[Ep07] Toward a New Era of Diverse, Varied, and Excellent Worship Music w/ The Church Van

The episode delves into the challenges worship leaders face in the contemporary Christian music scene, emphasizing the need for more diversity, variety, and excellence in worship. The conversation highlights the importance of offering the best in music to God and suggests a shift from "music for evangelism" to focusing on all music being for the worship of God. There is an emphasis on engaging congregations with more complex and challenging music, as well as incorporating a broader range of emotions and experiences in congregational music.

Furthermore, the guests discuss the importance of beauty and art in worship, emphasizing the need for a more diverse and transformative approach to music in churches. They highlight the significance of collaborating and empowering Christian musicians and artists to create more meaningful worship experiences. The conversation also explores the potential impact of art and music in engaging with the full spectrum of human emotions, including lament and darkness, to ultimately lead to a transcendent and redemptive experience.

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Our holistic approach to reviving beauty in arts, architecture, and entertainment:
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Transcript

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In today's episode, we are going in a direction that I love, and that's a practical one. We're actually touching on that there is a system that is holding back so many worship leaders and musicians. It's a time to start finding solutions and not be intimidated by these huge money-making machines that have a grip on the contemporary Christian music scene. How can we learn from the best? Then at the same time, starts to collaborate, form communities, to start to build up the creators and have more diversity, variety, and also excellence as Christians in our worship, if it's in the church or outside it. This and more in today's episode. 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 to unify the body of Christ and glorify the Lord more fully? Join us on this podcast as Christians from various stands 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 Gautstad, and welcome to SDG Music Radio. Greetings We are back, and I'm very grateful to be here together with Jen and Joel from the Church Van. How are you guys? I'm good. How are you? Very good. Thank you for having us here. Well, I'm so glad as If you could come. I'm really looking forward to this. Joel, are you okay? Yeah, doing great. Yeah, we're doing good. Wonderful. Happy to be here. Great. The Church Van, just to clarify that, I was very, very pleased when I I discovered them on Instagram the other day and I was like, okay, it seems like the Lord is doing something that we're both joining here and that there is something that resonates with our mission and that this is a voice which would be really good and complementary as we're building that foundational discussion here about what music glorifies God and what is the future of Christian music? Where should we go here? Where are the boundaries and where should there not be boundaries and such like that. I think we have come to a time where we can really be a bit more intentional about this. The Church Van, they are building a community dedicated to empowering Christian artists with the resources they need to bring healing through their communities. I think that's really wonderful. I remember back in the days, even before I became a believer, I was listening a lot to the band, and they said, The musicians sometimes did greater healing work than some of the priests in their city. I think it's something to it that the artists are part of the healing ministry in some way. I think it's a great thing that you're emphasizing the healing ministry of Christ. Jennifer Stucki, or Jen, as she will be referring to, has been involved with music her entire life. That's a very good start. Like many Christians, her first experience with music was in the church singing old-fashioned church hymns like I'll Fly Away and Great is Thy Faithfulness, as well becoming involved in children's music ministry programs. In 2000, she moved to Chicago and earned bachelor's and master's degree in Music performance on the Oboe. Jennifer has spent the last 15 years earning her living as a professional musician, maintaining an active freelance career that includes soloing, orchestra and chamber ensemble work, and organizing various collaborative arts projects. She and her husband, Joel, started the Substack this past year called the Church Van, with a mission to create a community of artists, patrons, and church leaders dedicating to supporting Christian artists of all mediums and to care for our surrounding communities through the promotion of new and existing works that display the beauty, truth, and goodness of God. Wow, what a beautiful thing to end that bio. That's definitely something that we have been speaking about, the true, the good, and the beautiful. I keep hearing it from many different areas. And if you take away one of them, you take away something of the two other ones. I think it's a great principle to follow. Let's go to Joel here. Thank you. Joel Stucki was an active percussionist for 30 years in the cities of Chicago and Boston. He was a tenured member of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra for eight years In addition, he performed with many orchestras in the Chicago area, including the Grant Park Symphony, the Elgin Symphony, the Chicago Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfionetta, and many others. Joel has played under many of the world's most noteworthy conductors, including Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, David Zinman, Robert Sprano, and David Robertson. He earned his bachelor's degree from the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music and his master's degree from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at the Roosevelt University. His instructions included members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Boston Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony and Dallas Symphony Orchestra. In 2021, Joel also received a graduate certificate from the Biblical Studies Department at Denver Seminary. I think it's really interesting to go through some of these lists. It's like when you go through them all, it's like going through the genealogy in the Bible. It's like, Okay, but where can we apply this? But as we are having these introductions, I really hope that people can start to see the different paths of where Christians who are involved in the classical making beautiful music, where they go, where they get their education. And hopefully that will just make a few links. So it's very great that we always also think through these bios and see how we can also inspire more people to go some similar paths. Now, we'll jump into the questions we have here today. And the first one is, and it's a challenging one. What type of music gives glory to God and what doesn't? Who want to have a go at that? I'll start. That's a really great question. It's also really open-ended, which great. I think the type of music that gives glory to God can be anything. This goes for all kinds of arts as well. In any genre, it can give glory to God. Just because it's from God. God gave us this incredible gift of music. We, as humans and little creators can use what he gave us and spin it off in all kinds of different directions. I think all genres can give glory to God. With that said, I do think that there's another way that we also have to look at this, and that is what kind. I know you already said what type, but what art or music gives glory to God. To me, it's more important to look at the quality of it, the excellence of it. I think it's Madalena Angle who states in her book, one of her books, that It's all good art is Christian art. That's just an interesting thought because if you think of something like right of spring from Stravinsky, I mean, whoa. But I think that that's very important to think about. It brings us to the question of what is excellence? What is good art? I think there's a couple of ways that you can look at that. The first way is just the Then with the quality, we have to look at the tradition and the history in each genre. For example, in classical music, where has the genre been? Who are the big players? We're looking at Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, all of these amazing composers all the way up until the modern era. What does the genre, what is the education and the history and the tradition tell us about what excellence is. That's one way that we have to look at that. That, of course, goes through jazz or any other art form. Then the second way to look at it is the motivation behind it. Are we trying to grow? Are we trying to bring our very best to God? I have to make a little bit of a disclaimer for both of us here. We come from the American evangelical Christian tradition. The music that we're looking at in praise and worship is praise and worship music, so contemporary Christianity music. With that said, We have to look at what attitude are we bringing with music into the church. Also, I just want to make one other statement about that. It's not just in the church that music can bring glory to God. It's in our secular spaces as well. Just to bring that disclaimer in there. But coming from the American evangelical tradition, if we look at contemporary Christian music, and I hate to be a little bit negative, but the genre itself does not stand up to the rest of the excellence and the rest of the whole of the music that we have. We're really not bringing our best to God. We can We can look at the music that is in those evangelical churches. Most of it comes from four major churches. It's very rote, it's very systematic. Some of those churches that it's coming from are actually mired in corruption. That's something to think about as we're bringing music to our places that we're worshiping. Are we bringing our best? Really, are we bringing our best? Are we getting it more varied? Are we incorporating music in a lot of different ways? Joel, did you have anything to add? Yeah. Just to expound on something you were saying about good art and all good art being Christian art. I think that's an excellent point. I think what Madalyn Lengel is referring to by saying that is the inherently cruciform nature of good art. To answer the question directly, I'd say good art brings glory to God, and bad art doesn't. What's happening in the artistic process? You have an artistic vision, be it in music or painting or sculpting or dance or whatever it is. You have a vision for what you want the work to be, the work of art. You, in a sense, die to yourself and live to the vision. The vision is uncompromising. It's the one objective reality in the evaluation of art is what is that vision? No one can really evaluate a work without at least some understanding of what that vision is, what the work is trying to say. But there's that cruciform element to all good art. God is the creator, and he made us in his image. He made us to be little creators. We bring glory to God when we do that. When we are little creators, we are bringing glory to God. As Jen said, that's true both inside the church and outside the church. Yeah, thank you for complimenting this great perspectives of Jen there. I think you have It's a very good point that you're actually striving for some objective standard. We live in a very relativistic type of subjective time right now in this postmodern era. Actually, saying that giving our best is actually not a critical question. It's a very encouraging question. It's a very inspiring a inspiring question. If you go into a church and say, Are we really giving our best? I think it's a great question. It's a great question I know some people use when they are developing churches and revitalizing churches, and I think it's very insightful. It is very interesting from the American evangelical church how that has developed and how it has been centralized in some areas and how it has been a great division in the church. As part of the introduction here, we're talking about the worship war because of that. One of my points is that beauty unites. If we can bring in more beauty in any style, it will unite us because we can sit. If we took one of those modern worship songs and added a little orchestra to it and some creative arrangements and we gave our best, there's a potential there. Then even people who are saying, Normally, I don't like this type of style, but now there is a certain beauty to it, so now I can love it. The same thing if you have a classical thing and you arrange it in a fresh way, and it's like there is something there, a universal equality there that people can at least see this is good. This is good music, even though it's not my personal preference. That was some of the ideas I think was important that we covered there. I would like to continue to the next question, but there was a lot of things we could have covered. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the leaders of music in the churches, because it seems that you have the worship leader, and they not only always have theological training, and it's like, who's really leading this whole thing of millions of Christians and how they worship and what they listen to and what they use in evangelism. We're a leader in music in churches. What is your main advice? Yeah. I think I would want to say a couple of things. I could say a lot of things, but I'm thinking of two things right now. Number one, the music we play in church is not for the congregation. It's for God. The personal preferences of the people in the congregation should not be the driving force behind what we decide to play or how we decide to play it. I don't mean something as crass as, Oh, I don't care what the congregation thinks. I hope that they do like it. But at the end of the day, if somebody in the congregation comes up to me after we play a worship set and says, Oh, I don't like that song, I can say, Well, that's okay. It wasn't for you. Ultimately, they are not who it's for. It's for God. I would encourage worship leaders and music leaders in the church to be mindful of that, that we don't need to engineer a worship set or a style to fit the congregations' preferences. That actually really should not be why we're making those decisions. The other thing I would want to say is that performance and worship are not mutually exclusive. As Jen said before, we come from the American evangelical tradition. I'm not meaning this to be a blanket statement for all Christians, all churches, or even all American churches, but with the Within the structure that we're coming from, performance has almost become a dirty word, where people think that if you're performing, it's this utterly self-serving, self-centered enterprise. That's really not the case. As I was saying before, you have this vision that you're trying to realize, and that's really what your focus is. It's not about trying to get adulation from the people listening to you. It's about God gave me this vision of how I want to play this, and I'm going to do that to the best of my ability, and that's my goal when I'm performing. That's true, whether I'm leading worship in church or whether I'm playing with an orchestra out in a concert hall somewhere, same approach. It's not any different. Performance and worship can be the same. That's more about what your mentality is. It's not a property inherent to performance. Do you have anything to add to that, Jen? Very thoughtful It's really helpful and easy to understand points there, Joel. Thank you so much for sharing. Jen, anything to add? Yeah. Basically, similar things, just that we have to stop worrying about pleasing the audience. I know that church is split over music a lot a lot of times. It's very frustrating, of course, for a worship leader, I'm sure. I guess I would just say, Stop trying to please the congregation so much. That also goes for the people who are the congregants. We have to just remember that that goes for the congregants, too, to try and set it aside for a second and be able to come and worship if you can. But one of the things that I would like to tell worship leaders, and this goes more towards the pastors and the elders and the church board, is that we really need to start letting the people who are trained musicians who know this stuff to lead and decide what we should be bringing to worship. I understand. Preferences can always be considered, of course, and I'd love to see more variety. But we have to work on letting the people who are trained to make the decisions about music because we wouldn't do that for a pastor. We wouldn't say the congregance or the board decides what the pastor is going to preach for the next few months or weeks or how they're going to study it or what they're going to bring to the sermon. Obviously, there are some standards that we have to go through, but we do have to start letting people who are trained to have a voice. Again, that also goes back to stop trying to please the audience. That also gets into a systematic problem with the training, which is that a lot of, and again, from the evangelical perspective, most of the training is in CCM music, praise and worship. The training is not even getting into the whole spectrum of what there is that the world has to offer that we can bring to God. That's something that I don't really know how to fix. That's something that we just have to start finding a way to get out of this system that we're stuck in of not getting more variety, not getting more interesting art into the church. That would be my advice. Yeah, that is, I think, some great thoughts that compliments it. It's interesting what you say that we're in some system. It seems that many people are concerned about this. People know that I'm a voice, that we should Yeah, that we should bring in more beauty in our worship and also make it more congruent, for example. That is something a musician would know. They would know that those cords feel like that. If you put the lyrics over there, that matches. Sometimes I hear worship music where it's something like, Oh, your Majesty, oh, the King of Kings. It's like, okay, so if you were a movie composer and you tried to put that in behind when the King was sitting on his throne, you would be fired from day one, right? That's something. Right, exactly. That's something that a musician, not necessarily in contemporary Christian music, went to some two-year study on some Christian school would know. But Any musician who has been classically trained or with air training and things like that would usually know these type of things. It's like that congruency, right? But how we step out of that system because when you have The system and the style doesn't really challenge the musicians to grow because they, okay, if I keep on growing, I can't use the skills anyway. It becomes a bit like that if you're not going to have those improvisations or those arrangements or that type of creativity. So there is a certain utilitarian attitude, I think, that we have taken a bit from modernism, and it's become like a tool. It's all the way a tool for the word. And then I think that when you think like that, well, of course, the word is very important and all of that. But then also the artist become like a tool day, too. Because if you say the music is just a tool for the word, then the artist becomes just a tool for something else. I think we learn in the Bible that there is an inherent value, not based on our effectiveness or productivity or rationality, but we're just valuable because we are made in the image of God and he can't love us more or less. I think it's very important that, for example, we have a system where we have this inherent value in the artist's work in itself. Then the the processes, even. For example, I just wanted to throw in a two-cent here with... I suggested some that we might get a choir back up in this little church here I attended in Spain, or I used to attend our way to a new church now because of some of these type of utilitarian attitudes for the arts. And then it was like, No, a choir is theatrics. That's performance. Then we get all these things. But then I say, When I to Christ in my mid-20s, they put me in a choir in that church, and that's how I meditated on the word of God. That's how I connected, had fellowships with the whole process. If you think that that performance then at the end of the month is just theatrics for you, remember that those 20 people there have just been glorifying God and really been studying and everything for a lot of time. And maybe they are not so academic as you. And that's one way they are worshiping God and God made them to worship God. So there are some points here. There's a system and patterns that we keep seeing again and again. But somebody has to say, Okay, so let's do something about it. We need to make something. We need to find some solutions. And so we We're covering just getting awareness of voices, people actually being honest, because I think there's many silent people in congregations that are in silent suffering. If it's artists, there's big ministries now for artists, like Arts and Entertainment Ministries, where Joel Pels you has thousands of Christian artists just, Oh, I have finally somebody that understands me. But then you have also these, again, people coming up to me and saying, You know what? When we were in there, when We were at this big conference. There was three songs I couldn't sing, and it was hurtful. I could not worship with that because of the theology. I could not worship because it was incongruent. It's really painful for me to not worship God when we're together like that, and it wouldn't take that much for me to be able. So I just want to share a little bit of what's going on and just how this resonates very well with the overall conversation. And for those just tuning into the conversation on our podcast, you're also get a little peek into what we're talking about here, that this is real matters of real people concerned with this, and many are very heavy-hearted with this, but also many are full of hope that we We can do something about it now because there are so many that are ready now to compose beautiful music, arrange music in a different way, and to find solutions and have conversations. But I want to move on to the next question now. We touched on this earlier about you have music in the churches, and you have also music for evangelism. We do work in my initiative Composers for Beauty, to get more music in the churches and more music out of the churches. We want that influence that cultural mandate. But what difference in music for evangelism and music for worship should there be, if any? Anyone have a cue on that? Go for it, Joel. First of Well, I think we need to consider what worship is most fundamentally. I tend to adhere to what I believe to be the most basic definition. The word, as I understand it, is a contraction of worth-ship. When you worship something, anything or anyone, you are declaring the worth of that thing or that person or whatever it is. When we worship God, we are declaring what God is worth to us. Obviously, in a material sense, he is worth more than everything. We can't actually come up with something that represents what he's truly worth, but that gets into offering our best, not because he demands our best, and not doing less than our best because he's willing to accept less, but doing our best because he is worth our best. Yeah. Can I just interject really fast, Joel, on that? Because I just want to make a disclaimer really fast to any worship leader out there listening, because I know that there are a lot of worship leaders who are doing their best and they're trying, and they're also very, very, very busy people who have a lot of work on their plate. It's not that an individual worship leader isn't doing their best. I just mean, I think we're talking about corporately, we have to find a way to get out of this system that we were talking about before. Sorry, please continue, Paul. I just wanted to make that. That's a good thing to reach out if anybody was sitting with that thought. It's like, But hey, I am really trying. Maybe sometimes people can only grow as big as how the system is. You have people that have more potential, but the system and demand is put on it. If worship leaders are so overwhelmed, then we need to find a way where they can delegate tasks, get more peace and quiet to actually work and reach out to those musicians and build up and prepare things. It's just like in a church with pastors. If they are overwhelmed to be CEO and administrator of everything, of course, the preaching will suffer. It's the same thing. I really like your perspective there, Jen, both the empathy you have, but also the There's a system we need to actually change together here to help people. Joel, please continue. Yeah, and I agree with that. I'm not even thinking in terms of a person doing their best in a job. I'm actually thinking more along the lines of, are we offering our best art? Or are we using the best music available to us? Things like that. But yes, I totally agree. People are working really hard and trying their best to do this. At any rate, with that understanding of what worship is, the phrase music for evangelism, to me, suggests worship of the audience. Because if we're doing music for evangelism, the focus is on at least in my mind, how that's working, the focus is on the people we're trying to reach and not on the God we're trying to lead them to. I would actually suggest we try to move away from music for something. Because to refer back to your comments about utilitarianism, which I hardly agree with. I very much agree with what you were saying there. I'd rather think that all the music we're making is for the worship of God. Our focus is on him, and it is he who is responsible for working in the hearts of the people that we want to reach, not us. It is not this song that I write that reaches people. It is God himself. It is the Holy spirit working in the hearts of people. That's what achieves the result, if you will, of evangelism. If we want to look, on the other hand, if we want to look at music that we use in congregational singing, which I take, I assume that's what you mean by music for worship. Obviously, we're not going to We're not going to use the Bach B Minor Mass as congregational singing, at least not today, because we just simply don't have a congregation able to do that. We might not have an orchestra. It'd be awesome, though. Sure, but- It would be hard. We got to grow a little bit more first. Yeah. Right. Realistically, we can't do that thing. In a contemporary setting, we use rush songs for congregational singing. Nevertheless, I do think that congregations are capable of participating in and engaging in music that's far more complicated and far more interesting and far better written than a lot of what we do tend to use. I think in some ways we insult the intelligence of our congregations by pigeonholing them into this very simplistic music. Good art, as I was saying before, good art brings glory to God. Good art is by nature challenging, and it is not necessarily easy, and it isn't even necessarily pleasant all the time. It doesn't always have to make us feel these warm, fuzzy things. Our emotions aren't always that warm and fuzzy anyway. It's real and raw and engages with different people in different places feeling different things. I think we can be more honest in our employment of good or negative. I think that aren't in congregational setting. Yeah. Really good point, Sergio. Really good points. This is a point I've been coming up before also in the conversation, for example, in the Psalms, how that reflects the whole scope of human experience. Especially then if a church says they want to teach the whole Council of God, if they don't have any songs of lament, well, then you're really worshiping a very concrete way that Lord has shown us. He wants us to come to him with all of that. I think you have a good point there. Do you want to add something, Ejen, to something Joel said? Yeah. Basically, same type of thing that I also agree with that. Just the idea that I think evangelism can be a natural output of bringing our best to God. Just to piggyback on a couple of things that you both said, I think that we need to focus a little bit more on the spiritual formation, worship being more of a spiritual formation instead of evangelism. This gets to the core of... I'm going to probably be getting a little bit out of my territory here, but with the evangelical church, let me evangelical church, the mission is always to bring the good news, bring the gospel to people. But I think, and this is happening a lot in the music, but I think this is a consequence of we're trying to get too many people in the seats. I don't mean we're trying to get too many people. I just mean our focus is on the wrong thing. I think that we're seeing a little bit of the fruits of that just in society right now and just certain things that have been happening in the church with some of the corruption and scandals that have happened. I think that our focus has been too much on evangelism in the sense that we're trying to get people to come to church instead of trying to bring glory to God. That is happening in our music as well. I see a little bit of a connection there. But yeah, just to piggyback on a couple of things that you said, Magnus, a little bit earlier about not being able to worship. I think that's just something that's really important to have that lament in our worship music. When somebody comes to church and they just had a baby pass away or somebody committed suicide or something, even just to fight with their spouse or something heavy is going on in their lives, they have to come to church and sing, 'Blessed be the name of the Lord.' That music is not meeting us where we are at. Same with that transition. The transitions in the Psalms is David is, well, a lot of times David is expressing anger, hatred. Well, maybe not hatred as much, but anger, bitterness, just to God. We don't do that in our music. I mean, there might be some of it in the lyrics, and we talk about the lyrics a lot, but we don't have that in the actual music, and no one can really speak to that. I know that what you were talking about, Joel and I have been to church a few years ago when we would go to services, and we just couldn't. We were in a bad place in our life, and we couldn't even worship. We couldn't even we couldn't go there because it felt shallow and sanitized and that I had to put on my best, that I had to have it all together before I come and worship God. We don't see that in the Psalms like you were talking about. I think that we need to remember that beauty, music, music reaches our hearts. We can use, aside from the utilitarian thing, music can be a transformative experience where we can take our griefs, our anger, and the music can help reach our hearts and then transform it into beauty. That's what we see happening in the Psalms is that David comes to God and he's upset, to put it lightly, and God, through lament, is transforming his heart to a right place, to a better place. But we just don't see that in our worship music today. I think you have such a good point. Yes. Of course, there is a good use for music as well here. There's both the inherent worth and the worth in the process. It's, okay, music Music can be used to understood, to teach the whole Bible. It can be used to inspire somebody for good works. It can make the creation and our experiences more beautiful. We will, through the general revelation of the Lord, just love him more, just glorify him more, just clarifying the kingdom for us. There is different, of course, good fruits of music in that way, too. I think You have a good point about the transformative essence of it. I will also just comment one more thing on what you said, Joel, about God-centered versus man-centered worship. I think that's a big discussion. We even have our own episode on that thing. I think you have a good point that if we want to step out of the church, we're just letting people witness us worshiping. When you said that, that was the view, right? I'm going to have a couple of classical pieces played in Vienna now in 11 days in a part of a concert there. Both are, one of them is on the... Of the Virgins is on, or mine is called Sleepers Awake, and I focus on the five virgins that don't have oil in their lamp instead. So it has this... Because I want to complement the Christian music scene with Also with fear and with those feelings of standing there alone. So in that moment, it's basically just other people are able to witness me as a composer, worshiping God and reflecting God. Then I think, like you say, if you have a high view on God, high view of the generating work of the Holy spirit, and that you just, Okay, I have such a high view on the sovereignty of God that I believe that if people can see my good works, they will be glorifying God in heaven. It's just very powerful perspectives you're bringing in here, which really, when I'm thinking about it, I just sense my love for God in that way. I think we have some very important discussions to make and that many deep down, when they have the Holy spirit in them, that they also want it. It's just that there's also this fear of doing anything new, that one thing. And just how... Yes, but what is the alternative? How does it look People can't just stop doing something and just go into a black room. So we need to help paint a vision and say, here are resources, here is systems, here is people, here are examples of people who have the same resources as you, but who are bringing their whole church together, and they're bringing in more artists in their local community because they're actually inspired by the artistic excellence there. The artists are more engaged, and everybody has more of their emotions and thoughts, and there's more teaching, and there's more diversity. How does that look? I think we need to show where they're They're doing it right. I got to say, I grew up in Norway. I'm not in the Lutheran Church now, but I must say that I have a lot of respect for some of the Lutheran churches because they have amazing music. They managed to have instrumentals, choir music, gospel music, lament music. If there's any Lutherans out there, I just want to give you some. There's something about the theology of Lutherans. Of course, Luther was a musician, and there's something about the principles of also how to interpret the Bible, that you don't have to specifically see that something is there for it to be a part of useful Christian practice and all of these things. But I just got to say that even though I'm not a Lutheran, I'm working with Lutherans in my organizations. I have a lot of respect for them, and they give a lot of beauty, both in their buildings, in their music, and a lot of great things. But we need to continue. A lot of where the many of the worship wars are, they are actually in the evangelical churches as large, which is growing so fast now that soon the Pentecostal church will be bigger than the Catholic church in Brazil. So it's just to give a little perspective, of what's going on now in the world. I think we need to go on to the next question or else we'll be here all night. We can talk a lot about this. Let's do number 4 here. We'll just continue for 4 hours after the interview. Okay, so how can Christians together to make more beautiful music, both for modern and traditional churches? Yeah. That's a really good question. To be honest, that's I think that's one of the reasons why we wanted to start the church band is because 10 years ago when both Joel and I were steeped into the music industry, trying to take auditions and trying to freelance and make a living and do all the things that you do when you're a classical musician. We both felt very alone at times because a lot of the times we all know that the music world is a very secular world, and it can be very hard to connect with people on a faith part, because as musicians, this isn't just my accounting job that I do on the side. This is something that goes very deep. This is part of who we are. Being able to connect that ties into our faith is what I'm getting at. To be able to really connect with musicians who are nonbelievers, that can be challenging Because I've always said sometimes it's easier to be a non-Christian and to fail because you can just say, Well, that's life. But when you are a Christian and you feel like you've been called to be a musician and to perform or an artist, that's something that goes a little bit deeper. What happens when things don't work out the way that you want them to? The world will say one thing, and then we would be at our churches, and the churches would discard music and the career. You get the impression that you're doing the starving artist type thing. We We wanted to start the Church Van as a way to connect with more Christian musicians and other artists who wanted to collaborate and care about these things. A lot of my Christian friends who also are musicians would be a little it more one track minded in winning an audition. When I would express frustration or want to do something more with music in the church, a lot of these same musicians would discard it as, Well, that's just music in the church. That's how that music goes. It's not very good. There's no point. You can't change it. It's just trying to find people to collaborate and do projects. That's something that I think more things like this, more like what you're doing, Magnus, and more things like the Arts and Entertainment Ministries and some of these other organizations that I have started to spring up out of nowhere that I've seen. I think I think that can start to connect people who care about these things. When we can have more connections and start collaborating together, then I think that collaborate on different projects, then I think that that can be a bit of a force to help bring together some really good music and also maybe be a voice for the church. Wonderful. Well, that's I think that's very concrete steps that we can think through and say, Okay, so what can I do in my local context? What can I do as a musician? You have already mentioned some of these communities of getting started, and then they know people again, and that's how it happens. It's a few dedicated leaders just taking initiative and being on their knees in prayer, and then huge things can happen with that. So very encouraging. Thank you for clarifying that. What about you, Joel? Do you have some comments on that point? Yeah. As Jen said, even among highly trained musicians who would almost by nature, care very much about music in the church, they've thrown up their hands, What can I do? Because There's part of this system that we've been alluding to is what has been called by many the evangelical industrial complex, where there's so much money behind this Christian contemporary music machine that just churns out this formulaic song after formulaic song after formulaic all controlled, apparently, by one of four churches, all of which are mired in massive scandal of one kind or another. There's just tons of money behind this. It can be very discouraging when you look at the whole scope of what's going on and be like, nothing's going to change because who in the world has the power to change it? I think it's fair to say that I'm not likely to raise up a multi-billion dollar industry to compete with the energy of the industrial complex. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That's right. You start exposing people to better art, and they develop a palate for it, and then more people, and then more people. And eventually, you create an appetite for this, and then there's more demand and so on. Just little by little, you don't change the world by, at least not typically, you don't change the world by setting out to change the world. You You do things at small levels and God will grow it. He's in control. That's a very good point. And the rest there because When you come to God, he will give us rest because the burden is light. And I think you have a good point there. When you're truly following God, the burden is light on us. It's a joy to do that in a certain way when you're in that power. I think you have a good point about many are intimidated by it. It seems to be so vast. Like you're saying, it's become this instead of various local churches, encouraging their composers to make music, and then there will be... And then when it's good and it's edifying, that region might start singing those worship songs. And then it deserves to spread because it's really good and people really learn and renews their mind and get a sense of the presence of God there through it and all of these things. Instead of that type of commercialized, top-down type of package deal like you're saying there. It's definitely a different approach. How do we do it? Well, I think first of all, now, because of internet and all of these things, there's possibilities for a collaboration at a level that has never been possible before. Now it's possible to empower and encourage and develop all of those composers. That is why we are making an organization called Composers for Beauty, basically because to solve this, I think we need to go to the root and we need to go to the creators. It's wonderful to train up more violin players and all of that. But if If the songwriting process, the arrangers, and all of that doesn't change, if they are not able to get deeper knowledge, it will not really get solved. I would say to, and if anybody think that some of these ideas were coming for here. It's not the solution. Well, put that in the Instagram comment fields, put that in the YouTube comment fields, because I don't want to be a big dummy and believe in things when maybe it's not good. So please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm very confident now that if we're going to change this, we need to help to develop really great artists. I think especially in the evangelical church, I've just been challenging, where are the really great composers and artists in evangelical churches? I say many times they don't go to the evangelical church. Exactly. There's no place for them. Lutheran, evangelical churches, whatever, because it seems like the evangelical church, I'm sorry to say it, but of all Christian denomination and all world religions has the lowest sense of esthetics It's a place which pride themselves of having kept the gospel in its purest form. If you're having something as beautiful as Jesus going on that cross and dying for people, not even for their friends who he owns a favor, but for people who are still in their sin, something so beautiful act of love, if that is preached, then why? There is definitely an incongruency if the music is not as beautiful as that message. No, I agree. Just to go to your point a little bit, we see beauty being incredibly important in the Bible with the building of a tabernacle in Exodus, where God, the first ind dwelling of the Holy spirit that we see in Bible is with a Bezalel and a Holiam. Holiam. Yeah, there we go. Just the two people, that's the first time we see the ind dwelling of the Holy spirit, and they are artists, and they are gifted to give the most beautiful, their artisan, to the Ark of the Covenant, which in the Holy of Holies, nobody goes in there except for the priest. One day a week, one day a month, one day a year. Sorry. One day a year. Yes, one day a year. Nobody ever even sees it. It's just for God. Yeah. We see the importance of beauty, and we see with Mary pouring the perfume on Jesus's feet that could be given to the poor, the disciples get upset with Jesus Jesus or with her, and yet he commends her. We see the importance of beauty and art all throughout the Bible. Absolutely. He even uses the word. He says, This is a beautiful thing. Our Lord Jesus, he was contemplating beauty, and he saw beauty, I'm sure, in the surroundings and in the arts, but also in the actions or in the manners. Because I think one of the reasons why beauty... I grew up playing rock bands, taking drugs. I was a very lost type of rebellious type of spirit. Beauty was what drew me to church because I was so tired of the world. I grew up with Christians around me who had... I even played in a Christian metal band and they were praying and we were around to Christian camps and I heard the gospel many times. I had really There were very lovely Christians around me that took care of me when I was a little. But for me was when I got a sense of that transcending beauty, that type of beauty which changes you, instead of being like an exercise in your mind And I went to church and I sat in church. No one in my nearest family was Christian. I just sat there alone and just looked at the room and listened to Bach and listened to the Psalms. And there was just, there must be something deeper. And I became so present. It was like I woke up spiritually. And when I did that, my conscience got awakened. So I think there's two ways to renew yourself. One is just to be in the presence of God for some time and just contemplating the Lord. And the other one is to read the word and to let his thoughts be our thoughts and all these things. So I think that is just spirituality, one, two, three, is to be present of God. And that is the artist now in a world which has become so flat and so dark and there's so much depression. The art is now has a great opportunity to reenchant and to bring that wonder back to life. How wonderful is it we're seeing here? It's so wonderful, really, when you wake up. And when you're there, of course, you want to learn more about who is the creator? And you want to... And then you have that relationship. So my call here to all the artists that are listening to this is that just because things have been in a certain way doesn't mean that that equals how things needs to be in the future. It only takes a few committed leaders that have discernment, that understands the will of the Lord, that are willing and bold to speak about these things and then to form organizations and then to start to encourage. I think part of this will be to give some education. And so we're working on that with Composers for Beauty and give platforms and show that this type of more rich art actually is what I think many in society is what they're actually... Is what actually is seeker friendly. I think very many like me, the last thing I wanted to do was to go into a church where everything felt like the same. I think now where the whole society and modernism and people taking their... Even neutral people in Norway, in Europe, in United States who before let their people be in the public schools, they're like, Things are getting so crazy now that I can't be neutral in more. I think very many young people also are like, No, I don't just want this flat, minimalist, functional thing. I want actually that, where's the belonging? Where is Where is the deeper? Where is the wonder? Where is the songs which actually steps out of the Earthbound feeling of the humanity of Christ, but actually the deity of Christ? I think to truly worship God in his Lordship and his Majesty, you got to put in a little bit classical somewhere to really get lifted up there. There's just some genres that just can't do it. They can speak about the intimacy of the Lord, but they just really can't give a piece of heaven I think we got a job to do. I believe that in this generation, we can actually have a classical revival. Classical doesn't only mean Beethoven and Bach. It can mean that. It means those excellent musical principles. Within the classical tradition, we have, we can dance, and we can be sad, and we can shout for joy. We have the whole vocabulary there. It's the full alphabet for us, basically. I hope this is an encouragement for those who are listening to it, that we're not saying that we cannot use anything of the modern or anything of this and that, but it's just, Okay, let's worship God for all these attributes, and let's teach the whole Council of God. Let's come together to worship him more fully. I think that's what he wants. Now he's claiming creativity back for the purpose he has meant it. That's why we're here. I just keep thinking about even ugliness, ugliness in art. Even though it repels us, that is still part of the redemptive story of Christ. The cross is not ugly. I'm sorry, when you go and you sing, Oh, the wonderful cross to this happy tune, wait, what? I'm not talking about the hymns. But that's Yes, it's wonderful, but it's ugly. It's repellent. It's something that is horrible, but it was something that was transformed to beauty. So engaging with the whole spectrum of the arts, the good art, it can engage with a whole redemptive story. That's a very good point. We're not trying to say here that you can never have any elements of an atonal piece in your... It's something like that. I say atonal music is great for horror movies. It's like there are pieces where you can use it, right? Yeah. But the point is that just like the gospel, you can share the bad news, but you don't want to leave them there. That is why usually I feel depressed in a modern art museum after 2 hours because it just leaves me there. It's just, Oh, wow, things are really bad. But I can then go into another place, see people, see saints, they're cutting out their skin while they're still alive. I'm like, I have hope. I see some of the worst possible human suffering, and I have love in my heart because why they did it. Because there's a transcending story in there. We need to be real. We can't be escapist with this. But I think that is true. Great music can show the worst and the deepest and the darkest. At the same time, if it has beauty, then it transcends that and it connects us again to the greater truth. I think we need to go into a close here. I'm looking forward to get to know you guys better, to see in any way that I can help. Stay here. I think what you're doing is exactly what we need more of. If people here are like, Okay, what more can I do? Look at what they are doing and see if you can help them, or if it's too impractical in any way, just start your own. But I think they're a role model for what we need. We need to make communities and we need to start collaborating, and then people will find each other, complement each other, we'll start reinventing the wheel in thousand places at the same time, and we can really have a big difference. Now, what I wonder about is how can our audience find out more about your work and services? Sure. I'll take this. For the Church Van, we just have a Substack. It's called thechurchvan. Substack. Well, that's the URL. thechurchvan. substack.com Also, you can find us also on social media, Instagram, Facebook. We have an account there. You can just subscribe to the Church Van. It's free and engage in conversation and all kinds of good things. Then I also have a website, woodensinger.com you can find a little bit more about me and all the performances I'm doing. I have a project coming up called Lament, actually, just funny. It's called Lament, and it's basically where I'm just taking laments through scripture, and I'm pairing them with different works. It's going to be a live recital, and it's also going to be a digital subscription. If you feel like I'm donating or doing anything for that, that would be great. If you are a leader at a church and you want to present the concert at your church, you can feel free to out to me as well. That sounds wonderful. Can you tell us your website one more time just to clarify that for people? Sure. Sure. It's woodensinger.com just wooden, W-O-O-O-D-E-N, singer. Com. Wonderful. I think that That's another great example of how we can bring in that excellence, get some ears trained, get people exposed to what they're missing out on and getting people to ask for more. We have a wonderful God, and history has shown that Christians can lead the greatest art in culture. I think it's very encouraging to see somebody who's leading by example. Joel, do you want to add something to that? No, I don't really have anything to add. I have not been an active performer for several years now, so I don't have my own website or performances or anything. I just I write. Okay. We need that, too, in the kingdom. Yeah. You need to edit what I write. That's a whole other long story in itself. Yeah, right. Okay. You guys, you know how to reach out to them. And in our case, we are on YouTube. So if you're listening on a podcast now, you can see the video version on YouTube, just SDG Music Radio. We're also on all podcast directories and on Instagram. We really want to hear from you. We want to hear what you liked, what you didn't like, what's true, what's not true. Let's come together, find good solutions, and then have a revival of beauty in the churches, and then to out into culture, to transform culture, as we're called to do. So thank you very much for being here on the show, taking the time to share your wisdom.