Ranting to /dev/null

I certainly hope you've heard of Indelible Grace. they're doing their best to re-introduce the old hymn texts, albeit with modern tunes (usually). good stuff.

I have, and it's certainly a step in the right direction. And it's okay, as far as it goes, but sometimes I find the attempt to put a metrical poem to a largely free-verse tune doesn't always work. But on the whole, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about: making good use of the rich history that we do have.

Somewhere in these posts you said something like "if it isn't good without the music, then it won't be good with the music."
It made me think that maybe there is a big difference in the culture of music 100-200 years ago, and the culture today. Now we primarily _listen_ to music rather than see it in print, so the lyrical content etc. can be propped up by interesting music.
I don't know the history of church music, but it seems like in the past it was written into books, and therefore needed to stand on its own in lyric, grammer, and punctuation.

Somewhere in these posts you said something like "if it isn't good without the music, then it won't be good with the music."
It made me think that maybe there is a big difference in the culture of music 100-200 years ago, and the culture today. Now we primarily _listen_ to music rather than see it in print, so the lyrical content etc. can be propped up by interesting music.
I don't know the history of church music, but it seems like in the past it was written into books, and therefore needed to stand on its own in lyric, grammer, and punctuation.

What about indellibly lame?

I like the traditional practice of the Church of doing good music. But that's just me.

come now, we all know that good is all too subjective when it comes to tunes. dont like it? fine, but name-calling is for sissies.

"Name-calling is for sissies" indeed.

I have been underimpressed with most of Indelible Grace's music. They choose some good songs, and put tunes to them that are boring and redundant and don't fit.

Well, some of it's decent. I was just really irritated with their rendition of "O Come and Mourn With Me A While," which was actually BOUNCY on the "Jesus, our Lord, is crucified" line that repeats at the end of every verse. I've gotten used to making "From Depths of Woe" into a happy song (though I still don't like it) because it does end with a positive note lyrically, but "O Come and Mourn" doesn't.

I've been thinking pretty much along the same line for several months, particularly since arriving here at Houghton....

I've basically got two choices of content to choose from for worship:

1) "I could sing of your love forever."

or

2) Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were ev'ry stalk on earth a quill,
And ev'ry man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the
Whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

Choice number 1 entails singing about singing about God's love a ridiculously repeated amount of times. It is extent of repetition that is hands-down uncalled for, and even worse doesn't sing about God's love at all. It seems like I'm singing forever about what I'm going to singing about forever. Too bad I'll never actually get around to singing about God's love - I'll never have time! That freaking chorus is the never ending song that never moves on.

Instead of hearing us sing about what we feel like doing forever, my guess is that God would much rather here us praise Him for the fact that His love is so immense that it can never be humanly grasped and documented.

That's just my hunch.

Also, my passionate soul feels much more refreshed, invogorated, comforted, encouraged, and quenched when I sing choice number two. I think there's a rational explanation for that...

And by way, "A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of Christ-Centered Worship" by Michael Horton is an amazing book. I highly recommend it.