Michael Krahn : The Ascent to Truth

Consuming media has an effect on our subliminal cognitive faculties. McLuhan would say the content of the television that you’re watching is far less important (McLuhan would say that content doesn’t matter at all but I think that takes it a bit far) than the fact that you’re sitting silent and motionless for hours while asking your brain to process more information (in the form of light and sound) than it was ever designed to handle. That at the core is the meaning of “the medium is the message”.

“The ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat that the burglar throws to distract the watchdog of the mind.”

“Now” is where we are at, but how was our understanding of God shaped (for good and bad) in each technological era? Now, what principles can we learn from those to guide us through the current era and next era?

For example, today the internet enables anonymity while the printing press did the opposite and allowed people to escape anonymity by publishing and proliferating their written output. This lead to new “authorities” on religion, philosophy. etc. based on celebrity/popularity.

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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In Numbers 24 the Moabite king Balak was so scared of the people of Israel that he summoned Balaam, a man with an international reputation named  for blessing and cursing, to defeat Israel by cursing them. Three times Balak asks Balaam to curse Israel for him, and three times Balaam seeks God and does the opposite.

10 And Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together. And Balak said to Balaam,

“I called you to curse my enemies, and behold, you have blessed them these three times. 11 Therefore now flee to your own place. I said, ‘I will certainly honor you,’ but the Lord has held you back from honor.”

12 And Balaam said to Balak, “Did I not tell your messengers whom you sent to me, 13 ‘If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go beyond the word of the Lord, to do either good or bad of my own will. What the Lord speaks, that will I speak’? 14 And now, behold, I am going to my people. Come, I will let you know what this people will do to your people in the latter days.”

A couple of things here:

1. Balak says, “The Lord has held you back from honor.” All Balaam needed to do was speak a few words and he would have been rich.

2.  After refusing to do his bidding, Balak tells Balaam to flee. Balaam’s response? “I will let you know what this people will do to your people in the latter days.”

That’s pretty good for a guy who not long before was beating a talking donkey.

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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Michael Spencer, who is a Protestant but blogs under the name The Internet Monk, wrote an excellent piece on worship a few days ago. I will print some of the highlights here followed by a few personal comments. If you want to see the entire article and read the comments on his blog (of which there are 173 at the moment) go here.

Here are the highlights:

- We have, within a matter of 50 years, completely changed the entire concept of what a worship service is. We’ve adopted an approach that demands ridiculous levels of musical, technical and financial commitment and resources.

- We have tied ourselves to the Christian music industry and its endless appetite for change and profit. We have accepted that all of our worship leaders are going to be very, very young people. Traditional worship  is on the verge of becoming a museum piece.

- Diversity, generational compatibility, even simplicity are all being blown up. Worship is now a major audience event, led by skilled entertainers, aimed at a demographic and judged by the audience reaction.

- Worship has now become a musical term. Praise and worship means music. Let’s worship means the band will play.

- Even singing is getting lost in this. As the volume and the performance level goes up, who knows who is singing?

- We have a lot of happy people right now. They have no idea what Biblical worship is outside of the context of their favorite songs played by a kickin’ band. They have little idea of worship in vocation, in family, in ordinary work or in silence. They credit their favorite songs as major spiritual events.

_____________________________

There are a number of things I want to comment on here, and I make these comments as a musician and Pastor of Worship who is training people to be part of, as Spencer calls it, “a kickin’ band”. But I am also one who believes that music is only a small part of worship which, although powerful, cannot be allowed to become what is seen as the only form of worship. I explored that idea a while ago in a post call “What Is Worship?”

1. Spencer claims that singing is getting lost in all this. I agree. I have noticed this in my own church, having grown up there and now returning to it as a pastor, the singing is not as vigorous as it once was. It seems to me that people once sang much louder, that they filled room with song - not with pitch perfect delivery, but with enthusiasm and confidence. Too many people have forgotten how to express themselves in song. People no longer sing because the room is too loud for them to hear themselves or anyone else around them.

2. Some of this is certainly my generation’s fault. In some cases we’ve pushed too hard for modern songs and styles at the expense of the old. We want what the world has: a loud band to perform for us while we consume the experience of their performance. In a lot of cases the older generation, wanting to keep us around, has acquiesced. We, like over ambitious high school athletes, have taken the ball, run past the goal line, and kept right on running right out of the stadium. (Need a visual on that statement? Watch 4:10 to 5:04 of this video) We now have not only modern instrumentation but all the look and feel of a modern rock concert. Like a rock concert, the privileged few create the experience and the rest of us consume.

3. I’m not unhappy at all with having what some oldtimers call “Rock and Roll” in our church. It has a time and place when it is effective - but that time and place is not always and everywhere.

4. I am committed to addressing these issues and as I figure out how to do that I’ll try to keep you posted on this blog.

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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When we lead the music (or preach or teach), we are there primarily for the benefit of the other people in the room. What we are trying do at church is follow Jesus’ example, who “came to serve, not to be served.”  Matthew 20:28

To do this, we partially put aside our preferences so that others can worship in a way that suits them. As a service to our fellow believers in Christ, we look out at them as we’re playing and we see when a song is hitting them and driving them to worship and when it is not.

Some people genuinely worship to Randy Travis and some worship to much louder music.  Now, I don’t think many people would be served by us playing Randy Travis style every week, but there are also a lot of people who are not served by us playing with the volume at 10 and 5 electric guitars on stage. Somewhere in between those two is where we want to be.

Its a matter of serving the people in the room. If its all youth - give-’er, full out, they’ll love it!  If its our Sunday morning crowd, which is a mixture of youth, seniors, young families, etc, then we look out and we adjust however we need to in order to serve them.

Servanthood can seem like a leash if you see it that way, but again, let’s look at Jesus example. Jesus gave up being in the presence of God in order to come to the earth, suffer, and die for us - as a servant. He did this so that people who didn’t know God could know God and have eternal life and so that people who already knew God could know him fully and enjoy him more.

As worship leaders, we are called to the same thing: we want people to meet Jesus, and we want people who already know Jesus to know him more. If we think of music as the vehicle for this, then ultimately we SHOULD be willing to play a style of music we hate every week if people are genuinely meeting Jesus and getting to know him better.

Related Post :

What is Worship?

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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Here is my highest priority “To Read” list, in no particular order.  Tell me yours below.

No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come-as-You-Are Culture in the Church - John Burke

Facing the Coming Storm - Eric S. Wyatt

Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods - Mark Driscoll

Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God - Bob Kauflin

upsidedn2 - Tim Bailey

What’s on your list?

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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People with no social authority suddenly gain access to previously inaccessible channels of idea distribution

- Anyone saying anything accessible to anyone. No filter, no editor, not time of reflection.

- People who attempt to transmit the authority of printed text to online print are doomed to waste their time chasing heresies. As a result, they increase the audience of the perceived “heretic”.  Page views and inbound links determine authority. Now, more than ever, unless it is someone who already has authority/audience, the best way to avoid increasing authority is to let the author’s post die in obscurity.

- Physical print is imbued with more authority because it takes time to process, time to deliver, and has usually been combed over by the eyes of an editor.

- With the removal of the costs of time, print, paper, and editor, there is little left to restrict anyone from writing and publishing online anything that comes to mind.  However, where restrictions are eliminated, a torrent of self-expression follows. In the case of music this has been a boon to artists and has increased the number of quality offerings available. For print, it has also increased the quantity but it has diluted the quality of work in print (online or offline).

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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I think it would be right to make a case that Christian believers always stand to lose more than they gain if they unthinkingly embrace every new technology or when they embrace it without taking God’s glory and sovereignty into account.

Last Thursday night I spoke to the youth at my church and one thing I drove home a few times was that there is no “on duty” and “off duty” modes of operation in the Christian life. Technology and entertainment are not a back door into a magical land where choices don’t matter, carry no consequence, and fall outside of God’s caring eye. I think many adults function this way as well.

Mark 12: 29-31 was the backbone of the two most important discernment tools I gave the youth. Loving God, Loving Others.  Our choices must take into account 1) a love for God and 2) a love for others.  Each action we take, each thing we examine and test, each movie we watch, each song we listen to, must be judged on the foundation of these two commandments.  Can what I’m doing in any way be loving towards God and beneficial towards others?

From a more technical, less content perspective, remaining oblivious or willfully ignorant of the of the costs and liabilities of new technology is another result of unrestrained capitalism. In order to sell something you draw attention to the good and try to keep the bad out of sight.

Profit (and war) is now the main driver of technological innovation - that was not the case when Gutenberg made it possible to print Bibles. 

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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With proper reflection I believe that we can see what the next story will be, much like McLuhan saw what the next story would be.  A personal example - and boy do I wish I had acted on this! Early on in the MP3 revolution I sat for a few hours and thought and wrote about some implications I was foreseeing.

Long story short, this was during the age when CD sales were boss as far as determining what was at the top of the music culture mindset. I saw that in the future recording artists would no longer be able to rely on CD sales as the main source of revenue and that recorded music would have little to no value other than as a promotional item to get people out to see the live show.

Principals:
1. Don’t try to strictly control and regulate what can be digitized BECAUSE what can be digitized can be copied and shared.  Use that as a given in your strategy and marketing

2. Capitalize on what cannot be digitized. In this case, the live experience of a concert

At the end of my analysis my recommendation was: invest in concert promotion and live experience companies. I saw it start to happen and when I kicked myself is when Madonna signed a contract - not with a “record company” at the center, but with a live event company at the center. Music sales are no longer the main source of revenue for bands that thrive. I should have taken my own advice.

Alright, that kind of turned into a long (and self-congratulatory) example but it illustrates my point: thoughtful reflection can lead us to accurate and trustworthy insights - to see what The Next Story might be.

(BTW - Bob Lesetz is a very clear - although sometimes belligerent - thinker on these issues and from my reading of him is McLuhan-esque in his ability to see what’s ahead in the music industry.)

McLuhan also said that “Humans are the sex organs of the machine world”. Meaning? Technologies do not self-replicate - a computer does not cozy up to a cell phone and produce a little iPhone (or similar pocket-sized computer).  The actions/desires of human being determine the course on new technology.

To the non-believer with purely capitalist motives, this means creating/inventing technology that will excite the consumerist passions of the masses. Profit trumps morals, so if you can turn a buck by piping porn into a cell phone then, hey, why not? If you can get people paying to simultaneously watch a movie, talk on their cell phones, IM their friends and Tweet about it - GO FOR IT! What do I care about the psychic effect of so much triviality and distraction?

To the believer it means understanding the principles of media and acting accordingly - not with the motive of profit (at least not without consideration of other factors) but with the motive of bringing glory to God

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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McLuhan:

“The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classified as ‘pseudo’ by those who have acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they happen to be.”

Best example I can think of: newpaper people railing against blogs.

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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A couple of years ago I won a prize at a writing conference for writing the following story in about 10 minutes:

It didn’t jive: foxes and God? What had one to do with the other? Yet here was this brewer, regaling me with stories of how both God and foxes made numerous cameos in his life.

“What does God say in these cameos?” I asked - assuming the cameo foxes were not talking cameo foxes.

“Well, it usually happens during a nap, so it’s kind of a dream, but too real to be a dream,” he said.

“I’m sitting on the ice - I’m dry but I’m frozen, and I always need to pee, but I don’t think that’s part of the message from God. That just happens because I have a large glass of water before my nap.”

“Ok, so you’re sitting on the ice…” I say, trying to pull him back from his tangent.

“Right, right, I’m on the ice…” he continues, “Everything around me whitens and out of a large hive come large bees…”

At this point I wonder if all this actually happens unaided or is the result of some brandy-spiked chocolate fondue.

“So the bees print messages in the snow, they dab themselves on the pure white blanket and print words. I sit there watching until six bees - its always six - grab my ears and turn my head.”

This is getting weirder by the moment, and I wonder if he’d notice if I snuck out and left him there alone with his story. No such luck. He grits his teeth and looks me straight in the eye and says:

“Here’s the best part…”

Ok, here’s how the story was written. We were given a photo of a finished Scrabble game board and we had to use as many of the words on the board as possible to create a story on the spot.

Below is a picture of a finished Scrabble game board. It’s not the same one I used but it will work for the same type of contest. Try it out - use as many of the words on the board as possible, then email the story to me (michael.krahn@gmail.com) or leave it in the comment box below.

Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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