joshmorton.com

I contemplated a lot of other things to write about today.. there was the thing Combs did, or inspiration by Amy blogging about blogging, and I even took some random pictures of me just now hoping to get one worth showing. But alas, nothing happened. So since I spent part of the night thinking more about my future, I think I’ll go with that. I should preface this writing by saying it depends on whether or not I can pass Health and Wellness, which right now is not looking very promising. I loathe gen eds.

So here are the options, as I see them (in no particular order):

1. Go to grad school for ministry. I have looked and am looking strongly at going to Fuller (in Pasadena) for grad school. There I would get an M.Div with a concentration on Worship, and see where that leads.

2. After going to Fuller, I could join the Navy as a chaplain, or pursue further schooling with the intent of teaching at college.

3. I could go to grad school for a technical degree, such as Purdue’s MFA in Technical Direction. This would give me great experience in the technical arts, and would open up the door for jobs such as a technical director in a performing arts center, or would go very well if I chose to make it part of my Worship education. I would love to one day teach in a Worship program, teaching the practical side of the field. Sound and lighting, set design and construction, maybe a little music; something like that. This option either leads to a job somewhere, or (crap!) more schooling.

4. I could just find a job somewhere. It probably wouldn’t be anything incredibly stunning; but it would be a job nonetheless. It would pay bills, and hopefully set me on the track towards financial stability. It would also get me out into the world and out of the IWU bubble/college bubble.

5. I could learn how to fly. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and still want to do. I could go into the Navy to do this, or find a school somewhere to learn. I’m not sure what exactly it would lead to, but probably a job being a pilot somewhere.

6. I could take some time to explore the world. It’s a costly option because this one doesn’t come with Stafford loans, but it would be an incredible experience.

7. I could fail Health and Wellness and stay at IWU for another year. This is very unlikely, because I would probably just quit if I went through four years of college (and even managed a B+ in an upper level Bible class with Wilbur Williams) but couldn’t graduate because of the easiest class in the entire catalogue.

8. Something else.

Right now, all of the options sound appealing depending on the day and what mood I’m in. Generally the grad school options sound the best, though I can’t decide which one I like better. I certainly would enjoy getting my M.Div, but getting the MFA sounds like a lot more fun. Life isn’t all about fun, but if I had to choose what to do in school for the next couple of years, I am leaning towards the one with classes that make me actually want to go to them.

It’s late and I’m tired. I’ve probably said something outlandishly wrong, and I apologize. I’m not sure what it is, but entries like this always get someone riled up about something. Four words if you’re that someone: send me an email.

Even though I have other homework due sooner than this, I decided tonight to begin working on my philosophy of worship. It’s for History & Philosophy of Worship class, and it also is probably one of the most important things I’ve written to date, and will be for some time. It will no doubt have a large impact on what happens in my near future, whether that is finding a career, going to grad school, or moving to Hungaria.

The outline I have so far breaks the paper down into three main parts, with several sub-sections. The first sections is about the Biblical foundations of worship. That is the hardest part of the paper, will require the most research and study (if I was writing this before taking a class on Bib Foundations it would all be so much easier… :), and is probably the hardest part to write and read. The next section is on corporate worship, where I will break it down into music, art (visual and drama), technology, liturgy, ritual, and worship as a lifestyle. For now, these are the sections I will be writing in the days to come. Finally, I will write a section on personal worship, and I’ not really sure how it will divide up yet, so you’ll just have to wait on that one. Today I want to start with Worship as Technology. It’s been on my mind a lot this weekend, and I want to get at least some of it out.

Please feel free to give feedback, good or bad. I especially value you helping me know where I’ve done a good job explaining my philosophies, and where I’ve left you unclear or wanting more (if you disagree with some of my philosophies, that’s great; but you’re probably not going to change a whole lot by telling me).

Technology as Worship

Including technology in a philosophy of worship is without question the most recent ‘category’ of worship. Only in the last 50 years has it played any role at all, and only in the last ten has it become overwhelmingly significant. I believe technology has a role in worship that it fits, and should play; but I also believe that its role has been largely misinterpreted and misused, especially recently.

I believe technology has two specific roles in worship. The first is that technology serves as a aid to corporate worship, and the second is that it serves as a platform to which we can make worship more understandable to those who are new or unfamiliar with what exactly our corporate worship is, and what it means. To say technology is a means of worship in and of itself is errant, but rather it is a medium of worship, no different than the altar was a medium which the Israelites used as an aid in their worship to God.

The foremost goal of technology in worship is to completely disappear from thought or conscience of the worshiper. If the worshiper is focused on how great the lighting is or how terrible the sound is, then technology has ceased to fill its role in worship and has become a distraction. This is the reason why I believe it is so important than hours of planning and preparation come before any worship service ever occurs. Technicians must realize importance is in the message, not the media. A certain video may be cinematically thrilling, but if the message is lost in the camera work or the acting, then all that video has done is become a hindrance and distraction to the worshiper. I do want to clarify here that for those working with the technology, their worship is very much in the technology because their efforts to do their best and present the best offering they can is their worship. But for the uninvolved worshiper, a perfect worship service, technologically speaking, is one where the technology is never even noticed.

The secondary goal of technology in worship is to serve as a way which unbelievers or new believers can relate to and understand. To just throw an unexperienced person into a worship service is like putting a passenger in the cockpit of a 747. You may have seen planes in the sky, or even flown on them, but if you have no training in how to fly it, the cockpit will look like an imposing myriad of buttons and switches. In this case, worship serves as a ‘flight simulator’ of sorts. It simplifies everything down to just a joystick, something easier to grasp and much less terrorizing to dive in to. For an outsider who is unfamiliar with what is happening, technology can serve this purpose well. Putting song lyrics or Bible verses on a screen will help focus in on the activity being performed. (I preface this next statement by saying I have nothing against hymnals, and I grew up singing the old hymns and I love them) By eliminating the need to find a hymnal and understand how to use, or keeping a person from searching for a pew Bible, the media has successfully skirted the first obstacle for someone in unfamiliar territory. That is not to say that worship should be a comfortable thing, for I believe it should be the exact opposite; but there’s no reason a worship service need scare a person away just because it’s hard to understand what is happening.

By my count, it’s been two weeks since I wrote something serious and worth readind. Well, it will be at least a couple more days until that happens again. But I just wanted you all to know that something is coming, eventually. I promise.

Remember that Christmas carol I wrote about during the documentary? The one I said was terrible, awful, and extremely funny? Well, due to popular demand, the lyrics are here for all to read.

A Christmas Carol for Homeless Children
by Claude DeBussy

We have no more house nor home!
Enemies took all we had;
all gone, all gone
Even our own little bed!

The school they burnt;
They burnt our teacher too.
They burnt the church
And also the Lord Jesus Christ,
The poor old beggar too who could not get away!

We have no more house nor home!
Enemies took all we had;
All gone, all gone
Even our own little bed!

Surely, Daddy to fight has gone,
Poor Mummy is in Heaven!
Died and did not see all this.
O! What shall we do….now?

Jesu! Infant Jesu!
Do not go to them;
Don’t go back to them ever.
Punish them all!
Avenge the children of France!
The little Belgians, the little Serbians
And the Polish children too!

Yet should we some forget,
Pray forgive us.
Noël! Noël! Noël!
No toys! We want no toys!
But may we please get back again our Daily Bread.

We have no more house nor home!
Enemies took all we had;
all gone, all gone
Even our own little bed!

The school they burnt;
They burnt our teacher too.
They burnt the church
And also the Lord Jesus Christ,
The poor old beggar too who could not get away!

Jesu! Listen to us,
Our wooden shoes we have no more;
So please give Victory to the Child of France!

So there you have it, the Christmas Carol for Homeless Children. Something tells me there’s some issues here.

Somewhere in the midst of the 374 things I had to do today, school officially began. Yes, I’ve read several books and written several papers and even done a couple of group projects, but no school year is official until you have one of those days when you just feel like imploding. Maybe it was the fact my day started an hour and a half earlier than normal, or the fact that staff meeting went long and I had three other things to do during my then shortened lunch time, or maybe I should blame it on dinner, when I got my only half-hour break of the day, which gave me just enough time to crash. But whenever it was and whatever caused it, stress showed up at school today.

At this point, all I look forward to is my bed. I should spend some time studying tonight, but I’m not going to. I’m tired of this day, and can’t wait to put it to death in my nice, warm sheets. Of course we have no weekend to speak of because of Chorale, and I love traveling with Chorale, but it really couldn’t come at a worse weekend for me. The last three or four have been luxuriously free from anything, and of course the one weekend I need the time is the one I don’t have it.

Nothing spiritually deep or insightful tonight. Just a request that you keep me in you prayers. It’s going to be a very long week and a half or so, but Fall Break is coming. It is coming, it is coming, it is coming…..

I don’t have much inspiration for a new article today… but I would like to explain myself to Amy since she asked me what I meant by “and she digressed from there by basically becoming one of those old people who have no appreciation for where music is headed right now.”

I guess the best way to explain my thoughts here is to say I was trying to put Gloria into that stereotype view of old people that a lot of the younger generation has. I don’t personally feel like older people are generally detrimental to the progression of worship as far as style goes, and I don’t necessarily think the fact that worship is almost universally (I say universal meaning the typical evangelical American church with at least a moderate amount of regular attenders) gravitating towards the Christ Tomlin feel is really a great thing either.

But the point was to get across my feelings on how she seemed to turn from her original argument (’its the message, not the style’) to one of a prescription of music that must be followed.

Also as far as her theological reasons for harmony, I don’t mind using that as a great parallel between music and the body. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to call it a theological reason for harmony. Somehow I get this feeling of doubt that God created the body to work as it does just to make us all sing 4-part. Especially since 8-part is better, anyways.

So far this semester Friday has been a good writing day for me, so look forward to good stuff again tomorrow night.

Some of you know this about me already, but I rarely write about it, so I thought I’d share with you one of my favorite things in the world to do.

Racquetball is an incredible game. Sure, it probably helps that I have some talent at it, but I just love it. Fast paced action with a ball moving up to 150 mph (and when I play good people, we absolutely hit it that hard), a court that’s only 20 feet wide and 40 feet long yet can keep you running the entire time the ball is in play, the amount of strategy involved to play well, it just is such a great game!

Tonight I played some racquetball with Jesus. Jesus is a great guy I got to know as an apartment-mate last year, and this year we’ve started playing some racquetball together. I honestly don’t think he expected me to give him competition–and not only did I do that, but I’ve taken two of the three games we’ve played now (all three very, very close games). After the longest game of racquetball I’ve ever played, we went out and found a couple of good players to play doubles with. They took it to us the first game and skunked us, but we were tied the second game when we got kicked out of the rec building. Not because we were too good, just because it was closing.

So I thought I’d share with you the highlight of my day. I’ll get back to some of the worship comments tomorrow night, because I’m tired and want to go to bed.

It is a sad and unfortunate thing, but the documentary has come to an abrupt end… without any pictures of the weekend to end it on. I apologize for those of you who were looking forward to some weekend pics, but the honest truth is I did absolutely nothing. I’m not even sure if I left my townhouse on Saturday. But the pics seemed to go over really well, and although I still believe the best part of this website is the writing, I’ll do my best to post pictures from time to time.

In the mean time, I have some more thoughts on worship, and I blame them partially on my class, and partially on these people:

Yep, that’s Bill and Gloria. Tonight my History & Philosophy of Worship class went to Huntington U. to hear them speak on worship, and it was an interesting time. It was a pretty relaxed format, where Bill and Gloria just stood up front and talked for a while, and then opened the floor for a few questions. I was both impressed and extremely disappointed with what they said. For most of the lecture part, they said some really good things. They’re very open to change within music, noting that they’ve seen a tremendous amount of it in their 42 years in the music business. They did address the content of the music, but that’s nothing my generation hasn’t talked about already. All in all, I was impressed with their stance on where music is going, and where it has come from.

The question and answer time quickly changed my opinion, at least of Gloria. While she seems to be the more Biblically grounded of the two, before long someone got her off on a rant about how she wants a singable melody in songs, and of course harmony to go along with that. Now, I love both of those things (though I don’t always find them necessary), but her next statement was ludicrous. She claimed theological foundation for singing harmony in the fact that the church is made up of many different people who often view things differently, but all must work together for the work intended us. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty ridiculous statement, and she digressed from there by basically becoming one of those old people who have no appreciation for where music is headed right now. And because that seemed like a complete reversal of what she said earlier, I lost a lot of respect for what she said tonight. I will hand it to Bill, however. He actually warned Gloria before she started off on her rant, and he was the one who eventually stopped her. Mad props to Bill, who actually seemed to be the one that had it all together when the night was said and done.

So being that this trip was to replace our class tomorrow, afterwards we had van discussion on the way back to Marion. Not quite the same as summer “van talk”, but it was better than your standard class lecture, so it was okay. We talked a lot about worship and the standard arguments about the role of the worship leader, and how to choose songs to sing, and what the criterion for choosing those songs are, etc. In the end, it became another one of those circular arguments that doesn’t actually progress anywhere and only ends up making people upset.

Now I don’t want to name names, but I feel like many of my fellow Worship majors approach worship from a very uneducated standpoint. Not to say they haven’t lead worship before–in fact most of them do it on a weekly basis–but rather that I feel like most of them create beliefs and views without ever knowing where the Bible and orthodoxy stand on issues. So I often get frustrated because so many Worship majors form belief without ever using scripture, whereas I try very hard to base all of my philosophies and theologies of worship soundly on scripture, with reason and orthodoxy as supporting factors. I’m not trying to say I’m some great worship mind–I’m far too under-educated to even consider such remarks, but I say that all just to convey the frustration almost all “worship” talks give me.

Today I had an epiphany of sorts, and maybe it was even revelation. While I was once again on my soapbox about how worship is SO MUCH MORE than just music and singing, I realized that perhaps this is the reason we are having such terrible ‘worship wars’ currently. Could it be that our warring is not ‘the right way’ versus ‘the wrong way’, but is in fact unfocused argument versus unfocused argument? Right now I am considering that our worship problems may not just be in need of compromise, but in fact of a complete refocusing of what we see as worship. David Peterson defines worship as our reaction to something God does; and for 5,000 years it has been expressed in many different ways, one of which is music (by no means is music the most prolific part of this worship, either; it’s just one part of it). The more I contemplate it, the more I believe our disagreements in worship stem not from stylistic differences, but from the fact we no longer understand what worship is. I think if the church can regain understanding of what true worship is, the stylistic differences would fade away… because we would understand worship is much more than an emotional response to a song. It is a conscious effort, a choice made to worship God through every last fiber of our being. It is so much more than just a song.

I would really like to hear your comments on this… remember it is still a fresh thought, and I would like to hear initial reaction to it, positive or negative. I really enjoy reading your comments!

Tony has Speech class with me. Today we had a special class in the library.

Paul French is in class, too. And so is Amanda, but apparently she didn’t want the glory and fame of being on the website.

Stephen and I have Theology together. His wife, Michelle, works in Academic Affairs with my mom. For some reason, he calls me “Supreme Chancellor of the Universe.” I kinda like it.

This is Ben. He lived down the hall sophomore year, and we shot each other with AirSoft guns a lot. I think I bled once or twice.

Kent was our team leader this summer. He’s old and graduated, but was here yesterday for homecoming. On 11 February, he’s getting married.

A couple seconds after I took this picture, Dr. Barnes looked over at me, but his cronies must not have been able to find me in my super-secret hiding spot.

Justin and Nate Felt. They’re our two RA’s for the Townhouses.

This picture was staged, of course. But it’s still far too incriminating to not be put on the website.

1:00am Saturday = Taco Bell run. I was proud of this one, I took it while I was driving.

Dang freeloaders. You say, “Taco Bell” and at least one of them always comes.

I can’t even tell you the feelings this place stirs up in me.

Last night we had one of those ageless latenight talks. Good times.

The link to yesterday’s documentary is in the post below this one.
But for those of you wondering what kind of floss I ended up buying, click on the pic below to find out.