Who why what

Somewhere between self advertising, biography and imaginary defense. Yet, how these pages come across to you could still sound like something else. Digging my own hole could be another one. Baseless, contradictory in ideas, let alone theology and liturgy.

The ‘who are you’ is probably better answered in the ‘what are you?’, and usually that means ‘what is your tradition’, as a kinder version of ‘what church do you attend?’ or the alternative ‘what church do you worship in?’ I grew up in the Brethren tradition, the Plymouth tradition. I would of course claim I am far less of the Brethren type than I practice it; in the last 20 years I have taken part in at most one service each year. During this time I have been active in a range of churches, Anglican, Baptist or Baptist oriented, Free Churches, and latterly Reformed Churches. The journey through the different denominations came about because of changes in my employment that brought about moving to another part of the country and therefore joining in fellowship with new acquaintances.

The pages here sound like monologues, well, they are. David Wong aims to turn a range of ideas into words. Content structure in some places is intentionally fluid, unstructured, or where change of focus is abrupt. There are reasons for this. One is that I had spent some much time rewriting to the point I think the key points are there, and I hope the opening lines catch enough of readers’ attention that they keep reading.

Electronic rules that apply intelligence will want to improve their quality by working on well structured text. The pages here are written to make categorising less easy, delay all those linking and idea relationship that is absent in the intention of the text. This sounds like a kind of technological racism.

My piano playing is about grade 5 standard. I can no longer play those higher grade pieces. I had the chance to study further, to the point I achieved a bachelor, a master and a PhD degrees in music. Everyone’s journey in training and study is from anyone else. Without classical music (the grades) as basis, I could not have discovered what piano playing techniques I could manage, develop further, and those that are completely beyond me.

Classically trained musicians will not recognised me a classical pianist (or have done the grades), or once was one. People in churches do assume I had classical training. I spent some time wondering how do I place myself. After a accumulated amount of about 5 minutes, I stopped thinking about this, and went on finding techniques that I could use to support worship. I can’t do anything else, so I won’t occupy much effort in pursuing whatever that can be, but keeping an eye for areas of growth.

Bear with me one moment (or skip this section): I spent so little time in ‘music’ that I cannot recall anything much about the traditional repertoire nor its history. For example, I can’t name or relate to you works of composer. If the subject goes the other way, I have more words to say about expressions / intent in a piece of music, and its ‘sonic structure’ (the traditional speak of melodic and harmonic). I gets excited about music that ‘sounds’ non-emotional, of which there appears to portray nothing of intention – no message, no flow, no progress, no direction.

I far prefer a piece of music that communicates something without the ‘interpretation’. It’s like seeing a set of traffic light.

The meaning of green is to go - strictly, you are free to move forward ensuring it is safe for you to do so, and then move away. It is about priority rather than a 'right'. But green is green, it has different meaning in different context. All I want to know is that for that colour, people that use the English language use the word 'green'. 
In some parts of the world, there seems to be a debate that certain shades of green is referred as blue; and certain shades of blue as green.

Maybe I have spent too much time in hymns and songs that are primarily 18th century harmonic progression. Fine music can help shape emotion and set a sense of purpose. The debate about role of music in worship / liturgy is as alive as distinction between religious belief and practices, between attributes of God and holy living, and between the ‘the’ in ‘I am the way’ and the ‘alone’ in ‘In Christ alone’. I took numerous opportunities to study theology. I was so glad I had a supervisor for my dissertation on singing in the early church, as part of my bachelor degree in divinity.

This basis of study provides some space on reflecting on the idea of the music discipleship programme that had been years in the making. Music is a wholesome discipline in as much as theology (or practice of faith) is. We should provide a framework of developing talents, gifts and training in mission, theology, pastoral and public ministry, and social care, in as much as a similar kind of framework in music making in the context of worship life of the believing community.

In other words, we should give equal emphasis to ministerial training and musicianship training. As ministers are not expected to lead service, preach, and / or preside at the sacraments without preparation for each event, musicians are not expected to take part in leading worship without preparation for each event. In the same way ministerial training can expect guidance and support from the church, musicianship training can expect similar.

Preaching has some similarity to public speaking. Pastoral care has some similarity to social care. But we don’t expect people of the Christian faith with such skills and experience to take on ecclesiastical responsibilities without a conversion training.

In a similar way, we don’t expect musicians of the Christian faith with musical skills to join the music team, or act as the organist or pianist, without a conversion training. For musicians, the question is what is this conversion training. And this is the reason for my music discipleship programme.