|
Medium and Message
FAITH. Here he reminds us of the importance of worshiping God rather than worshiping moving music or powerful preaching. MEDIUM AND MESSAGE No one can deny that people often turn worshipfully to God because the music has made them tender toward the words or the stylistic force of the singer has made both words and music into a deeply effective force. But once this happens, it becomes the duty of the ministerial leadership to explain the difference between a message delivered with personal power and the superior power of the message, irrespective of the force and gifts of the deliverers. Failure to do this can easily lead to the idolatry of personality cults and musical determinism, in which the singer or the sayer and the style in which the gospel is sung or said become so important that nothing much can be thought to happen without them. The medium becomes the message or, at the very least, inseparable from it. — Harold Best, in MUSIC THROUGH THE EYES OF FAITH, Chapter 10, "The Practice of Church Music (II): Music and the Witnessing Church," Harper Collins, 1993, p. 208. ISBN 0-06-060862-5 Have a great week. Chip Stam Director, Institute for Christian Worship School of Church Music and Worship Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Kentucky www.carlstam.org www.sbts.edu/icw |