culture — Clayfire Curator

Resurrecting Advent

by Anastasia McAteer | December 2, 2011

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so the song tells us. I, however, find myself increasingly grumpy. This is my annual affliction as the Christmas season creeps closer and closer to the start of the Christian year (which was this past Sunday, by the way).

The reason I get annoyed with Christians right about now is not because they are celebrating Christmas, but because they are skipping Advent—and thereby missing out on an opportunity to deepen their understanding and experience of God-with-us.

Now I admit, I’m a liturgy geek. A church decorated red during Advent gets my panties in a bunch. A Christian singing “Joy to the World, the Lord has come” in this season makes me /facepalm/. I’ve been called the “liturgy police” and even “Scrooge” (though I might point out that A Christmas Carol takes place on December 24, not November 24… just sayin’). But still, I think there’s something important being missed, something that all Christians need, whether they know a crucifer from a thurible.

Which reminds me: everything I’m saying here applies solely to Christians. I have no beef with a non-Christian celebrating Christmas in her own way, and starting in July if she likes. The cultural Christmas is a different holiday. (And I also participate in it to an extent (going to parties, gifting, watching claymation specials, etc.)

So with all that in mind, allow me a moment on my soapbox.

This year, I kicked off my grumpfest with a status update on Facebook. I remarked that the “Christmas Season” doesn’t actually begin until December 25, and could everyone please hold their decorating, music, and celebration of Christ’s birth just a bit longer?

Well, that got some response! People reacted as if I was trying to take Christmas away from them. Far from it! I’m trying to restore Christmas—to give it some meaning again apart from cutesy décor and overplayed carols. And just like Easter can mean immeasurably more when you have taken all of Lent to prepare for it, I don’t think you can really experience the wonder of Christmas without a season of anticipation and intentional waiting.

A season we in the Christian world call Advent.

I think I get grumpy because, in my heart, I don’t feel like it’s fair that other people are already getting to “do” Christmas, while I am still waiting. They’re enjoying the music I also love, putting up beautiful decorations that I have packed away. They are bringing Christmas into their homes, while I twiddle my thumbs and wait for God’s timing. Sure, I’d love to sing the more familiar carols and put up a tree the day after Thanksgiving. But I have learned that I need the forced rest, the pulling back, the resistance to the desire to get Christmas when I want it.

Here’s the thing: God isn’t about instant gratification. Christ comes when Christ chooses to, not on my timeline, and I can’t make him come. I can’t make it be Christmas. Advent commemorates both Christ’s first coming 2,000 years ago, and his reign that Christians hope will one day be consummated with complete “peace on earth.” We all know that we are nowhere near that day. We are waiting.

Advent teaches us how to wait for God. Waiting is something we are so terrible at. This morning I was behind a slow car on the road, unable to get around him before making my turn. In that moment I had to stop and breathe, allow myself to take all of fifteen seconds longer to get home. Just that little discipline opened me up—the breath was so refreshing, the letting go was so relaxing.

Now imagine making waiting and patience an intentional part of your day all throughout this season. The “Christmas” values of peace on earth and goodwill to all would naturally flow out of this demeanor. You would be countering the stress and hurry of the culture’s Christmas. You would breathe calm into a harried world.

More than this, you would be recognizing that God is in charge, that you trust God’s plan over your own preferences.

I realize asking people to change their holiday traditions is a tall order. But the fact is, Advent and Christmas can’t take place simultaneously. It simply doesn’t work that way, since Advent is anticipating Christmas. If we want to truly experience Advent, Christmas will have to wait, and we have to learn to let it come later.

I will admit I get a “fix” now and then: I’ll put on “winter” music or secular carols, take my kids around to see decorated houses, exchange early gifts with my family and friends. I don’t have a problem with the culture’s version of Christmas. But I think we need to be very clear: as Christians, that is not our season. (For a fascinating study of America’s cultural Christmas and its religious ramifications, see Dell deChant, The Sacred Santa.)

We must provide—for ourselves, our children, and especially our churches—a counter-narrative. Ironically, I think that the “war on Christmas” has largely been waged by the Church itself, through buying into the culture’s timeline and story instead of God’s.

The Christian Christmas season begins December 25, with the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, and lasts until January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. We spend twelve days celebrating the Incarnation, and it is key to our faith. We prepare ourselves for this miracle through the Advent season. But more-so, we practice it to remind ourselves that it’s not just the baby in Bethlehem for whom we hope—we mindfully seek the ongoing coming of our King.

Let’s learn to love the waiting, living in hope, and treasuring the glimpses of the promise that we are graced to receive in this beautiful season.

Not sure how to get started? Check out Busted Halo’s Advent Calendar for a daily quote from pop culture and an activity to get you in the spirit of the season (the real season, eh hem).

Categories: Formation

Spiritual Community: 18 and Over Only Please

by Jodi-Renee Adams | November 17, 2011

It’s funny the things we take for granted.

I had a consulting contract with a local Big Church and set a Sunday to attend their morning worship services so I could get an overview on things. A good friend, not estranged from GOD though vocally distant from “organized religion,” decided to attend with me—probably in the hopes of a free lunch afterwards. Of course, I didn’t expect him to participate and I was prepared for the cynical facial expressions he could compose like so much well-placed furniture. What I wasn’t prepared for was his increasingly nervous scanning of the room over the course of the first ten minutes of songs. As the energy (and the volume) in the room continued to escalate, he turned to me and grabbed my arm, seeming a little freaked out. “Where have all the children gone?”

I almost laughed out loud. Of course the childless sanctuary seemed bizzare to my never-been-to-Big-Church friend. When we entered the large building, there were children appearing magically around corners and from practically underneath the doughnut table. There were gaggles of pre-adolescents entrenched beneath alcoves and under the decorative silk trees. Baby cries and baby-babble bounced around the high ceilings. Then we entered the dark, high-tech space of the auditorium and voila. Vanished. Not a little person in sight.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that Big Community worship had no place in Big Church. We have programs for kids, for tweens, for pre-teens, for adolescents, for college “kids.” And once the family shows up at church, they wave goodbye to each other and the under-18s disappear into brightly colored and “age-friendly” rooms while the parents are absorbed into the throng of adults in the sanctuary until the service is done when everyone is reunited, rejuvenated, and needs-met-happy. What does this teach our children about the community of faith? Ah, log in my own eye—what does it reinforce in my own experience and expectations of the Body of Christ?

My friend, with his refreshing lack of cultural associations, put his finger on something poignant. There is something bizzare, alien, and almost life-draining about a “community gathering” that is devoid of its children and young people. All his “BBCA sci-fi” jokes aside, I think that he saw into a schism that we might have inadvertently, and with the best of intentions, reinforced.

Our attempts to “train our children up in the way they should go” means we have linked arms with a Western culture that tailors everything to our needs–whether they be perceived or actual. One of those needs was to make Christianity fun and relevant to kids; and one (maybe unintentional though it’s a complaint the nursery-free church hears a bit) was to remove the distractions a.k.a. children from worship. So it got me wondering: What are the actual needs of children and even the whole community when it comes to the worship gathering?

Programming cannot replace relationship and experience in the formation that takes place in a child (and in the community represented in the metaphor). Somewhere along the line, we decided that children can’t worship in the same way or through the same means as adults. And yet these kids become young people in the church who don’t understand why the faith community matters, why Eucharist nurtures, or even how to pray. When Church fails to meet their perceived needs, it ceases to become relevant. And so the cycle continues on and on.

When the children disappear from community worship–scuttled off like so many miniature Quasimodos–it implies something about our understanding of community. Of worship. Of GOD.

The plates are shifting underground. Conversations need to be had. The next generation of the Church may depend on it. But no pressure…

Image: Communion at Ecclesia, Denver, © Stephen Proctor

Categories: Formation

Musical Worship in West Africa

by Guest Blogger | July 19, 2011

This post was written by Rob Baker.

Musical worship in West Africa can be described in three words: diverse, vibrant and changing.

Diverse
From Senegal to Cameroon, Christians meet to worship the Lord in a range of styles and accompanied by a huge variety of musical instruments. Some churches are still singing Western-style hymns brought over by early missionaries, others sing more modern Western songs. In both cases, however, the way of singing and accompanying these has been Africanized as local musicians strive to make this foreign music work in their own systems. And so a Guinean rendition of ‘How Great Thou Art’ will differ not only from the Western original, but also from a Togolese or Ghanaian version.

Many West African churches now worship the Lord with African song styles, using repertoire composed by local musicians and accompanied by indigenous instruments. I know of groups who meet regularly to compose new worship songs, often based directly on Bible verses and using culturally relevant styles. In Benin, an ensemble of large drums, bells and shakers is commonly used in worship. In Mali or Côte d’Ivoire, the balafon (an African version of the xylophone) can be heard. There are also flutes of varying shapes and sizes, stringed instruments, even a ram’s horn, which is, after all, Biblical (cf Psalm 98:5-7).

Vibrant
One clear difference between African worship and that found in at least some Western churches today is the sheer level of energy involved. African music goes together with rhythm and dance as an entire event. Telling an African “do not dance to your music” would be a bit like saying to a Westerner: “sing me your National Anthem, but without the tune” – it ain’t gonna happen! Have a look at these Igo musicians from Togo singing a new indigenous worship song; one of the first ever in their own language. Their joy and vitality displayed is positively infectious! As a Brit, I know how reserved we can be, even in worship; Africans seldom display such reticence! Non-musical prayer times are often carried out with everyone praying out loud simultaneously – an inspiring and moving experience indeed. I tried doing this with a Western congregation once… but only once!!

Changing
Culture is not a static thing, neither is church worship. Whilst West African cultural identity remains strong, church music has changed dramatically over the past half century. Previously, many churches did not use African instruments in church. This was largely due to early missionaries who “initially banned almost all African instruments because they were considered pagan or associated with pagan rituals” (Kidula 2008, 108-109). Because of this, Christians at the time were fearful of using such cultural expressions for Christ. In recent times, however, African believers have begun to re-evaluate their music and culture and are now appropriating local arts for the Lord. One Beninese pastor told me that

… with time, Christians have understood that what God created and the Devil took, can now be taken back to show God’s glory. (Pastor Cheton, MIERS Church, Cotonou, Benin, May 2008)

This is a phenomenon which has been witnessed in many parts of Africa since the 1960s. SIL ethnomusicology ‘guru’ Brian Schrag states that traditional music

… touches the very fiber of existence of a member of that culture – even after generations of interaction with another culture […] it is just too valuable and potentially powerful an asset to leave to the impersonal forces of social change. (EM News, 1993)

Indeed, many churches using local music in worship have experienced significant growth as worshippers from traditional African religions are able to come to Christ and worship Him in a way that makes sense to them.

Another change, seen particularly in the cities, is that of fusion. Here, African styles are blended with Western popular styles to create exciting new musical expressions. This has occurred a lot in West African secular music (cf Amadou et Mariam, Angelique Kidjo or Youssou N’Dour) and also in church. One Tamacheq pastor sang for me the French chorus: Avec des cris de joie, accompanied on the guitar. However, his singing style, choice of scale, language and desert blues accompaniment could in no way be considered purely Western.

To end, here is Beninese artist Mathieu Assogba with a Bible-based anti-corruption song, often played on local television.

Words and photos © Rob Baker

Referrences:
Kidula, Jean N. (2008). “Chapter 6: Making and Managing Music in African Christian Life.” Music in the life of the African Church. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. King, Roberta (ed).

Schrag, Brian (1993). “First Impressions, thoughts on entering a new Language and Music project,” EM News, vol.2 no.4, November 1993, Dallas, Texas.

Rob Baker, though trained as a music and French language teacher, has worked as an ethnomusicologist in West Africa since 2005. In Togo, Benin and Mali, he has carried out extensive research, run numerous song-writing workshops and made many field recordings of new indigenous worship songs. He studied ethnomusicology with SIL in Europe and has recently completed an MPhil thesis with Birmingham University (UK) about the reclamation of so-called ‘pagan’ music styles. He has taught internationally in Nigeria, Burundi, Singapore and the UK and now works as an ethnomusicology/arts consultant with SIL. He also hosts a Facebook ethno-arts forum and blogs regularly about African culture and worship. Rob currently lives in Bamako, Mali with his wife and three children.

You can find more information on Rob’s blog. He also recommends Paul Neeley’s blog, which covers various aspects of global worship.

Categories: Curation

Do you incorporate worship practices from other cultures?

by Eric Herron | July 18, 2011

Paul Simon’s album Graceland won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1988. Despite the record’s wild popularity, Simon was criticized for his heavy use of indigenous, South African rhythms, instrumentation and harmonies. Some believed that his reliance on African music was gimmicky. Despite the fact that Simon went to South Africa himself, collaborated with native musicians, paid them triple the American pay scale, and gave them full credit on his album, he was accused of exploiting the African musicians from whom he’d learned this new sound.

Since the Simon-South Africa dilemma, globalization has blossomed and zoomed into hyper-drive. The music of nearly every culture you can imagine is now available at the flick of the radio dial. One does not need to travel to hear music from South Africa or anywhere else. If not accessible through some analog recording, one can download or stream the digitized version from the Internet. Beyond music, we’ve reached seemingly limitless access to information about all other types of foreign cultural artifacts. What does all of this mean for those of us who curate worship?

This week, we are taking a peek at a couple of different African cultures. Specifically, we’re going to hear from two different church leaders – one in West Africa and one in South Africa – about the kinds of worship forms that are used in these places and how these may differ from what others outside of Africa experience.

Why engage this exercise? First, as we’ve said, globalism has made the world our doorstep. Nevertheless, most of us haven’t as much as cracked open the door or even put our ear to it to explore how the world’s rich diversity might enliven and enhance our own local worship practices.

Second, as with Paul Simon, when incorporating cultural practices that are not our own, we run the risk of perceived (or actual) exploitation. We must be thoughtful and respectful of the other cultures from whom we decide to beg, steal, and borrow. We’ll do some thinking about this important question this week, too.

Here’s a question to get the ball rolling. Ask yourself: How am I incorporating practices from other cultures into my worship context?

Do you use prayers that have originated in another culture and have been translated for the hearers? Are there songs in your repertoire that were written in a region of the world much different than your own? Have you ever used a symbol or ritual from Christians on another continent in order that you might feel united with sisters and brothers who are culturally very different than you?

As the week goes on, you might even ask yourself: Are there some specific forms from Africa that would give my congregation a larger vision of the universal God we serve and adore?

Share some of your own cross-cultural worship practices with us in the comments section of this post. (Or, share with us your struggle to incorporate the worship practices of others.) Take this week’s poll, too, while you’re at it!

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Categories: Q of the Week

Tony Jones, Prayer, and Being Evangelical @ The Goose

by Jodi-Renee Adams | June 28, 2011

I’m an Evangelical. There. The cat’s out of the bag. Grant you, I feel the need to point out that I’m a “E”vangelical, not an “e”vangelical. I use the word to give one of those labels that make us more comfortable because it aligns us with a particular tribe, a common-unity and makes us at least a bit understandable. You are there and I am here. In this case, it defines my creed and statement of belief but not my culture so much, in case you hadn’t already figured that out. You’re a smart bunch.

This last weekend, I took my little Evangelical self to the Wild Goose Festival in Shakori Hills, North Carolina. Wild Goose… a festival to celebrate art, justice, music and spirituality. Talk about a diverse tribe. One of the most beautiful things about Wild Goose: the demographic spanned every possible life stage and age bracket without any crazy skew towards one group. The grounds were animated by just as many laughing, dirty-faced children and silver heads with wise-lined faces as there were inked up thirty-somethings or youngish hipsters with little square glasses and cowboy shirts. In my mind, that in and of itself is a statement. Hey, there’s something stirring, something afoot, something curious and mysterious at work in the Church.

Nonetheless, my tribe seemed to be in the minority at ye ol’ Wild Goose. This became most evident when I headed over to the geodesic dome for a conversation with my friend and one of my favorite writers-thinkers, Dr. Tony Jones. (I’m throwing the Dr. part in just in case Tony reads this. GOD knows, he earned it and I make fun of him enough to off-set it anyway.) The Geodesic Dome, aside from just being a pretty fantastic physical space, was a forum where a thinker or “expert” would come in and present a question to which they do not have an answer. And then we dialogue. Tony’s question: Why Pray?

My first reaction: Excitement. These topics weren’t overwhelming the line-up at Wild Goose. We were talking about something that had to do – very concretely – with spiritual formation. With Christian tradition and discipline. With something that, honestly, I was curious to know how the other Emergents (yes to Phyllis Tickle, no to Mark Driscoll) would handle it. I’ll let you in on a secret: I sometimes entertain this idea that maybe hip Emergents don’t pray, read the Bible, engage in The Hours or the disciplines because they’re so in tune with the GOD-at-Present that they believe these things to be trite, unenlightened, maybe even a bit superstitious. Here was a chance to hear a group of diverse but unified people converse on this topic.

Heading into the conversation, Tony took about ten minutes to set it up, to lay out his process and thoughts to this point. And then he threw the ball to the group: so if it’s not x or y or z, then we do we pray? The conversation turned existential very, very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a girl who’s always good for a good turn around the philosophical dance floor; but Tony’s question was an apologetic one, as he kept reminding the group. “What makes prayer a uniquely Christian practice?” Apparently, this was not a concern for the bulk of us gathered since some of the most common responses were “Why does it need to be?”

It was an odd place to be — standing between the enharmonic of why prayer doesn’t seem to matter and the importance of why it should. It’s not making the world a better place in any visibly monumental ways. It’s not theologically inclined to the notion that it forms us into the image of Christ. So, um…

But the other odd place here in this dome was the space created where the teacher was decidedly and purposefully standing in as the student. While Dr. Jones was still present, tossing out the grand process of his thought around this topic and even grander ideologies, every sentence ended with a vibe of “don’t you think?” or “could it be?”

There were a few comments Tony made that flew at me in 3-D given the audience and the context. The first was this: “There’s lots of things [Jesus] didn’t talk about that we have opinions on, but he did talk about prayer… and he did [pray].” Here we were – sitting in the middle of a phenomenal landscape with a radical group of spiritual people, really seeking out the Divine imagination around issues like creation care and sexuality and being ready to carry those flags in the name of Christ (and for that I say, thanks be to GOD) but in that one statement, I felt like Tony captured my fear and struggle with my own faith and with the context in which I must work that faith out.

I don’t fit in with my old tribe, the “e”vangelicals. And I sometimes fear that we progressives and creatives are just creating a new subculture of Christianity – just a little more hip, cynical, and edgy. We have our celebrities, our music, our group think. Wild Goose made me think about it – with her beautiful fluidity of engagement smattered with the occasional moment of spiritual consumerism. It was a vibe definitely not geared to those of a less wide-open persuasion. The dialogue that Tony facilitated intrigued me for that very reason but his summation moved me to a deep inner recognition that seemed to buzz through the whole dome, regardless of ones tradition or cultural persuasion:

I pray to be obedient because Jesus says to pray. This is my prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

Yes. Exhale.

I’ll be honest with you – some days, that’s the reason I worship too. Because Jesus did it. Not because I get it or I’m more enlightened or in touch or spiritually eager. (Sorry, red wine just came out my nose on that one.) I don’t have all the answers and sometimes I feel like this is our own little geodesic dome right here with me throwing out a question and hoping the dialogue will give me something to move forward again. It’s not always popular and certainly not seemingly enlightened to show up at church Sunday after Sunday with the kids in tow and no great argument for why we need to be there, or at least not a good Christian apologetic.

Wild Goose was an extraordinary community experience that I hope you will consider attending next year. In the meantime, I lift you all up in my prayers – some of you by name, some of you by proxy – all of you in spirit.

Categories: Formation