 | | |
| Why I Left The Contemporary Christian Music Movement: Confessions Of A Former Worship Leader | 
 enlarge | List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $3.99
You Save: $11.00 (73%)
Buy New/Used from $2.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 71 reviews)
Sales Rank: 101655
Category: Book
Author: Dan Lucarini
Publisher: Evangelical Press
Studio: Evangelical Press
Manufacturer: Evangelical Press
Label: Evangelical Press
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0852345178
Dewey Decimal Number: 291
EAN: 9780852345177
ASIN: 0852345178
Publication Date: July 31, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 66 more reviews...
 Challenging Message December 29, 2008
This is a good book that will challenge your viewpoint on music in general but especially that of many churches across the nation. It gives comprehensive lessons as to why certain music can be destructive and will make you think if nothing else.
 A Weak Case Against CCM November 25, 2008
Though anticipating some fresh perspectives on worship and music styles, I found Dan Lucarini's book to be severely flawed and even deceptive. His pick-and-choose approach and conspicuous omissions make for a weak and manipulated case against CCM at best.
He denigrates the use of secular music styles in worship while failing to acknowledge that many of our favorite traditional hymns are from English folk melodies and even drinking songs. He zeroes in on Genesis' mention of the harp and flute (along with their orchestral evolutions) as the primary tools of worship and ignores the Psalms' cymbals, timbrals, dancing, and clapping, all of which are biblical hallmarks of CCM worship. He quotes Matt Redman's famous song "The Heart of Worship" as a point against CCM in general while ignoring that Matt is still a prominent CCM artist because he was talking about the "heart", not the music style. And the list goes on...
Man can indeed corrupt anything, and much of that is based on personal perceptions. As a former rock musician myself, I needed inspired guidance and teaching before moving into worship performance and leadership. It sounds like Dan jumped head-first into worship music and was then thrust into a position of leadership without that crucial orientation, carrying his rock culture baggage to the worship stage with him, becoming disenchanted, and blaming it on the music style rather than his own personal influences and weaknesses. This was best illustrated when Dan transitioned to a traditional church, but shelved his God-given musical gifts for fear of "corrupting" their ministry.
It reminds me of CCM artist Chris Tomlin's life changing run-in with an evangelist who queried, "You really don't know what you're doing up there, do you?" I believe Dan needed someone to ask him that question before he assumed his worship capabilities and insight.
I would not recommend Mr. Lucarini's misguided and blanket condemnation of CCM. I would recommend he save his prosecutorial efforts for matters of the heart, and take a second look at his own honesty and motives.
 Fails to understand Worship, & Relationship of Faith and Culture August 26, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recently read Why I Left the Contemporary Christian Music Movement: Confessions of a Former Worship Leader, Evangelical Press, 2004, by Dan Lucarini. Lucarini draws on his own broad experience on the leading edge of contemporary Christian music to reveal how deeply music is rooted in the culture of our fallen world. He writes to those who may suspect music's strong cultural influences to highlight the dangers worship leaders face. However, I believe he errs in isolating music, as though it is in any way unique or alone in this regard. Language itself is not redeemed in our post- Babel world. Illustrations, assumptions, meanings, and contemporary idioms and styles of speaking pervade our sermons as much as they do our music. On Lucarini's rationale, we might consider abandoning the contemporary sermon. Styles in many aspects of our lives, from architecture and furniture, to visual art, music, and literature, clothing and the spectacles we wear, are not originally Christian, but bear the stamp of our culture and its values, and trends. Fashion moguls who live immoral lives, or corporate executives driven by profit motives dictate most fashions and trends. Medicine, which has made many advances to providing better health care, and Science, which has provided many useful technological advances, both grow out of a predominantly naturalistic and materialistic view of creation. The extent that participation in popular culture causes us to sin is proportional to the extent that we are unaware of and therefore not watchful for Satan's schemes and flaming arrows. Therefore, Lucarini's book is helpful in raising awareness.
Not only in music, but in all of life, it is necessary to ask: To what extent must we isolate from our culture to avoid its pitfalls and to what extent must we engage in our culture to speak the same language and reach it with the gospel? Paul referred to everything in his life before Christ as `rubbish' (Phil 3:8) in light of his pursuit of Christ. "Old things have passed away; all things are made new" (2 Cor 5:17). This does not mean that St. Paul rejected every aspect of his culture. Rather, to the extent that the influence of the `world' was part of him, it was in the process of "being renewed daily in the image of his creator (Col 3:10).
Lucarini uses his first-hand knowledge about music, its sources and influences to interpret its significance. Unfortunately, he lacks comparable knowledge of Scripture and sound biblical interpretation. Hence, he makes universal statements about music based on his personal experiences, then selectively proof-texts passages, and interprets them to support his experience. One of these sweeping global statements is:
"It does not matter if you change the lyrics. It does not matter if you change the musicians. It does not matter if you change the record labels. It does not matter if you ask God to sanctify it. Rock music and all its children, and by association CCM [Christian Contemporary Music], can and will corrupt the morals of everyone who practises it" p. 73.
This view forms the central premise of the book. It is not convincingly supported. To conclude as he does, that whatever we do as believers must be original and have no "baggage of the world" associated with it, is to require an otherworldliness that is not modeled in Scripture by Jesus who did not hesitate to walk on Roman roads and draw a lesson about paying taxes from a coin that represented a pagan monetary system and bore the image of a pagan Caesar, nor by Paul who quoted from the pagan philosophers in Acts 17, nor by the Magi, who are in no way censured for finding guidance in a star. New Testament writers used Koine Greek, not a special spiritual language, nor even classical Greek.
An implication of the incarnation itself if that the message of the gospel is not only inseparable from its culture, but woven into its very fabric. We bear God's treasure in earthen vessels. Leslie Newbigin, in Paradigms Lost, writes, "Neither at the beginning, nor at any subsequent time is there or can there be a gospel that is not embodied [relevant] in a culturally conditioned form of words" (p. 4). Newbigin continues, "The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretion is an illusion." He concludes, "... We should have known this from the incarnation."
Lucarini selects three passages to address contemporary Christian music. 1) "Abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22). 2) "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but no all things edify" (1 Cor 10:23). 3) "But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.' "But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ" (1 Cor. 8:9, 12). However, Lucarini's application of these Scripture verses goes beyond all three of these passages with his universal statements and judgments. (Though he states at the outset of the book that he wants to avoid judging, he does judge most severely).
Jesus said, leave the tares alongside the wheat. Plucking tares would damage the wheat. If culture were uprooted, we'd have no soil to grow in. We live in a fallen world. Culture is rife with the Fall. Yet, we are rooted in the soil of culture; we travel its roads, work in its buildings, attend its schools, vote for its governments, read its news, and employ its medical findings. We live in a fallen world. Nothing in this world has escaped the tragic implications of the Fall of humanity into sin. As believers we live in between the `already' and the `not yet' of the Kingdom of God. There is both completion and continuity in our redemption. According to scripture, we are saved, being saved, and yet to be saved. We are dead to sin, yet we must put it to death. We have been "raised with Christ," yet we must set our hearts and minds "on things above" Colossians 3:1-2. This leads believers to feel conflicted about the world and the fleshly bodies, both of which we necessarily occupy until we will be redeemed from them.
What does it mean to be in the world, but not of the world? Richard Niehbuhr in his discussion, Christ and Culture (1949), explored the classic question of how a Christian should regard the culture around him. Some of the numerous models he explored were "Christ against culture", "Christ over culture", and "Christ in culture." Though his discussion is widely considered passe today precisely because he sets Christ over against culture, he presented each of his models as inadequate alone to fully model the biblical relationship between Christ and culture. Locarni's writing shows complete unfamiliarity with the qualities of Neihbuhr's nuanced discussion. Locarni's is a description of a relatively narrow personal pilgrimage, certainly not some last word on Christian music or Christian worship. Lucarini refers to the deep influence that his family members and their persuasions had on him without examining their motives closely.
Is Lucarini unaware that circumcision was practiced in ancient Egypt, or that baptism was practiced before New Testament times in pagan contexts? Yet these symbolic practices were adopted in Scripture. Would Locarni have written differently had he been aware that many musical terms and notations in the Psalms and Daniel were lost to the translators of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek around 300 BC? The terms referred to contemporary characteristics and instruments that later generations soon were so unfamiliar with that all they could do was transliterate the sounds of the Hebrew words! ("Selah" is just one of many examples.) It may be helpful to remember that cultural change Before Christ was much more gradual than it is today, yet 200 years after exiles wrote the latest Psalms and the book took its final form, the meaning of these terms was lost. Is that not a way of God indicating his stamp of approval precisely on contemporary music? God saw fit to prevent any effort to revive and recreate the original music of the Psalms.
The crucial quality of music with which Christians worship God is not some kind of imagined purist Christian origin that Lucarno is now exploring, neither is it contemporariness nor antiquity, nor even disassociation with rock music. Rather, the essence of Christian worship is the singular yet diverse quality that is born out of a believer's true heart of worship, consecrated (set apart) by deep personal repentance, confession, purity, holiness and obedience. It is singular because only worshippers can produce genuine worship music. It is diverse because every worshipper expresses worship to God genuinely out of his or her personal and unique cultural, linguistic, ethnic and historical time, place and experience.
Surely you can't be serious ... July 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If I could rate this book LESS than one-star I would, for it doesn't even deserve that. In a nutshell, the author makes rash generalizations based solely on personal opinion with no substantiation whatsoever. Some of his statements are, in reality, quite ironic and, consequently, very amusing. To paraphrase, for example, he states that contemporary worship is "bad" because dim lighting and candles will promote an environment that is conducive to sexual misconduct. Likewise, he states that praise teams should not have mixed gender participants, as it creates an environment for inappropriate relationships. Are you kidding me? Let's turn this around to "traditional worship." Haven't we had candlelight and SATB choirs for hundreds of years in traditional worship? But that's okay? I could not believe what I read. And let me be very clear. I have always been a "traditional worship" advocate in every sense of the word. But this book offended me to the point that I threw it in the trash when I was done reading it. I did not want to expose anyone else to such rubbish. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!!
Thought-provoking June 26, 2008
I appreciated the honest appraisal from one who has been there. This book was throught provoking without being preachy. If you can read the book without a prior agenda on your mind, I think you'll be able to learn something from it.
|
|
|
 Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| | |
