Sometimes, the most important developments in our lives are the ones that almost get derailed before they start. My attendance at the 2019 annual Worship Symposium at the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship hosted by Calvin College was one such. In an especially insightful devotional entry the Word for Today writer Bob Gass addresses those ‘with enough […]
After what has been a necessary time away from the blogosphere, this morning’s devotional work has just led me to a conclusion that is too big to keep to myself. Henceforth – this blog post. We know this text, many of us: 1 Samuel 15:22 King James Version (KJV) 22 And Samuel said, Hath the Lord […]
OK, time to make a few more enemies. I am only vaguely jesting. This post was drafted a long time ago, but never sent. It happens that I live in a church community of British Seventh-Day Adventists at a time in which the standard of collective music-making and of technical musical awareness is abysmally low. […]
Being a theologically-conservative Seventh-Day Adventist and jazz musician has been the hardest thing I have ever experienced- the best and the worst aspect of my entire life journey. And before I get to John Taylor, I’m going to go back to the beginning. ~ Sometime in the 1990’s I switched on the TV just in […]
I’m not sure that all the folks who need to read this will be able to read this, but for ten years I have wanted to write a letter to those (mostly but by no means exclusively) UK-based musicians who were a major part of my life between the years 1996-2004. Some of you are […]
So! Theomusicologist, you do realise that I’ve been waiting for the LONGEST while for you to pick this unfinished business up – but when we spoke on the phone, you said that this might not end how we’d both expected. Care to fill me in? Hang on, let me guess… …is this by any chance […]
Growing amounts of words have been and are being written on the question of congregational singing – or lack thereof – across denominations. It does not appear that the ‘charismatic’ traditions suffer from this problem in anything like the same way other denominations and movements do. All sort of interesting theses have been put forward; […]
What can we musicians learn from our sporting colleagues? The title of this post comes from a sentence in a BBC article on the new England football coach – Roy Hodgson. Here is the statement in full: Hodgson is not the type of manager synonymous with the boom and bust of England’s hopes past. The […]
James MacMillan is someone very, very rare in the professional music industry. One of the most successful living composers that we have, he is also a very devout Roman Catholic. And while there are excellent historical reasons for the Protestant Reformation and the ongoing commitment of many Protestants to Protestant theology, I have now learnt […]
Those of you who ever played high-school basketball seriously may recognise the words from the title of this post as being applicable to thinking about one’s personal offense with the ball in hand. Possibly one of the great unalloyed, uncomplicated joys of my teenage years was driving into the paint (having just lost my man […]
