Tim Keller is often heard saying something to the effect of, “Idolatry can happen when you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing.”  A cousin of this idea is that problems can arise in one practice when one elevates a value to an inappropriate height.  Modern worship has elevated the value of the “experience with / encounter with God” to a very high place.  In fact, it is so high that one can quite easily observe this value in everything from the top CCLI songs of the last twenty years to the pressure a lonely worship leader feels in his or her office on a Monday as he or she looks to the following Sunday.  Lester Ruth, in a penetrating chapter analyzing top modern worship songs for their Trinitarian content, makes this statement as a side note to the summary of his findings:

If explicit witness to the Trinity is not the high priority [in these contemporary worship songs], then what is? The songs demonstrate a common concern: the priority of a shared affective experience in the worship of God.¹

Put another way, Ruth is saying that, upon observation of these songs, a major value of contemporary/modern worship is having an experience of God which is tangible and moving.  Do I really need to elaborate on this value?  Isn’t it clear from the way we structure our services (to drive someone toward an affective experience of God)?  Isn’t it clear from the questions we often ask in evaluating whether a service was “successful” (e.g. Were people really “into it,” evidenced by their posture, body language, or facial expression?)?  Isn’t it clear from the language of our worship songs (e.g. “rain down,” “come down,” “we are waiting on you,” etc.)?

Now, is valuing a “shared affective experience of God” wrong?  Absolutely not!  We are whole beings encountering a real, personal God.  We should expect to have a shared experience which moves us—mind, body, will, emotions.  But the question for modern worship remains: Has this value moved to an improperly high status on the hierarchy of priorities?  I believe so.

Symptoms that the status is too high include:

• disappointment a worship leader feels after a service when the people sang with stoic faces and unmoved bodies
• conclusion by congregants that a worship service was “bad” if they did not have an affective experience
• language in our worship songs that betray we are seeking an experience of God rather than seeking God Himself
• pressure a worship leader feels to plan a song-set or liturgy which flows to some climax or peak intended to create that moment of supreme affect

We lovers of modern worship can embrace a helpful corrective: worship is just as much act as it is experience.  A while ago, I posted a more lengthy explanation of what this means, but suffice it to say here that worship, because it not only involves affections but actions, can be meaningful even if the actions lack affect.  Like many others, I use the language of “I truly worshiped” when I am speaking of affective experiences of God in the worship context.  But we mustn’t let such language fool us that action without affect is not true worship.  Perhaps it is not the richest or most holistic form possible, but act-worship is not void of all power and consequence. 

At the Bifrost Arts conference a few weeks ago, Pastor Greg Thompson reminded us that our worship is habit-forming, even if we don’t realize it.  This means that worship-as-act is not inconsequential.  Think about routine exercise.  Those committed to it don’t necessarily demand an affective, euphoric experience every time while working out.  But exercise, nevertheless, forms a habit of health and muscle-use.  Think of worship as “spiritual exercise.”  You certainly hope and wish for the type of exercise-experience which is deeply emotionally satisfying, but when it is not, you haven’t not exercised.  Yet, how many times have we thought we “haven’t worshiped” when we haven’t had an affective experience?

So perhaps what we are learning is not that desiring an affective experience with God is bad, but that desiring it to the level we do is placing it on the wrong level in our value hierarchy.  There are manifold, unintended consequences of misplaced values, but exploring this would open another discussion for another day.

¹Lester Ruth, “How Great is Our God: The Trinity in Contemporary Christian Worship Music,” in The Message in the Music, ed. Robert Woods and Brian Walrath (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 37.

My Bifrostian Journey: Video Blog and Reflections

I decided to try my hand at video-blogging.  I hope that for those of you who weren't able to attend, you're able to see and hear more clearly the sights and sounds of what made this conference special.   

Cardiphonia has put together a great run-through of the entire conference.  Check it out.  And here are some of my random takeaways.

The Best Thing About the Conference: Love Challenges Hipsterdom
I'll be honest.  Bifrost Arts is just hip.  Sufjan is VERY in right now, and Bifrost Arts--a railcar on his musical train--has a musical style that makes one feel quite "cool" when listening to it.  One would have expected that this conference would attract hipsters.  And it did.  Fitted jeans, black-rimmed glasses, and beards were plentiful.  Anticipating all of this, my expectation was that the conference leaders were going to give off a "We're cool, aren't we?" vibe (which shows how little I often think of people, by the way...Lord, have mercy).  I expected pot shots at non-liturgical worship or subtle jabs that Bifrostian pop-orchestral styles were the ideal form for worship.  Isaac Wardell, the figurehead of the event, dispelled all such nonsense quite immediately.  I was impressed and even admonished by the humility and love-focus of leaders like Wardell.  The message was loud and clear: when the church is truly being the church under Christ, the gospel shapes local communities to be marked by love, self-sacrifice, and deference.  Perhaps my greatest takeaway from the conference, then, is a vision for church-wide worship discussions which can be formative rather than adversarial.  Worship is not about being cool, and I think everyone benefitted, in one way or another, from that meta-message.

In the Presence of Greatness
My video only gave a snapshot of the rich connection I had at this conference.  Over the last few years, as my blog has grown in reach, I've come into contact with some amazing people who I would consider "greats" in my field of pastoring in worship, music, and arts.  Some have been more professional-style online acquaintances.  Some have developed into full-blown friendships of resource-sharing and mutual prayer and support.  Many have been in between.  One of the blessings of the Bifrost Conference is that it attracted many of those people to one city for a few days, and I got to meet many of them, all at once.  Relationships beat out sleep this time.  I was blessed to finally put names with faces, and "online personas" with true hearts.  I was encouraged that there are a lot of great worship leaders out in Evangelcaland, thinking critically, prayerfully, theologically, biblically, liturgically, and culturally about local church worship.  I was blessed to rub shoulders with some truly gifted songwriters, like Bruce Benedict, Matt Stevens, Alex Mejias, Michael Van Patter, David M. Bailey, Rick Jensen, and Nathan Partain.  These are folks doing the painstaking but heart-driven work of setting old hymns to new music, and in some cases writing new texts and tunes for the church.  I don't know that any one of us will have breakout exposure, but meeting this iron-clad batallion gives me great hope that the collective work will continue to have an increasing influence on mainstream evangelicalism.  There's just too much excitement, too much vision, too much passion, for it to not take effect.

The Shape Note Surprise
I was shocked by how much I personally enjoyed Matt Hinton's breakout session on shape-note singing.  Perhaps the earliest uniquely American musical tradition, shape-note singing developed as a style of music education in the South and solidified into a movement.  The sound is atypical of Western music in that it breaks standard conventions for part-writing (e.g. parallel fifths).  I was taken aback by the joy and vigor of this communal enterprise.  My mother grew up in rural Alabama under the influence of this tradition, and though I am far from a southerner (I grew up in Hawaii), something in my soul stirred.  I think my roots were tickled.

Notes from the Conference
Some of my notes are more piecemeal than others, but if they're helpful, I offer them here.  I obviously missed some (great) sessions, either to decompress or to spend time with other attenders.

Greg Thompson - The Order of Worship and the Order of Love
Isaac Wardell - Formative Practices for Worship
Mike Farley - The Formative Role of the Body in Worship
Nicholas Wolterstorff - Does Your Church Building Say What it Should Say?
Isaac Wardell - Teaching Liturgy, Music, & Space in Your Congregation
Matt Hinton - Shape Note Singing
Kevin Twit - Hymns

Bifrost Arts Conference: Liturgy, Music, & Space - Nicholas Wolterstorff on Why Church Architecture Matters

CHECK OUT MY VIDEO BLOG OF THE WHOLE CONFERENCE

Go to Bifrost Arts Conference Video Blog

INFO

Plenary Session: "Does Your Church Building Say What it Should Say?"

Nicholas Wolterstorff was the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, and taught at Yale from 1989 until he retired in June 2002. Previously, he taught at Calvin College, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the University of Notre Dame and was visiting professor at several institutions. After concentrating on metaphysics at the beginning of his career (On Universals), he spent many years working primarily on aesthetics and art philosophy (Works and Worlds of Art, Art in Action).

SYNOPSIS

Too often we think of church buildings purely in functional terms.  However, the human being's natural propensity toward evaluating "fittingness" (how fitting something is for its purpose) and processing with "synesthesia" (other senses being triggered and affected by input from another sense) necessitates that we understand ecclesiastical architecture in theological and affective terms.  In other words, architecture matters because it both speaks of our theology of worship and shapes us as worshipers.  A brief journey through church history illustrates this (Wolterstorff walks through various eras, discussing how architecture reflected varying degrees of passivity and active participation of the laity in corporate worship).  Wolterstorff encourages a balanced perspective when thinking about and planning our worship spaces (i.e. vertical/transcendent/majestic dimensions, coupled with horizontal/familial dimensions) and offers practical illustrations of what that looks like.

OUTLINE

Here's a PDF of my outline from this session. 

Bifrost Arts Conference: Liturgy, Music, & Space - Greg Thompson on Why Liturgy is Important

CHECK OUT MY VIDEO BLOG OF THE WHOLE CONFERENCE

Go to Bifrost Arts Conference Video Blog

As I can, I'll post my notes from the Liturgy, Music, & Space conference in St. Louis, MO.  Cardiphonia and I are in an arms race to see who can post first about it all.  Hopefully I'll win! :)

INFO

Plenary Session: "The Order of Worship and the Order of Love"

Greg Thompson is the Senior Pastor for Worship at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesviille, Virginia. Prior to this, he served as Reformed University Fellowship campus minister at the University of Virginia from 2000-2005. He is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and Covenant theological Seminary adn is pursuing a Ph.D. in Theology at the University of Virginia. Recently, he was the editor of the book Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World (Eerdmans, 2011).

SYNOPSIS

Liturgy actually shapes us in the "order of God's love," and our worship should reflect the twin reality of "participation" and "protest."  Because liturgy is habit-forming, liturgy done rightly trains us to simultaneously participate in God's love and plan and protest the ways our culture's idols fight against our participation in the life of God.  Common liturgical elements (e.g. call to worship, confession, benediction) are not only important, but essential, to walking this road of participation and protest in worship.

OUTLINE

Here's a PDF of my notes, which I think are fairly thorough, organized, and easy-to-follow.  My understanding is that the recordings of the sessions will be available, too, somewhere, somehow.

Sorry to Burst Your Bubble: Liturgy Doesn’t Mean “Work of the People”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that “liturgy” means, “the work of the people.”  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said it myself.  I, for one, won’t ever be saying it again.  The reason for this is a test case in why linguistics, history, and etymology are important disciplines.

Here’s what Nicholas Wolterstorff¹ has taught me:

As almost every book on liturgy points out, the English word “liturgy” is simply the transliteration of the Greek word leitourgia.  In classical Greek the word was used to refer to a service performed by an individual for the benefit of the public, usually at his own expense.  For example, if a warship had to be outfitted, sometimes, instead of taxing the citizenry as a whole, the officials invited a wealthy individual to do the outfitting as a personal contribution to the public. Such a public service was a liturgy, and the person performing it, a liturgete (leitourgos).

Etymologically the word leitourgia comes from two Greek words, leitos and ergon, meaning, respectively, “of the people” and “action.”  In numerous books on liturgy it is said, accordingly, that the word originally meant action of the people.  And often nowadays an argument for more participation of the people in the church’s liturgy is based on this claim.  It is said that for something to be liturgy, it must be action of the people and not action of a few priests or pastors.  But the word leitourgia never did mean action of the people.  It meant action for the benefit of the people.  A liturgy was a type of public service.

In the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, the word leitourgia was regularly borrowed from its Greek civic use and applied, by metaphorical extension, to the kind of service rendered by the priests in the temple. Apparently this was the best that could be done with the language of the day in translating the cultic language of the Old Testament into Greek.  This metaphorical extension was continued in rabbinic usage of New Testament times and in the New Testament itself. For example, in Luke 1:23 we read of the priest Zechariah that “when his time of liturgy was ended, he went to his home.”

It is only a small step from speaking of the cultic acts of the temple priest as (his) liturgy to speaking of what transpires in the Christian assemblies as liturgy, or service.²

Whoa!  Whether we liturgo-philes like it or not, etymologically speaking, it appears that “liturgy” is quite the opposite of the work of the people.  It is the work for the people.  We must be fair, then.  We cannot argue that liturgy, linguistically, encourages corporate participation.

Why should this not rattle us, though?  First, if anything, it gives more glory to God and his sovereignty.  Even our “work” of liturgy is ultimately a “work” done to us, for our benefit.  Sure, it may be mediated through “liturgetes,” but worship, ironically, ends up being God’s work on us, in us, through us, and sometimes in spite of us.  Second, who cares what the etymology of the word is?  Liturgy still is the work of the people.  While the etymology of “liturgy” can’t defend this, scripture can.  All over the sacred page are commands, admonishments, descriptions, and examples of active, communal engagement in the act of corporate worship.  So, while “liturgy” doesn’t mean “the work of the people,” it certainly still is the work of the people.  We don’t need etymology to prove that.

Perhaps this post is a bubble-burster for some of us.  Reading Wolterstorff was for me.  But maybe we can understand clarifications like these not as bubble-bursting, but as bubble-sharpening.  It’s an important part of being truthful and authentic thinkers.  So don’t kill the messenger, folks.  If you take issue, contact Dr. Wolterstorff.  I happen to really like this bubble.  And, chances are, if you’ve come this far in reading this post, you do to.  Cheers to the bubble!

******************

¹I’ve got Woltersorff on the brain because I’ll be hearing him lecture at the Bifrost Arts’ “Liturgy, Music, Space” Conference next week!

²Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Reformed Liturgy,” in Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition, ed. Donald K. McKim (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1998), 274.