Episode 17 - Worship (Part 1)

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[Music] welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody this is part one of two on worship we had so many really great questions and stories from our audience that we wanted to take the time to explore this topic in more depth so we've got part one coming up this week in two weeks we'll release part two and then we've got some other great episodes and series planned for you after that so stay tuned and i hope you enjoy this episode on worship one of the most powerful worship experiences i've had was playing at a catholic youth conference during the time of adoration which is a time to reflect and meditate on god's presence and i'm not even catholic but i remember feeling something more profound than just playing soft background music i remember feeling a kind of transcendence but it was liberating and slightly terrifying as i also contemplated my existence of my insignificance and significance in both the universe and the story of god mike when i met you i'm not sure if you remember this question this is the first question that i uh i was able to see the glory that is science mike in full full action with uh this was like our introductory i walked in and our friend rob said hey michael this is that we call this guy science mike mike what what's happening when michael is in a room full of thousands of people and they're all going crazy over this mythological construct and putting themselves into a frenzy what's what's going on in their brains and i so clearly remember him saying mythological construct oh man well first of all i was uh i had a couple which always makes my answers better which for you a couple is like a normal person's like 12-pack right you're right exactly like by a couple i'm like staggering and and waving um yeah

but worship is crazy uh neurologically speaking

and it's especially crazy when it involves music

you know when we like asked people on this episode you know what are your questions about worship i thought was really interesting that what do you think michael 85 90 were about music

but that's for good reason because when we attach music to worship it's more neurologically powerful

it's more potent so when you're listening to music a lot of your brain is active, especially in the obvious areas around processing of sound

but then also you get a lot of activity in your left temporal lobe which is where language happens

you also have corresponding activity in the right temporal lobe which is typically associated with creativity and music which is remarkable

but then also when you're listening music there's lots of activity on the corpus callosum which is the the channel of nerves in the center of the brain where the two hemispheres of the brain communicate to each other

and what's interesting is there's you know one level of neurological activity associated with listening but there's like this whole separate tier associated with participating or creating in some way

and like i was thinking about the really cheesy reputation that christian music has as being low quality being derivative

but when you look at what actually happens in a room full of christian singing praise music is it's incredibly participatory compared to other forms of musical performance

everyone is singing along, everyone's music is moving and everyone has some way in which they are contributing to the environment of the room and that amplifies the cognitive effects of music, the beneficial effects, the increased capacity to process language, the more positive frame of mind, a higher sense of self-esteem higher, sense of self-worth

i know that sounds contradictory to worshiping worshiping god but that's just the science

and you have this room full of brains that actually start to create these neurological patterns that are similar to each other in a brain scan

you see similar networks and shapes of neurological activity association forming in all these different brains together

and as that happens, as people start to contemplate increasingly broad ideas - so the most of our thought life is centered on self and centered on the needs of self but the way to transcendence - which transcendence is associated with a certain type of seizure-like activity in your left temporal lobe and your left prefrontal cortex - you can ladder up to those sorts of experiences by contemplating increasingly broad phenomenon

so you move from yourself to your family, to your community, to your city, to your part of the world, to all of humanity, to greater than that is god

and worship actually steps you in these ever broader views of reality towards that transcendent state which is amplified by the music and amplified by everyone doing it together

so there's like these tendencies we have some of us are more naturally able to experience wonder, experience-- kind of have moments of worship on our own

but not everyone has that same sort of propensity

but when you get everyone together because of social identity because of the power of music, because of the participatory aspects, everyone can start to walk together towards this experience that rises above self and rises above our everyday awareness

and that actually thinking about that and studying that has made me dramatically less cynical about the ways that different denominations express worship, especially in music because it acts as a neurological force amplifier and allows people with a greater inherent propensity towards transcendence to give others a leg up towards that same experience

that was a long intro but it was really full of meat and glory

on the podcast today liturgist podcast as always we have uh science mike and me michael gunger and this next voice is is gonna be uh you're gonna have to put on your discerning ears to prop maybe tell the difference between our voices at times because it's my brother and people say our voices sound the same a lot of times but welcome david gunger from brilliance hey dave hey guys thanks uh for having me on mike it's always good to hear you talk about meat and glory people really say you guys voices sound the same i think so that's crazy yeah i mean gungers have a certain timbre in their voices let me try gungers have a certain timbre to their voice oh that is brutal every time i hear myself talk back though i do i'm like oh how do i sound like that and then i think of like my dad's girly voice and i'm like oh no i really need to try to go with my lower tones [Laughter] um david tell us a little bit about those some of us uh if if the listeners have heard the liturgies which hopefully you have the liturgies that the liturgists put out we realize that we hardly ever talk about them on the podcast which is kind of funny um because we see it sort of as a big part of the center of our work actually these liturgies we put out yeah this is like the side the side serving as the podcast um but anyway david and the brilliance which is uh david and and his best friend john arndt um have been putting out church music liturgical music for years now and they've contributed to at least a couple how many of the of the liturgies that we've done and they've been there kind of from the beginning of these conversations they've done uh the initial like liturgist events with us so david is a liturgist um [Music] tell us why you do what you do dave what do you why are you why do you make church music there are plenty of other stuff to do i i don't know i ask myself that question every day me too why do i do this um i i live in new york city uh with my wife kate and our four children and i work at a church called trinity grace church and i work at the parish in tribeca we are 11 parishes in new york city and i am one of the pastors of the parish which means i uh it's a smaller church and there is another pastor that kind of does the majority of the teaching and i do the majority of the music but then i put together a lot of the liturgies right a lot of the liturgies for our sunday gatherings as well as help pastor the church so i do that and then i also have a band called the brilliance which you mentioned um that puts out music that um is art for the church or based around the church narrative and so yeah so i'm honored to be a liturgist and honored to be a part of this podcast with you guys right now thanks for having me on okay so we got lots of good questions about about worship and if you're new to the liturgist podcast we take a subject and we discuss that subject through the lens of science faith and art and today worship um i think there's plenty to talk about i was in this panel this last week at calvin university they had this faith and arts festival and i was part of this panel on worship which is actually part of the reason that this subject was inspired to do on the podcast because it started a conversation the guy the guy that was leading the kind of the moderator of the room um asked a question for the four of us that were on the panel and it was supposed to be you know we all kind of give a quick answer and keep moving through the questions and an hour later we're still on the first question debating one another um and the it was like this lively crazy debate kind of that was starting to happen and we never really got to finish it and i was like i kind of want to talk about some of this stuff um on the podcast so it was interesting to me and i think with a lot of our listeners uh and some of the questions reflect this there seems to be when you you know when you start asking questions when you start your faith kind of starts evolving from you know superstitious sky god um appeasing the gods and sort of a world into you know and it starts taking on a more incarnational or subtle or nuanced um thing that that how we treat one another is more important than appeasing some being in the sky you know like as and i think a lot of our listeners are there a lot of the things we hear from people um and so worship kind of takes it kind of gets awkward for some people at a certain stage of journey where the uh you know you start coming into a room and and why if there's if there is a god why does this god want us to like just get together and like talk about how awesome he is and how he's better than the the other gods or you know like what are we doing here are we just stroking the ego of some big dude in the sky um so he doesn't get mad at us are we and so theologically philosophically worship kind of takes on a it kind of loses value for a lot of people and i think you see that in a lot of progressive circles and stuff like you kind of well it's just i guess seeing some old hymns um and it doesn't a lot of times there's not much heart in it for a lot of people i think um you know in more conservative circles a lot of times there's a lot of heart in it and sometimes not a lot of let's think about every one of these lyrics that we're singing you know like most of the uh really popular worship songs are if you look on the ccli charts which is sort of the reporting agency for publishing for churches that sing songs usually it's not the songs that are full of like really uh progressive philosophical ideas or challenging theological ideas that are the ones that most churches pick up to sing it's the ones that are kind of like pop music rock music formula um where you know first chorus first chorus bridge chorus sort of a lot of times um there's kind of a a more like song like formula like that the the the more popular recordings and stuff of those songs were kind of you know christian radio sounding um there's definitely like and a lot of the lyrics are kind of i mean i don't want to i don't want to be cynical about it but are they kind of have a uh how to say this they they rhyme you know they run they rhyme and they're very uh sentimental or and emotional i guess a lot of times but for me i'm rarely like whoa that lyric i'm gonna have to go chew on that for a while um so so in this panel we're all we're talking about this and it was funny because there was the worship one of the guys on the panel was a worship leader at a fairly progressive church in town in grand rapids and uh and by the middle of the conversation he go he's like i can't believe i'm the like most conservative guy in the room for the first time ever because the other two and i was the second most conservative guy uh the other the other two guys were like yeah um and i think they did this kind of they did this on purpose they knew it would be quite a conversation and it was um but one of the guys is a radical theology guy which basically um i don't want to butcher the the radical theology philosophy but essentially it's that the mess that christianity uh is a great means to an end of deconstructing your faith or deconstructing the metaphysic of a big other um yeah so the guy the radical theology guy had come to chapel that morning and that uh calvin had asked me to lead some songs for their chapel and kind of came in and i was singing this is our father's world and he was just immediately just disgusted by the whole thing why are we all in here having to sing to this big other sky god rather than taking care of each other and the conversation kind of turned why can't we just sing i mean what's different about that than just singing a katy perry song together and why why don't we just sing a katy perry song together i think he would prefer it um to just sing singer songwriter songs that talk about us and uh so what do you guys think dave what do you think what is the value of why you would sing a song to god and how would you respond to that kind of sentiment like are you just appeasing a mythological construct in your head or or is there something more beautiful more important that's happening when we all get together and sing a worship song to god i think part of what you were describing a little bit earlier before you pose this question about church music in general and the song structure and the form usually lines up with everything about that song should be positive and encouraging or informative instead of inspiring and authentic and um it feels like sometimes and i know for something like this like especially if you're just singing about ideas um and they're just ideas to you then it can really feel unauthentic it can feel very uninspired for me i feel like within the christian narrative you know in a larger scale obviously that guy's whole theology is pointing towards a deconstruction of something that he finds to be a problem and for me when i think about like jesus and the love of god it's something that i can build upon on how i view the other and so i don't naturally view the other oftentimes the way that jesus teaches to view the other or teaches to love others and they're counter cultural oftentimes or they're counter intuitive to what i would normally want to do if someone wronged me and so to have to have something like hymns or have something like songs that i sing about the idea of god um first it it is putting me at a moment where it comes to friction and i think that friction is a good thing and second it's like especially within a group setting it's it's putting me at a place with that group um where all of those ideas about god are coming to a head and so if i'm singing about god's forgiveness and about how we are to forgive obviously i'm going to look at the person next to me and it's going to put me in a challenging spot of like how do i view them and then by no means am i just trying to say oh all worship songs do this like all worship songs you know obviously if we're only singing songs about the wrath of god um and judgment and um you know how we view holiness and how we view if that's all we sing about then i'm probably going to view people in a certain way it's going to help shape the way that i view the world but i i don't i don't think it's a bad thing to be able to have counter narratives that we sing about and that were given to us because our faith isn't one that we make up it's one that we receive so like it or not we can try to change it but still you're receiving whatever you got and so even being able to take something like this is my father's world like if we were gonna take those lyrics which i love this is my father's world so i'm probably biased in this um but like why should my heart be sad the lord is king let the heavens ring like there's something about the lord is king that odd obviously is gonna say so many things about like even like now like what do we think of as king we don't live in a society where we have kings or we have queens we or even you know whatever that is so it's automatically a counter narrative to where we are right now or some of our listeners might in in britain uh yeah i guess so i guess so yes hello to you who still have the royalty um i i just don't there's that for me it's like um there is a difference between the greek self-expression just this is how i feel today and just saying well that's authentic because it's how i feel today i feel like yeah but there also can be authenticity in having a counter narrative and then being like i don't feel like this today however um i realize that when i sing and when i'm doing this the point is not for me to to have some emotional feeling of this is how i feel and now because i feel like this it's like oh i just really feel great i'm not i don't sing songs in church to get a feeling i don't sing songs in church to just go oh i agree i agree i agree there's something about and that even like now i don't like framing the question with and i could see if he was getting frustrated of like even when we say worship worship is so much so much bigger than just music or the songs we sing however when we put the songs we sing into an expression of worship and into an expression of trying to encounter the divine anytime you encounter the divine it's going to mess with you on some level and i and because it's messing with you on some level i'm okay with it uh you know not always having to uh to line up of just like well this is inauthentic because this is just an idea it's like yeah what if it is just an idea what is this idea saying my sister has a severely disabled child she's blind and she's has seizures constantly all day long and miraculously um she is 14 now but her baptism was the most moving experience of worship i've ever had she as greek orthodox and we didn't know if ellie would live through the year um and so when we can went to her baptism we knew that it was her event the big event of her life where she would have a party where she would have people coming to attend and celebrating with her celebrating her life and it was extremely moving because the sacraments were so powerful in that moment it wasn't about what ellie could understand because we knew she'd never understand anyway and it wasn't about what anybody there could do for her because we didn't know what that could be it was all about god's grace his power and his grace [Music] worship is a posture so when i was coming to record this podcast i drove home from my office down a beautiful canopy road on a gorgeous spring day on a very fast motorcycle and as i'm driving down the road on this motorcycle with this just perfect temperature air clear skies that are only visible through this thick tree canopy that entirely covered the road i had an awareness that i did not make this day and i did not make this weather and i did not create the circumstances that were allowing me to experience such a wonderful moment but i could receive those things in a posture of humility and gratitude so what is that gratitude toward that gratitude is toward god the source of all things the ground of all being so as i'm just like cruising down the road i had a moment where my awareness expanded beyond the the mere amazing visceral thrill of riding a motorcycle towards the fact that this moment is a gift that came from somewhere and when i acknowledge that gift in gratitude that becomes a moment of worship now that was personal worship it was just me but we have those moments we have those experiences where we sing these songs in the presence of other people or we hear these stories or we tell our own or we read from the scriptures and all those things give us a posture where we acknowledge that we humans amazing and clever and powerful as we are are not the ground of being and are not the source of all and orient our posture to an openness of the gift that is experienced and to me anything that encompasses that posture and that awareness is worship you don't even have to know exactly who or what god is you don't even have to have a clue who or what god is to assume that posture of awareness and gratitude [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com the evening of a day when someone very close to me hurt me very deeply i was alone brushing my teeth under the stars just looking up at the stars and kind of you know in all of the universe and uh thinking about my brother who hurt me and i just started having compassion on him just realizing that really he just wanted love as much as i did and then that led me to you know thinking about god and actually having the same kind of compassion on him on god just like thinking of him as just like being heartbroken over our relationship as well and wanting wanting my love just like i wanted his so i began to open up i was like look god i don't have anything for you he met me there and and that really is kind of the heart of my worship experience every time i worship it's just like look god this is who i am and what i have for you and you're invited into my life and it's powerful okay so this is specifically uh my own uh my own laments and this is on the christian worship leader rock star so we both and i have followed in your footsteps have both tried to make art while being worship leaders and making art for the church and yet at the same time have felt at some point the tension probably of the christian worship leader rock star and the imaging of that and how we try to say that uh in certain contexts like we're not building a rock concert we're not doing this and then you look at everything of the medium that is the message as a worship leader and you're on the giant screen and you look really cool and you're playing you know large crowd and everything that that means on the big stage and for both of us for the churches that we attend we have tried to get away from that as much as possible even so much to the point where oftentimes we're getting rid of stages or we're trying to at a liturgist concert be behind a screen so it's not so much us in the front and us as the leader and us as the the front and center while leading congregational music so i guess one of the ways that we could start with is we're obviously going to have a tension when you talk about worship leaders and image and who we let on stage and who we let participate can you talk maybe a little bit about the tension of that and maybe what about some of your your own thoughts and musings on it it is a funny thing i was just with some friends who i won't name because their names are known um pretty popularly out there but i kind of came to this point in the conversation where one of the parties involved kind of called out most of the popular worship culture today is not you know people talk keep talking about like this move of god that's happening over here or there where all these people are assembled and this particular person said i went to one of these places where god was supposedly moving and this is with one of these people by the way like right there and said um to me kind of looked more like there was a bunch of sexy calvin klein models on the stage and uh and of course a lot of people were there pretty happy about that because if i got on the stage the move of god would definitely move somewhere else uh this particular guy was a little chubby and a little meat and glory little meat and glory um meet without the glory for the move of god but it's it's uh quite an interesting yeah like the fact that all of our our worship leaders the most popular ones they're not they're not often ugly they're not often uh overweight um they're nice to look at they've got i find this especially with women and i don't mean that misogynistically i feel bad where it's like often times in the end you can be a guy and you can maybe be a little overweight or you can be like me bald or like you trying to escape baldi and it's not like gungers are really good looking guys but what we try to do as men is when we're not really good looking we try to move from trying to still be really good looking to just trying to look interesting you know so it's like well we can be cool so we wear glasses or we do this and we look like kind of cool and hip and we're not really good looking but we're hip and with women with women that's really hard because you know especially in evangelical culture we still celebrate yeah if you're if you're not a great looking guy you just grow a beard and put on some you know yeah i mean right now right now i'm wearing like an indiana jones like freaking crazy hat i'm wearing some like really cool like baggy baggy sweatpants and this like baggy sweatshirt and i'm sure i'm the fattest i've ever been in my life right now with like this like ragged beard and baldness you know and yet i can get away with it and there's probably some worship leader girl out there right now that just feels like total crap because she feels like she has to be some image and that's that's what drives me crazy about like evangelical worship pop star where it's like we say we're about the community we're saying we're about this thing and then so blatantly our our whole medium is an image and that to me is something that i lament and something that drives me crazy and it drives me crazy even more when through our art like so michael i'll speak to like i played bass for gunger for a while now i have my own band with the brilliance it's hard because a lot of times i'll open up for like worship bands that are bigger than us and for brilliance in particular we're trying to make art like we're a band that's making art based around the church and it's music for the church but it's not like congregational worship songs all the time it's art and so i want anyone to be able to listen and experience that art and it's a show and i'm cool with it being a show but then i'll get worship bands that we'll play with or whatever and they're like well what we're doing isn't a show it's just worship it's just worship and yet the whole thing is designed as a show and it's like and then they sign autographs afterwards yes and then you're signing autographs after look i'm cool with you doing art with christian art and be cool with that and make beautiful music but why do we have to be so unauthentic and then try to call that worship and then like diss on bands that do like spiritual music and be like oh that's a show yeah there's like a negative connotation to show i think for a lot of people in worship world and i used to say the same thing like we're not trying to put on a show and i say the same thing like even when we were at bloom we started bloom in denver and our church there and we definitely were not trying to put on a show that's why we got in a circle and you know i played acoustic guitar on the floor standing next to the other congregants but i don't think there's anything wrong with a show i think it's just when you you do equate a show with in a purely church context uh i i am personally am too green or whatever to to to want to have just one person get up and and tell me what he thinks about the bible or listen to one person and rehearsing all of her music that she's interested in um that's i i want a more communal experience than that personally but that doesn't mean that a show is any less holy but then yeah when you when you mix up the category so much to you know a christian concert for instance that's a worship night but you're charging tickets for it and people are there to see you that's where i can feel like somewhat and this is and i don't mean to like be harsh against this because i find myself in the reality of it but this is where it's like oftentimes i find especially if you're going to use like an evangelical nature it's like there are so many worship bands and worship artists or christian artists that also lead worship that like i would love to take um someone that isn't like at all associated with faith or christianity and would love to take them to a ganger concert or john mark macmillan concert or whatever it is and experience beauty and be like this is awesome music and it's about hope and it's about this and oh that's cool and it opens the question to like what are they about and what is this about and so like on one end it's like very evangelical in nature and yet it's so funny to me because then as like christian artists we feel like we're not allowed to have a show because we feel like everything is just this is just worship and if it's just worship and this is this thing we make music the most sacred part and that's to me the disconnect because for me the sacred part is like the community the liturgy the actual sacraments and that to me is when there's like this big disconnect and for my own like job my own vocation is like i look at what i do um on sunday mornings as a pastor and there's a i'm going to approach that as a pastor and yet with my art with the brilliance i look at it more like and i know this is like stupid to say about yourself but i try to look at it more like prophetically and more like i'm speaking to other things and i'm just i'm speaking this thing that then like i can use art as a vehicle of like of of using art to show beauty in certain ways [Music] normally i worship best in the corporate setting but i was singing my favorite song to god and i started laughing and crying i just felt this overwhelming feeling of peace and love and i started laughing and crying because i knew that was god talking to me that's powerful [Music] i don't know if it's just our culture i'm sure other cultures through time and history have experienced similar tensions with sacred and secular but there seems to be such a strange divide within a certain religious world that that i have brushed shoulders with quite often um where there is this weird divide even when you say worship that automatically paints a picture for so many people about a music that's sung to god within a church setting or whatever how is a rage against the machine song not worship that's like oh man i've had serious moments i've had serious killing in the name of love moments that i am like this is like i don't get the old testament often through like worship songs i sing at church but i get the freaking old testament when i listen to rage against the machine like oh my gosh this like tension of war and this tension of oppression and this tension of like everything that is like how we take nationalistic thoughts and these things and it's like true art that freaking like sings to the soul because it speaks of what it what it means to be human and that's what good art you know like i john says this i'm totally ripping this from john but john the other guy in the brilliance and plays keys with michael all the time um he'll talk about like mona lisa and be like what is the thing that makes mona lisa a piece of art and the thing that makes it a piece of art like that's such so famous is not that it's just like so great but it's so mysterious where it's like there's so much room for interpretation where in the mona lisa is she's smiling is she mad is she is it a smirk is she trying to be like sexy like what is that and we all have this interpretation it wasn't the best painting of a woman ever in that time period it just is like there's something about the mystery of it and it leaves room for questions and that for me is like the beauty so many times of music that wrestles with tension and with doubt or calls out certain things and lives in that tension is that we all can have different interpretations of it and that's the beauty of the art of it and in the church world so many times we never leave room for mystery or for tension yeah i the tension that i struggle with is because i want to write personally i've always wanted to write honestly and musically you know be musically honest be lyrically honest and to do that i have to talk about god if i'm ever like because i think about god so much i always have it's part of you know it when i have a couple of drinks i'm immediately going philosophical on you i'm immediately talking theology it's what i when you get rid of my inhibitions but that's why i write the songs that i write not because i'm trying to reach a christian market not because i'm trying to create christian propaganda to turn other people into christians it's because that's what i think about that's what i wrestle about these ideas of god and meaning and spirituality and is any of this true and if it is what does that mean and if it's not why is it why can't i stop thinking about it and you know like um so to not be able to make art about that and even directly to it to god that's how i started writing songs was in church to god and as i've evolved as an artist um that's just part of me it's like my heritage is my artistic heritage is church music so how do i can i make art within that context that's not propaganda that's not and that's it the thing is that space doesn't exist on a mainstream scale there are certainly artists that are trying to do it um but there's not a system for that there's not a you know a label that specializes in that and there's millions of people that know about this there's not a christian radio equivalent of becky for this thing it hasn't been that's the tension that i live in of feeling like feeling like because there's not a market for it and you're like you're talking about not a market for it i mean like people literally a lot of times don't know what to do with it because they're like well it's not like church sunday music like it's not like sunday morning music at church and it's not like really uh you know but it's sort of yeah at my church i do everything at my church but i live in a community where like i'm allowed to do that like i'm allowed to sing make us one and sing does your heart break and sing mercy and wrestle but so many people like especially on like a mainstream christian thing it's like because that market doesn't exist and it kind of exists you always feel like either i'm going to go with like one market that's going to totally discredit the christian market and they're really not going to get this or i'm going to go with the really christianese market which is not going to get at all where i'm coming from and they just don't know how to handle you so they're like i can't use your songs on radio which is how i make money because we don't make it in selling records anymore so we can't use you in radio and we don't really want to push your songs in the church because they're not really easy to do so what are we gonna do with you i don't know it's cool that you're making your music michael [Laughter] so we make podcasts and try to convince uh people that that it's uh possible to to sing to god and and it not be some weird sort of propaganda attempt or uh and try to convince others that that art might be worth trying to make within a church context but i don't know i just i do think that it's worth worth the struggle because when i experience it i do experience it not only from trying to make it and when i actually do come up with a lyric that like speaks something um that rings true for me and that there's something oh man it's so nice when i'm finally like oh i said what i was trying to say i found the words i've been trying to say but also if that can help other people because i experienced that through other people's work of course far more often in non-liturgical music far more often than just mainstream music i listen to very little what would be labeled or marketed as christian music but sometimes even within christian you know there are people that have been marketed within the christian uh music industry that they'll they'll do something that i that has been really profound for me and when you just when that when that happens there are some songs and some moments that i've experienced from other artists that i'm like that just does so much for me i can't if i have any possibility of doing that for somebody else to um even if it's just a few people it's what's funny though is some of the most musically inspired moments that i have in my life today even is that i i experience those musical moments and i don't like listen to them on a record but i experience them live so i'll give you like three examples one would be i love i live in new york i love going to village vanguard i go about once every two months and i go catch a show i don't listen to jazz music a lot like at like while i'm walking or doing something you know i only listen to jazz music in certain circumstances if i'm at home and i put on like a record player or if i'm like out at a jazz club and there's something about it that's like so inspiring so beautiful it's in that moment and i'm not trying to make it my music all the time and there's something similar about like classical music for me where like the most inspired i've ever been by far is listening to orchestras where i'm or a string quartet where like the taka string quartet at carnegie hall blew my mind away and like i'm not listening tacos all the time and then i think about like sunday mornings and i think about hymns and i think about like it's funny this week it like somehow got me i'm like getting ready for easter and we're singing garden this week and i like never like listen to stuff that we record you know or somewhat record so like i don't go back and listen to brilliance tracks all the time or old gunger tunes but somehow i found like i'm getting ready for this and i found higher if you remember your song and be lifted higher there is no one like no one like you and bro i sang that song and like wept for like an hour this last week and i'm like how did this song escape me and i'm putting it in our good friday service and like that song to me is so powerful and makes me wrestle with god's judgments even his judgments are righteous and true and it hits me so freaking hard and yet it's music that i'm not like sitting here listening to you sing all the time like i'm not sitting here listening those songs all the time and yet that's kind of the beauty of it where it's like is that where church music really is so artistic and so beautiful that it doesn't have to be music that i listen to all the time but somehow when i go to church and i sing this and i and i experience this it's just like that jazz club or it's just like that moment at carnegie hall for me where it literally is sacred and it's musical and it literally inspires my worldview and shapes who i am this has been part one of our conversation about worship part two is coming in two weeks so tune back in to check that out and uh if you'd like to talk about what you've heard in this episode join us at the liturgist.com podcast and leave a comment you can also go to facebook.com the liturgists or connect to us on twitter at the liturgists i'm science mike i'm michael gunger i'm david gunger thanks so much everybody you