[Ep01] How SDG Music Radio Intends to Empower Contemporary Christian Music w/ Magnus Gautestad

In the first episode of SDG Music Radio, the host Magnus Gautestad discusses the divide within churches regarding worship music and the need for unity and understanding between different musical traditions. He expresses concern about the lack of richness and excess of emotions in some worship music and believes that artists and leaders from different backgrounds should come together to create music that reflects and glorifies all the different attributes of God. Magnus plans to further explore this topic in his bachelor thesis and a book, aiming to provide practical insights into the role of beauty and aesthetics in Christian music.

Magnus advocates for a holistic approach to worship, incorporating art, music, and education in the church to deepen engagement and glorify God. He emphasizes the need for excellence and creativity, and discusses his own work as a composer and musician, combining classical with other genres of music. He introduced his other podcast, "Beauty and the Faith," which aims to explore the connection between beauty and faith, and an upcoming event called "Together for Beauty," which seeks to recover the beauty of the arts, music, and architecture. Magnus invites listeners to participate in discussions and engage with the content through various platforms for feedback and discussion.

SDG Music Radio contact email:
contact@beautyandthefaith.com

Our initiative to revive beauty in music:
https://www.composersforbeauty.org/
https://www.instagram.com/composersforbeauty/
https://www.instagram.com/sdgmusicradio/
https://www.instagram.com/classicalmg/
https://www.instagram.com/magnusgautestad/

Our holistic approach to reviving beauty in arts, architecture, and entertainment:
https://www.instagram.com/beautyandthefaithart/
https://www.instagram.com/churchsquarerenewalcenter/

Facebook group (soon to be an app) that fuels the Classical Revival with products and services of beauty:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/togetherforbeautymarketplace

Transcript

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In this first episode, you'll be learning who the show is for, what you can expect, and what the mission and vision is of this movement, and a little bit about who your host is. Let's go. There's a war in our churches between modern and traditional music. But the question is this, can we creatively integrate the best of both worlds to unify the body of Christ and glorify the Lord more fully? Join us on this podcast as Christians from various dance share their voice and come together to develop new creative arrangements and compositions that will help us to worship the Lord more fully and to empower evangelism. I'm Magnus Gautestad, and welcome to SDG Music Radio. I am so grateful to be here in this moment and that the Lord has allowed me to be a part of his mission when it comes to worshiping him and to loving people with arts. In this short introductory episode, I'll be sharing what you can expect from the show and who it is for, and just a bit about who I am. First of all, who is this show for? Well, this is a show mainly for Christian artists, Christian musicians, but also other Christian leaders and people in the congregation which is interested in music. And in the music that we play in the churches and also the music that we play in the churches and also the music that we create to reach people in evangelism. Coming to Christ myself about 10 years ago, when I was in my mid 20s, I was quickly met with many mixed feelings about the worship music in the churches. Coming from a very rock and roll background, I had almost like an awakening when it comes to the classical tradition. When I studied musical appreciation, during some classes I did in the United States for a while, and through education, I learned about the Western tradition and I really took time to train my ear to be able to take in the classical music. And after that, things really just changed for me. It really changed who I wanted to become. I wanted to be more elevated and I wanted to live in a more transcendent and holy way because of that type of music. That was just the feeling I got from that. What happened when I got back to Norway, I wasn't a believer yet then, but I started to go to the church because of that beauty. For me, was an amazing attraction to step out of the world. Some might find that coming to a church and they play music which is very similar to the pop scene or rock scene, things like that, and they feel that I'm comfortable here. I'm very slow to condemn that. I do believe definitely that the Lord can use many different means to reach the lost and to draw people to him. But what I am really concerned about is that it seems that you have a problem on each side when it comes to the Christian music. So on one side, you will hear people say that the congregation, just going through the motions, they are intellectual dryness to the worship and it lacks richness. And then you have on the other side, you will maybe say it's worldly, it has an excess of emotions. It disengaged the mind because of the loudness and the repetitions and all of these things. And then there's been a tendency in the Church, in the global Church to throw rocks at each other. And more and more the Lord has put on my heart to bring us together because we know that it is the will of Jesus to be in one body and to have unity in the Church. Now it's about high time that the artists and leaders of the Church come together and listen to each other and see what can we do to learn from each other. I read a book that was called Worshiping in the Best of both worlds, and it talks about different qualities from all kinds of traditions history-wise too, that has different aspects of the attributes of God and different ways of how the Holy Spirit works. And if we are going to be faithful to scripture, then we need to reflect and glorify all the different attributes of God. I definitely think we have something to learn from each other. The question is then how can we arrange music and how can we compose music that will be faithful to the Lord and actually refresh the soul? That will actually glorify God and refresh the soul, but at the same time, we'll have that type of freshness and creating a new song to quote the Lord so that we keep a new life in it. And the intention of both the interviews that you can expect on this show will be then to, for once, just open our minds to what is Biblical, to how people are really experiencing things in the churches. I've been talking with people who, for example, they sit in churches with very modern music and they struggle, but they don't really say it out loud. The pastor maybe don't know that many are really struggling with the type of worship music. It can be the other way. Maybe in other churches, I haven't heard that personally, but there can be many young people who are like, are they just tuning out? They're not able to connect and they're struggling, but they don't want to rock the boat. Here this is a platform where we can encourage honesty when it comes to this. Examples. If there was a modern worship band, for example, that also there were people in the church that knew how to play any classical instruments, if you then added, for example, a violin or added a flute or something like that, you could add some type of improvisation or some form of excellence. Those who are artists in the church can actually also get a platform because the evangelical churches, I believe, has and are still doing a tremendous error in how they are neglecting the potential to use the gifts of the artists in the churches. So yeah, of course, in the Reformation, it was important to stop the idolatry of the arts that happened in many places. But do you think that all the reformers really meant that we're going to be so brutally reject so much of the arts so brutally as we are still doing now. Now that most people can read and we have the Bible in our own language, might that open up that we are able to introduce more beauty and esthetics into the Church and also put more emphasis in a time of modern relativism when it comes to goodness and truth, that also that this music, if we can raise the excellence like the Church has through history, had an amazing excellence when it comes to both the architecture, the art, the music, and reached so many and opened up so many for the attribute of beauty of God that this is a time where we should take this more seriously. I talk to many people across the world and many seem to be having similar convictions in this time, and it's an important discussion to have. I'm now finishing my degree in theology and leadership, and next year I'll be writing my bachelor thesis on beauty and including also Christian music. That paper, together with all the interviews here, is going to lead toward a book that will be about this topic. We'll be very practical. We'll be more not so philosophical as other books. Me in school was just playing PlayStation under the desk and I had a very hard time focusing. I'm very just like a practical guy. I'm not that academic, even though the Lord has allowed me to learn many of the academic disciplines through his power. But I like things to get to the point and to make something happen, to come together and actually make courses, create art centers, music school departments from Christian entrepreneurs that can be connected to local churches, and finding ways where we can bring in education to to mature the taste. Like the Arcy Sprawl talking about in his series, Recovering the Beauty of the Arts, that just like as we are maturing in our knowledge of scripture, that there should also be maturing in our appreciation of the arts as we grow in holiness. So that's one perspective that we can also discuss here that we maybe should be more challenged. There's also other aspects of... I met somebody at an event and he said that he had read a book about why many men are leaving the Church. And he talked about that sometimes we make the Church too sentimental and it becomes too Earthbound and we neglect the Majesty of God. And for this purpose also, the classical tradition, by adding that to some simple hymns or adding that to simple modern worship music, can help to elevate and transcend the music upward. So we can also see God in His Majesty and by that being more faithful. Me and myself, I'm a composer and a guitar player and I make crossover music. I make music where I take classical music and combine it with gospel or classical music and combine it with drums and bass and things like that, or even taking Baroque music and putting on beats and seeing how we can combine it with faithful, lyrical theology. So I'm very open to experimenting and how we can glorify God in different ways. So at the same time as we're doing this process, of course, we need to do things God's way, but to hold truth in one hand and hold the culture in the other and see how we can reach the people with great art, great music and at the same time, worship the Lord more fully and really engage the heart and the mind and the soul and the strength and worship him like he says he wants to be worshiped. So this will be a very, very interesting journey toward the book. And also I'm having another podcast called Beauty and the Faith. And this is more general discussions, also go more into art and architecture in these areas. And we are starting an event called Together for Beauty, which will be both a virtual summit, but also a live in-person event every year, will get people together. And that will be especially to recover the beauty of the arts, music and architecture. So that will talk more about the classical perspective of this. But I definitely think that again, even though I'm a bit of a classical guy, I definitely believe that there can also be a certain mechanical or dryness to if we keep things too stale and that there is definitely room when we use the potential and the gifts of the artists in the various churches and we come together and help to bring in education and creative ideas that we can be even more faithful and that the churches can also grow more because of this in evangelism, because of the excellence. That's how what you can expect from the show. It will be interviews. It will be me sharing about the journey of how I'm developing my music and going forward as an example and the different ways, the resources that we are creating. I encourage you to contact me on contact@beautyandthefaith. Com. That's the overarching organization here I have with my partner. If you want to be on the show to share your perspective as a listener or as a creator, as a worship leader, as a pastor, we would love to have you on the and consider you for that. So just tell me a little bit about yourself and what perspective you want to add. And this isn't for us when we start to have these discussions that we also get feedback. So on YouTube, you can put your comments under the video. On Instagram, you can comment when we put out teasers and things like that there. And also just feel free to send an email. So if there's something that's not true, if there's something we forgot to say, we want to hear it. And this is also comments that I could contribute. When I sometimes add more episodes where I'm just speaking with things that I've been writing, things that might be in the book, and I can include these things so we all end up with a practical guide on how we can achieve this mission of coming together as a church and glorify God more fully with the Christian music that we're creating. I'm really glad that you're listening here. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram. Contact me if there's anything. That is contactbeautyandthefaith. Com. I'm really looking forward to getting to know you better. God bless you and we'll get in touch.