Church

A new book by an anglican youth minister — Mixing It Up With The Simpsons, written by Owen Smith, a youth worker with the Church of England.  This article lets you in on a bit of the history and continued discussion on Bart and the boys!  Here’s a taste!

• From the Church’s perspective, enlisting Springfield’s dysfunctional clan to ride shotgun with the Almighty makes perfect sense, especially since Sunday attendance figures for young people (under 16) dropped by more than 20,000 between 2000 to 2005.

Classic jazz and blues?  Steely Dan combined that and black stylings with gospel and just a lot of good musicianship.  I was listening to a YouTube video of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker talking about producing the music. to Deacon Blues.  While I don’t always agree with the lyrics of their music, I can appreciate their approach to making good music.

Dean Parks, a guitarist for some of the recording, comments on Donald and Walters approach to recording (around 3:40 minutes into the video).  He says that they were not looking for perfection, they were there for "beyond perfection."  They wanted the music to be something that people would listen to over and over.  You worked past perfecc to where it seemed natural and then to where it seemed almost improvised.  There music was a two step process — perfection and then beyond perfection.

I know what that is about.  I have played with musicians who got every note right.  But the music was lifeless.  One pianist I know could play the hardest pieces in the world.  But you seemed to be missing a reason to listen to him again.  You can’t always define that, but you know it when  you hear it!

Getting to that place in music is where we are headed as musicians!  But first we must get the foundation down — learn to play music first!

Franklin Pyles, President of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, has got some new thoughts on his blog — part 1 deals with a new book out called "Jim and Casper go to church", published by Tyndale, 2007 — asking questions like, "what is a real worship service?", and "was the establishment of the church the real mission of Jesus?".  Part 2 is a continuation of the discussion touching on faith, belief and truth. Here is a section of that discussion:

• We truly need to hear a condemnation of smugness in stating our beliefs. We need to be honest that we are beset by doubts and assailed by fears. But, we must also say that our belief is not something that has been made up to make us feel better, but something that can be inquired into and about which an assessment of truth can be made.