Christmas CD of the Day
Blind Boys of Alabama- Go Tell It On the Mountain
From Gospel to jazz vocal to blues, the Blind Boys of Alabama are truly remarkable vocalists and musicians. They have a number of special guests on this album including Tom Waits on Go Tell It On the Mountain (as you've never heard it before), Aaron Neville on Joy to the World and a real gem with Shelby Lynne on The Christmas Song that is truly remarkable. It is a new album this year and has risen to the top of the list!
Ringing Bells
The worker ringing the bell for the local Salvation Army finances told me this evening that she had always wanted to be a bell ringer for the organization but never knew how. She was grateful that she could do it. Last night a family stood in the snow because they wanted to. I have done a couple shifts this year (as well coordinating the schedule) and they are right. It is a special act of service and servanthood with little work and lots of blessing!
A Real OOPPS
This from Yahoo Oddly Enough News Section needs no commentary (although it probably begs for one, which I will resist):
Oops! Vicar gives out porn films Fri Dec 5,11:23 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German vicar inadvertently supplied his parish with dozens of hard core porn films in an unsuccessful bid to teach people about the life of Christ.
Frithjof Schwesig, vicar in the southwestern town of Lampoldshausen, had ordered 300 copies of a video film portraying the life of Christ as told by the gospel according to Luke.
"In a first batch 20 to 30 videos were distributed and we immediately got a reaction from five to seven people saying we must have given them the wrong film," he said.
"It was a real porn film. Within an hour our staff had collected all the videos. Really, all were withdrawn."
Schwesig said there had been a mistake at the Munich video copying plant and his staff established in a viewing session that night that 200 of the videos were pornographic.
Undaunted, Schwesig said he was pressing ahead with the life of Christ video campaign.
"It's extremely successful," he said.
Early Church Growth
Darren at The Living Room has an excellent post about church growth in the early church...
Here are a few thoughts from the Forge Intensive session I went to on Monday about Missional Church DNA. The speaker was Alan Hirsch.
The church in 100AD was approximately 25,000 people in number. The Roman Empire at the time was 45 million people.
By 300AD before Constantine the church is estimated to be 27 million people. The Roman Empire was 60 million. Something happened that brought about an explosion in this time.
Alan made a number of observations:
- they had no (or very few) centralized buildings
- they met in small ecclesial units - often based around households
- there was very little in the way of professional clergy
- they were persecuted - their movement was often quite underground
- they grew through multiplication - not through growing large churches
Interesting to compare this early approach to they way we go about things today.
And now- Latin Jazz
This has become an eclectic post.... I am sitting here writing and I have BET Jazz on the TV. It is the Latin Jazz hour. I find Latin Jazz (and I know there are different types- I just can't keep them straight) foot-tapping and happy in style. I don't have any idea what they're singing. The videos that have been showing the past 40 minutes or so with the music tend to have a"steamy" sexuality that goes with the music in some way. Some have been tongue-in-cheek" others have been serious, but all have been sensual. I know that not all Latin Jazz has that, but it is part of the style.
Why? Is it the weather in Latin America? All the heat and sun? Why is Latin Music so much more sensual than say Northern European music traditionally? Just wondering?
Which leads me to...
Abba
I am not a fan of Abba, the Swedish (?) or whatever, quintessential 80s group- mindless music. Extremely popular 80s music. So much so that many will credit Abba as being the paradigm for the contemporary Christian music that came to life in the 80s. Which, the first time I heard that theory, led me to say- "Aha! That's what's wrong with CCM. Its roots are in the wrong place." The pop-py, feel good, sound that for some reason or another Baby Boomers turned from empty, vacuous (sp?) secular music to empty, vacuous church music. I wonder why? What does that say about the Boomer ("talkin' about my generation") and their sense of Taste (sic)?
End of rambling and roaming, filling time and cyberspace while continuing to decompress from yesterday and the roller coaster. Will fill you all in by Monday.
