Wednesday, October 13, 2004

A Blast From the Past!

I recently found an article on the Zoe Group website that brought back a flood of memories and made me shout "Amen" all at once. It's called "Heart of Worship: Gen X and was written by none other than Randy Gill.

That name may mean nothing to you, but it means a great deal to me. I first met Randy through a friend who had been in the Metropolitan Detroit Youth Chorus (MDYC) with me and was then going to Michigan Christian College (now Rochester College). She invited me to a concert the chorus was doing at a local church and she introduced me to Randy. The rest was history. At that time I was all but set on going to another very remote, small college in the middle of corn country, but once I met Randy I knew I wanted to be in his chorus.

A good bit of what I know and understand about worship and leading singing I learned from watching him and being around him about 6 days a week. He never took worship lightly, even 20+ years ago, his song leading was "cutting edge" and listening to him in chorus practices on tours you knew he had a fire for his Lord that could not be contained in boring, ritualistic service. I could lead singing before I met him (thanks to people like Cecil and my mom), but just being around him took me to the next level and the next.

His article addresses something that I have referred to here ("Church Music Part IV - Our Kids"). Our kids DO think differently than we do. For example, for us, it was enough for us to spend some time on the phone with a best friend. For my son, he "talks" to 2, 3, 4, 5 or more AT A TIME on his computer using "Instant Messaging". These are not kids from school (for the most part), but kids he met at camp, or at a youth rally or from short trips to Michigan. It's not as simple as saying that they are the "MTV Generation", because (here's a secret), they are not. Most of them stopped watching MTV (or never did) a long time ago.

Randy is right, they don't think linearly and even though I couldn't get my hands around it (or start to) until I read his article, I already knew that. I talked about it in another article called ("Spontaneous Part One"), we have to find some way to come to a happy medium of organization and spontenaety.

Do I have the answers. I think not, but I'm going to continue looking, in fact I'm going to look harder. I may make some mistakes, but I would rather make mistakes of action than make the big mistake of inaction.

Thanks Randy.

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"...Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Corinthians 3:7-18