Opening Remarks
I have a new hobby. Remixing songs.
When I was in college, I was first introduced to the world of putting music together via computers, and fell in love with the process. I was in the studio at all hours programming away, and became addicted.
Flash forward, after a couple of years of letting GarageBand sit on my computer, I decided to play around with it one day, and I was hooked. Instantly But it wasn’t enough fun to just record my own songs I wanted to rip stuff apart and put it back together again. It was a strange craving.
So I stared with your standard emo-pop ballad, sped it up to twice it’s speed, and began. First I began the painstaking journey of matching a drum loop, determining the tempo, and syncing it up with every phrase. Then, I added a groovy synth bass line. Miss a few notes? No problem – drag and drop it to it’s new location. A shaker here, and additional drum loop for texture, and I was done. What a geeky, technological rush of adrenaline.
There is something amazing about taking something and seeing it in a different light. But sometimes in order to do so, you have to take it apart. You have to expose it. You have to let some parts stand on their own, and you have to mute others. You have to try new pairings of ideas. You have to cut, paste, and shift. And more than anything, you have to be open to the synergy that arises when the newly arranged elements begin to evolve into a new monster.
In ministry we spend so many hours trying to reinvent the wheel, when instead what we need to do is use the wheel. We spend hours at our coffeeshop haunt trying to come up with new snazzy ideas, and beat ourselves up trying to come up with teaching that noone has ever stumbled on before, all in an effort to keep ourselves from being bored of using..the wheel.
But we forget. Many people have never seen the wheel before. Ever.
We can’t throw it out and start over – why would we? If we’re not careful, we will turn around and wonder how we got so far away from the basic, fundamental, functional elements of the church that people so desperately need to experience.
Familiarity breeds comfort. You hear a song you know, you are set at ease. You hear a few new tweaks and changes here and there, and you appreciate the new context. More than anything, now they’ve got your attention.
