Today, I went on a little iTunes downloading rampage. I must have spent about $35 on all kinds of worship music. I'm afraid to look at the actual total. Afterward, I put on the music and sort of let it carry me away. I got lost in prayer and it occurred to me- that seldom happens anymore when I watch Human Videos. Why is that?
Mostly because I think that music selection is often primary; that is to say, music selection usually comes first and then the story is crammed in to fit the music. Someone hears a song and thinks, "That would make a good human video." They are inspired by a picture, or more often, something they saw someone else do. I am not sure that is always the best way to go about things.
In my youth ministry, back in the olden days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we connected to the internet once a day on dial-up, we had a motto: "Innovate, don't replicate." And I did not come up with it, but it is chalk full of wisdom.
Think about the last good movie you saw, or last good book you read. Why did you connect with them?
I'm willing to bet that it was because they:
1. were unique
and
2. had a compelling story.
What I often see at festival time is a video that someone learned from someone else who saw it at Fine Arts the year before who saw it on YouTube. There is nothing wrong with building on the past, but unfortunately, the replication is of something that wasn't that great to begin with.
Now before you go and get all upset with me I'll tell you what my rubric is for evaluating something and calling it good or not good. It has to have 3 things:
1. A sacred message that someone who has NEVER READ THE BIBLE can understand
2. A unique message or personal element
3. A complete story (exposition,conflict, climax, resolution)
It should not be difficult to have all three of those things, but, sadly, it seems to be.
All three of these things are all bound up together. They rely upon each other and enhance one another. I am drawn to this concept more and more lately: that we are all of us connected in a way that we cannot yet comprehend, and drama, the sharing of the experience of conflict, draws us even closer. What one of us does or says effects us mightily. If, then, a drama does not have drama (conflict) then it cannot connect or draw us closer together.
As a Pentecostal, I look to Acts 2:1 and ponder what was happening when the Holy Spirit first came.
"And when the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place," other translations say "one accord."
To be at the same place or time -- together.
That act of drama brings you together to the same place like no other. It should be, in the sacred performance, drawing everyone into the same story, saint and sinner, male and female, old and young, and takes us toward the good news. Further up and further in toward His heart.
So.
How does this happen when the story begins from the outside? Can it ever be as powerful, poignant, as binding, as one that flows out from within, like streams of living water? Well it can't begin by you telling someone else's story. I cannot draw closer to you when you are not present in the work you perform. It cannot happen when you create something because you see some cool move you can do, or when you are trying to impress, or when you are trying to be better than someone else. Those things only push us farther apart.
But if it begins with your testimony, if parts of others are added to it, if then you find a song that expresses that longing for Jesus, that struggle, that pain, that bliss, then we are pulled together- we become as one Body, we are then in "one accord."
Well... I certainly have gotten a bit melodramatic here, but I think you see my point.
My hope is that this year, as I move in to my favorite time of year, Fine Arts season, is that I see more stories flowing out from within, and less copying, conceit, and MUCH less competition pressing itself in on your presentations. Spend some time deep in prayer, poke around the iTunes store and find the less obvious, the old, the songs that express the longing, struggle, pain, and bliss that you feel.
Draw me in.
Further up and further in!
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
The Chronicles, The Last Battle
(1956)
Closing lines, in Ch. 16 : Farewell to Shadowlands
