Authenticity in Action

The parable of The Good Samaritan has a lot of things to teach us. There’s truth about racism, the obvious truth about ‘Who is my neighbour?’, and, some might say, even a dire warning about taking shortcuts through unfamiliar territory (okay, maybe the last one not so much…).

One thing I see in it is the truth about being authentic. The Priest and the Levite (read: ‘pastor and worship leader’, or ‘minister and facilities manager’), who each passed by the beaten-up man on the other side of the road, illustrate how easy it is for each of us to fall into the role of being a ‘professional believer’ without letting the words of Jesus actually change our lives in any way. That’s not a good way to operate.

It’s always refreshing to see someone operate in fidelity to their faith. When what someone says – or sings about – lines up with what they profess, especially when they think no one is watching, I find it makes me smile.

Last time Jennifer Jade Kerr was at Worship Café she illustrated this truth without being aware of it. Jennifer had been a guest worship leader in January, and returned to lead again in May. In between those two gigs I was reviewing old video files, and I saw I had filmed her as part of a project where adults contribute time as mentors to help kids in elementary and junior high school.

That’s what made me smile. As part of this project (“Heroes Okanagan”) she was giving her time without anyone really knowing about it. Sure, the other three volunteers knew about it, and the kids in the classroom knew about it, but no one outside of those parameters knew anything; no one who could ‘help build her career’ as a worship leader or children/youth pastor knew what she was up to. She was basically just doing it because she wanted to make a difference in some kids’ lives.

The second time Jennifer led at WC she blazed into the Café from a car wash where she was helping the youth from her church raise money. As soon as she was done the worship set she left to go back and help wash cars again. That in itself was cool to see – but that was a fairly public event where lots of people from her church would have been in attendance. The gig she did with the kids in school, though, was done far away from the public eye.

I liked that.

You can find an archive of Jennifer Jade Kerr’s worship times on the Worship Café website. Just look for her under the ARCHIVES tab at the top left of the page.

And join us again for live worship every Sunday afternoon.

In the meantime, be real.

Log in to Worship Cafe to see the archive.

Up and running

Hard to believe we’re already way down the road in our calendar, booking artists now for Worship Café’s October dates. But we are, which means in a couple of weeks school is going to be back in session, stores will be gearing up for Thanksgiving and Halloween, and long days of laying out in the summer sun will be behind us.

Rats.

At Worship Café, though, we’ll be kicking things off in a good way come September with Nico as our first post-summer worship leader. He’s been to the Café a couple of times previously with his buddy Ari, but this time it’s Nico in his own right.

Nico B in an earlier visit to WC

Nico left Kelowna (home of Worship Café) several years ago to engage as a worship pastor down in the USA. He formed a stellar band while he was in the US, and his recordings from that era are really good. When he moved back to Kelowna a few years back he stepped out of music for a bit, and we’ve all been glad that he’s seen fit to pick up his guitar again.

If you’ve never been to a Nico-led worship session before, you can expect lots of groove, lots of rich husky vocals, and lots of truth. Nico’s not one to do fluffy songs for the sake of singing something nice – but he sure does deliver well with the material that’s in his heart.

Nico will be the first worship leader after our summer break, and he’ll be getting underway at 4PM on September 12. Hope to see you then…

The soul of rock and roll

I remember as a kid looking up Rock Music in the World Book encyclopedia. I think it was the 1978 edition. Remember when encyclopedias were actual physical books?

According to WB, Rock and Roll was born from a blend of R&B, Soul, and Gospel music. If that’s the case, then we got a true experience of that on Sunday June 27th with the visit of gospel-playing John Lee Sanders to the Worship Cafe.



Raised in Memphis Tennessee, and with years of the Louisiana and southern States gospel music scene under his belt, John Lee Sanders has been a blues man for years. He tours either on his own or with a band, primarily playing the piano but also adding in powerful blues tenor sax from time to time.

His “played-with” list reads like a textbook on who’s who in the music business, with John Lee Hooker, Long John Baldry, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page, and Huey Lewis among the names you’ll see there. John Lee actually replaced Elton John as the music director/keyboard player with the touring Long John Baldry outfit.

John Lee says the heart of what makes him tick musically is Gospel Music. Raised in the church but then experiencing years of the lifestyle of a touring blues musician, Sanders told us, on Sunday, how he was faced with a crisis of soul several years ago when his new record label encouraged him to do a Gospel album. John Lee knew he wouldn’t be able to record the songs with any degree of authenticity if his life didn’t line up with what he was singing, so he grabbed the opportunity that was presented to him and got back on track in his life with God.

On Sunday John Lee started off with the classic gospel song Mary Don’t You Weep and followed that up with number after number of gospel tunes, ranging from originals or songs written by friends to gospel arrangements of hymns such as Amazing Grace and His Eye Is On The Sparrow. Confident piano playing that supported a perfect blues voice made for an afternoon of great Gospel music... it was a perfect way to wind up the Spring session of Worship Cafe prior to our summer break.

We’ll be featuring previous shows and a loop of previous worship leaders during our summer months. Join us again in September for new experiences of live worship music every Sunday on your computer at 4PM Pacific.

John Lee will be rebroadcast all this week at www.worshipcafe.net


- Malcolm

Hybrid worship

Hybrid cars: seemingly esoteric a few years ago, but all the rage in the current environment. Two power sources, one gasoline and the other rechargeable electric, share duties to power one vehicle forward.

We’ve seen a lot of hybrid worship artists in the Worship Café over the last few weeks. Just one power source, mind you, but two different tracks on which the artists run. Kim McMechan, Andrew Smith, and Ari Neufeld, to name a few, all pursue careers as musicians and singer/songwriters in the non-church arena, yet all have graced our stage at Worship Café as worship leaders.

 They don’t fit the typical slot of ‘worship leader’, in that most of their repertoire does not consist of cover versions of worship songs known by believers everywhere. Probably most of them would even hesitate to call themselves worship leaders.

But as singer/songwriters who also engage the rest of the world face-to-face with their art, they bring a heartfelt authenticity to the table when it comes to leading worship. Kim, Andrew, and Ari each have gut-level songs that speak from and to deeper issues in life than one normally hears addressed on a Sunday morning. Their songs, even though they’re not necessarily ones we’d all sing along with, resonate with truth.

Am I saying more typical Sunday-morning worship leaders don’t operate in authenticity? Not at all. I’m one of those myself.

I’m saying that these artists, in the context of the Worship Café, have shared deep and precious inner thoughts with us as the viewers, both in their songs and in their spoken lead-in to songs. They’ve touched on topics, including depression and wrestling with God, that are not the common ingredients of a more ‘typical’ Sunday morning time of musical worship.

The book of Psalms includes a number of  laments, songs written out of angst or inner turmoil. Rarely do we hear songs based on these passages, even though it’s clear the ancient Hebrews were not afraid to wrestle with God one-on-one over things which weighed them down. But I’ve heard songs at Worship Café which could be called laments.

So what is it about Worship Café that allows these artists the freedom to talk and sing about things they’d perhaps normally reserve for the non-worship concert stage? I don’t know; it might be just that we’re meeting in a coffee shop, and the environment is free enough that everyone just feels safe. Like I said, I don’t really know – but I know that I like it. And I’m sure hoping it will continue.

New Folk

What does it mean to win a Kerrville New Folk award at the Kerrville Folk Festival?

Well, for one thing, it puts you in the shoes of other performers who've gone on to much broader recognition: Steve Earl, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, David Wilcox, to name a few, have all appeared as finalists in the competition.

For another thing, it marks you as having really stood out in the crowd. A massive amount of entries come in, and each year the Festival only allows the first 800 entrants they receive to compete.

And what has that got to do with Worship Café?

Andrew Smith was a Kerrville New Folk award winner in 2006. It's a fitting accolade for someone who's written songs from the depth of his being for years. One of the songs Andrew played in the competition was "Rite of Passage", a song about his son's coming-of-age and heading off to university. Years earlier, that same son was the underlying current in Andrew's worship CD entitled Through My Emotions, which explored the darker side of faith: is it okay to question God when someone you love is deathly ill and no prayer seems to make a difference?

When I've heard Andrew's songs over the years, it seems to me that he's been on a real journey. I guess all of us are, but few are as candid about it as Andrew is. His songs serve as markers along the way, almost a roadmap for the pilgrimage.

His last few albums (the guy's got four or five solo recordings plus at least two other collaboration CDs) are logged as Folk, and some of his earlier ones would be considered Worship CDs. Yet no matter the genre, in each album you'll find honest writing that explores the human condition, wrestles with belief in the context of real life, and thoroughly celebrates being a man, a husband, and a father.

At Worship Café on May 9th it was sublime to hear Andrew doing songs from across that spectrum. The simplicity of some of his classic worship songs like I Come Undone were the perfect counterpoint for newer and more intricate numbers like Turning to Stone. Fans of Andrew know he's discovered the beauty of traditional songs, too, as evidenced by his version of Stephen Foster's Hard Times Come Again No More. Yeah, he's discovered the beauty, and he brings us along for the view.

I found it very refreshing.

If you missed the live worship time with Andrew, you can find the full session in our archives at worshipcafe.net - and, by the way, it makes great sonic wallpaper to have on while you're working away at your computer...

Wow! Person!

When something good happens from out of the blue, you can just enjoy it. When it happens twice you can start thinking there’s a pattern forming.

Nico and Ari were at Worship Cafe on May 2, and I’m starting to see a pattern. This was their second appearance, having been with us back on February 21, and once again the response to their worship session was very favourable.

I realize part of the buzz was simply the energy of friends reconnecting. The Cafe was full of what appeared to be friends of either Nico’s or Ari’s – or both – who apparently hadn’t seen each other in ages; a number of people were catching up with each other over coffee before the session started, comparing notes as to what they’d been up to over the last while and so on. I was in and out of the Cafe several times doing the tech setup for the webcast, and it seemed like every second person through the door of the coffee shop was met with a greeting like, “Wow! Dorothy! I haven’t seen you in like forever! How are you? Where are you living now?”.

(No, every second person wasn’t named “Dorothy”, but I had to personalize that phrase somehow. It just wouldn’t have sounded good if I’d written, “Wow! Person! I haven’t seen you in like forever...”)

There was also a significant international component to the in-house crowd, too, due to a large group of primarily European students who are in the area attending a local ministry school. They weren’t old friends with anyone, of course, but they seemed to really enjoy the vibe of the coffee shop setting for the worship time.

But the main component of the worship time, Nico and Ari, were very refreshing to listen to. Even without the buzz of reconnection happening in the Cafe, the session would have been enjoyable and meaningful because of these two.

Ari led out on a few songs with Nico on the drums, and then Nico strapped his guitar on to join Ari out front for the next few songs while Eric took over on the kit. Richard joined the others with his cello and lent his support by adding bass lines, classic cello textures and rhythmic counterpoints I didn’t know you could even get from a cello!

Nico and Ari mentioned that they weren’t totally comfortable in the “worship” environment. Ari does a lot of playing, but it’s usually as a folk artist. Their lack of comfort, however, was misplaced: the content of their original songs, and their words spoken between songs, spoke volumes about how much they each process on a spiritual level. Nico’s vulnerability near the end of the session, in particular, caused a lot of people to sit up and take notice; despite the fact that a number of the writers in the book of Psalms lay bare their souls about hard stuff as well as praise-worthy stuff, we’re not that familiar with worship leaders doing that here in the 21st Century. And everyone I spoke with afterward said they found it very impacting. We could all use a good dose of honesty every once in a while.

As always, the worship session with Nico and Ari will be playing on the website all this week (www.worshipcafe.net), and their appearance back in February is available in our archives.

Worship as a lifestyle

In the Christian community we often use the term “worship as a lifestyle” – meaning, of course, that worship goes beyond what we do in our gatherings together (i.e. singing, reading the Bible, praying, and so on).

It’s true. Not only is worship something we “should” every day during the week, it actually is what we do every day during the week: the way we live our lives, the things we focus on, give our energy and money to, stress about; those actions literally reflect what or who we worship.

“Worship,” the English term, is from an old English word “worth-ship”; it carries the meaning of “attributing worth to something or someone”. The way we spend our time and energy and money and focus during our day and week shows what and who we attribute worth to.

Based on that, we could theoretically turn that whole phrase around and still be accurate: rather than “worship as a lifestyle”, we could truly say, “my lifestyle shows what I worship”.

Hmmm. That’s kinda scary, actually. With that in mind, reflecting on the choices of where I’ve put my time, energy, and money this past week reveals more to me about what I worship than I’d wanted to know.

More often than not, unfortunately, it’s we, ourselves – or the things in our own little world – that come out on the top of that heap. My ‘disposable’ money? Spent on me and my interests. Time? Spent on me and my interests. (Okay, I know for you it’s different. I’m just familiar with my own tendencies…). Sure, I give money to good causes, and I volunteer; but if I compare what I spend on myself to what I give selflessly to others, unconnected to my own interests, I see a clear propensity toward self-interest. Would people be able to convict me as a God worshipper based on the evidence they find? I don’t want to know the answer to that.

To my way of thinking that’s one reason why having focused times of worship are essential, periods in which we consciously think about God and our relationship to Him. Those times bring an intentionality to the focus of our lives that would be missing otherwise. Worship as a lifestyle? Yes. Worship as an intentional focus for right here, right now? Yes –indispensable! Whether we’re singing songs, reading Scripture (or poetry or other prose that draws us to focus directly on God) or praying, moving into intentionality about worship encourages us to let the truth of God permeate our very beings.

Only when that purposeful focus happens regularly, when that permeation of God-truth occurs consistently, will my lifestyle reflect that heart of worship with more constancy.

That focused and deliberate time of worship doesn’t have to be all about music, of course. Not everyone even likes music! Perhaps the unconscious equating of ‘worship’ with ‘music’ is what leads some people to declare their loyalty to the concept of ‘worship as a lifestyle’.

At Worship Café we’ve had the joy of hosting Filid, a fluid time of worship which incorporated poetry, historic narrative and reflection as well as music. The full worship session is available in the archives. It is not a typical Sunday-morning evangelical demonstration of worship, by any means, but Filid does effectively move us outside the box of expected musical expression and across the lines into reflective and contemplative worship which only sometimes involves music. Check it out, if you’re so inclined. www.worshipcafe.net - and look for the button marked “Archives”.

Worship as a lifestyle? Worship is a lifestyle; my lifestyle reflects my worship. Intentionality, chosen times of focusing my heart and mind on God and my relationship with Him, will go a long way toward helping my lifestyle reflect a heart of true worship.