From Libertas (a conservative Showbiz blog my buddy John Kenneson introduced me to last year):

Though not a big fan of the fantasy genre, the first Narnia earned my eternal goodwill in a single scene. Any film that has Santa Claus handing out weapons to young children is a-okay by me.

Oh yeah – took my daughter to see Prince Caspian on Friday. It was an A+ in my book – especially so the next morning when E.T. was on TV – the stupid “enhanced” version that replaced all of the guns with walkie-talkies.

Several weeks ago, Shane Hipps spoke at Mars Hill Bible Church on the Spirituality of the Cellphone (link good for about 7 more weeks) a look at how human culture is, and has been, shaped by its media and the underlying technology for thousands of years. His message was so compelling, dovetailing with a professional project I’m working on, that I ordered his new book which greatly expands on the subject: The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture.

As a one-time ad-man for Porche, who left the world of marketing to become a pastor, Hipps does a remarkable job at examining how the media we use and choose, in and of itself, conveys certain messages, things what we need to be cognizant of as Christians in our culture. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you are interested in how to communicate Christ in an increasingly postmodern society.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a bit of different topic than we usually talk about here, but I found this article by Charlie Peacock in CCM quite insightful about the current and future state of the Christian music industry.  Charlie Peacock is one of the Christian artists who doesn’t get enough recognition in my opinion, but his overall influence on the industry is hard to overstate.   He has worked with a diverse bunch of musicians including Al Green, CeCe Winans, and Switchfoot to name a few.  So, as the saying goes, when he talks, we should listen.

There are a lot of good quotes in the article, but here’s a few I really find hard-hitting:

The music business, Christian and otherwise, has been a wealth-creation mechanism for a small, elite group of executives, songwriters, producers and artists. Those days are over. Still, the old guard won’t go peaceably. They’ll fight for control to the end. When they finally exit, the new music business will be underway.

Christian music as a genre has always been a music you move on from. Young Christian baby-boomers and Gen-X once in love with the music abandoned it in adulthood and have not returned. As a result, legacy artist catalogs (ranging from Larry Norman to Amy Grant to dcTalk and beyond) do not and will not have the staying power of their mainstream counterparts such as The Beatles, The Eagles, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Celine Dion, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and U2. All these artists, and a hundred others, remain popular and economically viable today. Sadly, the pattern does not hold true for what was contemporary Christian music.

I can especially speak for the validity of the second paragraph.  I think I had close to 300 albums when I left for college, and the vast majority of them were “Christian”.  I look back on some of those groups like Audio Adrenaline, dc Talk, and the Newsboys with fond memories, but honestly I find a lot of it written for the 12-18 year-old demographic.

Working with college students, I find that many of them do not have the same type of devotion to Christian bands that students had even less than 10 years ago.  They have access to practically any song from an artist in any genre at any moment.  They no longer have to go to the shady record stores to get their music.  The ones that into more mainstream music no longer listen to the church-lady warnings about personal holiness.  I’m not saying whether this is good or bad, I’m stating what I see.  I think that in the future is going to get harder and harder for Christian publishing companies to survive.  Like Peacock says, the mainstream CCM industry will probably get distilled down to one big company.

Anyway, I found the article interesting, and I hope to hear people’s thoughts.  I think parallels can be drawn between the CCM industry and the church as a whole.  People are less willing to invest themselves in top-down, power-driven institutions, and I think the time is coming when these institutions will need to make some big changes to survive.

HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi

Since we seem to be on a musical theme, I thought I’d post this real quickly, before leaving to a conference for the week.

So, last year it was Paul Potts, who I thought was amazing (picking up the ref in a MHBC sermon):

This year, it seems to be a 13-year old kid that even has Simon Cowell being a nice guy! Quite an accomplishment!

HT:FARK

It is no secret that a certain Christian website has taken great pains to vilify teen star Miley Cyrus (of “Hannah Montana” fame), who frequently uses her public stage to reference her Christian faith. We’ve defended Ms. Cyrus, who attends Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, CA at least twice previously (along with a bit of tongue-in-cheek advice for her and other Christian artists). In one of the most read chapters of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, we read:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And so it is that we try to consider love, though we have a lot of room for improvement. In light of this, it seems that almost the OPPOSITE of love is displayed in this article (UPDATE: cached image), which gleefully ‘exposes’ Ms. Cyrus for having racy photos taken of her and posted on the internet:

My congenital detractors hooted and howled with laughter when I posted on Miley Cyrus, rock idol to millions of little girls around the world, and her claims that she is a Christian, doing everything she does for Jesus. Irate evangelical Hannah Montana fans indignantly defended the professing Christian rock star for her “squeaky clean” image and her image as a “good Christian role model” for their daughters. Yeah, yeah, right. The news headlines at AOL this morning:

Yet another batch of probably-meant-to-be-private photos of teen sensation Miley ‘Hannah Montana’ Cyrus have found their way on to the Internet, showing the 15-year-old starlet flashing a bra and laying across the lap of a male with her top pulled up. While certainly scandalous simply because of her age, this wouldn’t be the first time that mature photos of Cyrus have made their rounds. In the past, pictures of the singer-actress in underwear and bikinis also made headlines.

Noting that Ms. Cyrus thanked “my lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” when accepting a recent award, the author sneered:

Just leave my Saviour’s holy name out of it, Miley. (emphasis mine)

So what, exactly is the problem with this response to the news about Ms. Cyrus’ suggestive pictures? Well, maybe the fact that they weren’t pictures of her, and that the reporting standard was just shy of that of the National Enquirer? In this age of frequent “Photoshopped” scandals, it doesn’t make sense to be sensational with ‘breaking news’ – particularly when it is salacious – until enough time (typically one or two news cycles – 1-2 weekdays) has passed for the actual facts of a situation have been ascertained. As for the final comment about “my Saviour’s holy name”, the implication is clear that the author arrogantly believes that her Saviour and Ms. Cyrus’ Saviour are two different individuals. If they are two separate individuals, indeed, I think I will take the one publicly proclaimed by Ms. Cyrus over one that (by the author’s implication) would wholeheartedly endorse the gossip-mongering, externals-focused, deceitful, slander-filled rantings of her critic.

If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

I wonder if a retraction will be forthcoming, or if it will be an Obama-like “I’m sorry if people were hurt by the way I said things, but the underlying truth still exists” non-apology. I am truly hoping for the former. ***UPDATE (with thanks to Matt B)*** It seems that the original author deleted the article (I’ll rescue the original from my cache and link it tomorrow, if possible) and – rather than issue an apology – used her own error to compound her attack against the teenager in her crosshairs, by issuing an increasingly vitriolic non-apology. What is sad is that she links to a rather innocuous video of Ms. Cyrus performing at a charity event to raise money for the relief of human suffering. (See below) Were we to be of the same, twisted mindset, we could write up a post comparing this author’s ideal of Christian dress with that of the FLDS Texas polygamy cult. Then, we could make suggestions that the two are somehow connected. (See below):

While we could do this, such a comparison would be just as much of an ad homenim attack as the string of anti-Christian attacks made by the author of the attack piece. Instead, we have an author who has had to issue multiple corrections in the past week, whether for being punk’d (along with several other media outlets) by a Yale student, for linking to gay porn, or – now – for posting false, salacious gossip that might be a stumbling block for Christians struggling with porn. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that this website claims to have the gift of discernment here:

That’s right the Lord gave everything he had for us, the least we can do is to return what we have — the gifts that he’s given us — to use them for his glory and to warn those in the church — as unpopular as it is — to be in the postition of watchman you take a bit of egg in the face from the kids standing down below.

Despite claiming such powers, its own powers of ‘discernment’ seem to be on par with the Weekly World News, and just as sinful. Certainly, God has called – and He wants His truth back…

It’s kind of rare that I find something in the “Christian” music market that I can recommend to people, but one exception throughout the years has been Justin McRoberts.  I don’t even know if it’s completely accurate to say he’s part of the Christian market, since he releases all of his music independently.  But He is a Christian, and he still writes a lot of his songs with a Christian audience in mind.

McRobert’s new album is entitled Deconstruction, and though the word has gotten a lot press recently, I find the lyrics to be quite poignant and challenging.  I find that God has gifted certain people to express things I would like to say better than I possibly could.

Deconstruction
© Justin McRoberts 2008 Five Foot Six and a Half Music (ASCAP)

I am comfortable with deconstruction
I am comfortable with doubt
It’s the assurance that I’m right about the mystery
The assurance that you’re wrong that I can do without

So everything I knew about you
Everything I thought I knew
I’d tear it down and I would leave it all in pieces
If finally what it means is that I’m left with only you

They say it’s not about religion
But then they tell you how to think
They say it’s all about the way you understand it
Then they tell you what it means that you’ve experienced these things

They say it’s not about performance
They say it’s all about the heart
But every critic with his pen or his computer
Talks about effectiveness and not about the art

If you’d like to hear the song, it should come up on the embedded player on McRobert’s website.  I highly recommend that you check him out if you haven’t before.

Proving the old adage of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Ingrid is siding with the complaining neighbors in this story about a church that had some noise complaints from some people in the neighborhood.  Apparantly, it is bad for Rick Warren to ask people in a community what they don’t like about a church service, but it’s OK to listen to these people when they complain about our music.

Now it’s hard to say what the actual facts of the story are from this news story, but I’ve often seen noise complaints come from the kind of people who get angry if you look at their lawn in the wrong way.  Also, the article says the town’s noise ordinance has a level of 70 dB listed.  Now from acoustics class, I remember that 70 dB is about the sound level of a noisy office.  A typical city street would probably be above 70 dB, so it’s hard to say what the level of noise was from the church.  There’s no mention of anyone taking a reading at the church building.

I just am really shocked that Ingrid is supporting police officers coming into a church building and threatening to physically remove musicians from the stage.  I guess she’s all for the government getting its hands into churches as long as they’re ones she doesn’t like.

Like Ingrid, I’m not a HM fan, all be it for different reasons. I’m not a fan of “pop” music in general.

Also, like Ingrid, I dislike celebrities throwing out phrases like “I do it all for Jesus”. It seems like a cliche and not very thought out or meaningful.

So I watched the video Ingrid posted and I was a little disappointed. I was kind of hoping it would be worldly. However, there is no crotch grabbing, no dirty dancing, no nothing. It is some girl jumping around to music and not in a provocative outfit or in a provocative style. You can see for yourself the “worldliness”:

As I read Ingrid’s article, I wondered what exactly her definition of worldliness is? For instance, I have had to work late for the past two weeks because we have a big project due. My non-believer boss has publicly thanked me. Is that worldly, to be recognized by a non believer for hard work?

What if I got up at the next company meeting and gave a big speech in front of thousands of fellow employees and I got a standing ovation? Is that worldly?

What if I was actually skilled enough at a sport, say baseball. Two out, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded. I hit the home run and thousands cheer me. Is that worldly?

Am I missing something here?

Early last week, Steve Camp wrote a moving tribute to his friend Larry Norman. Then, later in the week, Camp went after Mark Driscoll for his comments on Song of Solomon.

My question is, what is more “graphic-smutty-over the top-foul language”, Larry Norman’s lyrics or Mark Driscoll’s comments? Here’s some of Norman’s lyrics:

Pardon Me (from “Only Visiting This Planet”)

Close your eyes, and pretend that you are me.
See how empty it can be
Making love if love’s not really there.

Watch me go, watch me walk away alone,
As your clothing comes undone,
And you pull the ribbon from your hair.

“Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus” (from “Only Visiting This Planet”)

Gonorrhea on Valentines day, and you’re still lookin’ for the perfect lay.
You think rock and roll will set you free, honey, you’ll be deaf before you’re 33
Shootin’ junk until you’re half insane, broken needle in your purple vein.

Steve Camp, your hypocrisy is showing.

*Note: This is not an attack on Larry Norman. I am using hyperbole to make a point.

Somehow I think Rick Warren is behind this…

SEATTLE – Starbucks is shutting its doors for three hours Tuesday night, the latest drastic step in a companywide bid to improve its sagging fortunes.

The shutdown is one of several big moves spearheaded by Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz, who recently took back the reins of the company amid concerns that it was losing its edge and facing increased competition from the likes of McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Schultz has said the shutdown, which begins at 5:30 p.m. local time, is a way to energize its 135,000 employees and provide some barista re-education in the “art of espresso” at its 7,100 U.S. locations.

Read the rest of the article here.

Who knew the Onion was so prophetic? 

I don’t know what this has to do with anything really, but for the more conspiracy-minded of us out there, I’m sure it does.

I heard there was a direct correlation between latte and frappucino consumption and heretical beliefs.

Bon Appétit!