This past Sunday, our Musician-in-Residence, Richard Kentopp, spoke of God, music, The Ramones, Worship and most things in between. Yes, we heard an excerpt of The Ramones song, Sheena is a Punk Rocker, in morning worship. This is a new church community.
Music connects, inspires, informs, embeds, challenges and provokes us. The fact that we sing together during our worship service is integrally connected to what it means to a part of Servant Church and Richard described much of the theology that goes into how he sees music in connection with our being an inviting, becoming, and demonstrating community of God.
Richard spoke intimately about his own vocation in ministry to draw people closer to God through music. To remind them that what we sing and how we sing it matters and central to the kind of community we are. Not that we sing on pitch, but that we sing from our hearts words that can change us and draw us into the Holy Trinity. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, told people to sing lustily and with full heart. We do not follow a timid God and so should not sing timidly.
We form and are formed but what we do, how we act, how we see each other, how we see God, and the music in worship effects all of these.
Next week we will continue to look at the letters of Paul in new and vibrant ways. Join us!
