I'll say this again because I don't know how
clear it was.
First time through, this is the same class as
it was in the 830, so if you're here,
the program has part one and part two, so if
you think you're just getting part two,
you're getting it all.
That's the good news.
Bad news is if you were here the first time,
it's the same talk, so feel free to go elsewhere
if you need to.
But I start all my talks the same way when I'm
in a church fellowship, and that's this way.
My name is Blane McCormick, and I want you to
know that I believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of the Living God.
Because I believe that, I'm called to be
different, called to be holy, or set apart.
And I'm going to talk about difference this
morning as a matter of our church fellowship
and how different we are in many ways.
And this talk's called Preserving Our Acapella
Heritage into the 21st Century.
It is a topic that's near and dear to me, and I
love our acapella heritage, and I want
to see it go on and flourish as long as we can,
well into this century, as long as I'm
around to promote it.
And so that's the purpose of the talk today.
I'm going to try to give you some very
practical things that you can use tomorrow if you're
in a leadership position, and I'll also just
talk about some more abstract issues because
I'll share with you what perspective I'm coming
from here.
I want to start off with a few definitions.
One is acapella with two P's.
It's in italics because it's a foreign word,
but two P's, two L's, and it's an Italian
term translated as in the style of the chapel.
Now I never knew this until I started pulling
this material together when I was about 30
years old.
I always assumed that capella was instrument.
I didn't know Latin.
I didn't teach Latin in the elementary schools
in La Mesa, Texas where I grew up, and I assumed
ah was without, and so acapella obviously must
have meant without instrument.
I was not correct in that.
Acapella means in the style of the chapel.
Now what that means is they say, well, how'd
they sing at the chapel?
Guess how they sang at the chapel?
Without instrument.
In medieval times, that's how they sang it.
It was the chant that we're familiar with, the
Gregorian chant, you may have heard some
of that, that was in the style of the chapel,
was acapella.
Now acapella with one P translates as in your
hair, which is a funny little phrase, but
I don't know if it's completely inaccurate
given that I've always sang to the hair of
the person in front of me in the pews, so this
might be applicable for today.
There's another spelling here, Acapello, which
means in your hat, if it's an older lady who
still wears a hat to church, that would apply,
or a younger individual who wears a baseball
cap to church, acapello translates to in your
hat, so that may not be totally inappropriate.
Just for fun, I thought I would throw this one in.
This is acapella, it's not a foreign word, but
it's an astronomical reference.
There's a star out there called Capella, and
it's got several planets circling it, and
the first planet is known as acapella.
So just for fun, if you spell it with capitals,
you don't italicize it, you're actually making
an astronomical reference, but I don't think
anything's going to throw you out of the church
for that.
Lastly, acapulco, which is a popular leisure
destination, really has nothing to do with
this talk, but it sounds like acapella, so I
thought I'd throw it in anyway, but we'll
go ahead and move on from that.
I want to note a couple of things up front.
The first and foremost, you need to know that I
am not a Bible scholar.
That's not my training.
I grew up in the Churches of Christ.
I think I know my Bible a little better than
the average there, but I'm not a Bible scholar.
I'm a professor, but I'm a professor of management.
I teach in a business school at Baylor
University, born and raised in the Churches of Christ.
Happy to be part of this fellowship.
I love it, committed to it, called to it in the future.
No doubt in my mind this is where I want to be.
That's not necessarily a sentiment shared by a
lot of the people even I graduated from
college with, I've seen more than one of my
friends lead the fellowship, but that's not
going to be me.
I'm called to be here, but I'm not a Bible scholar.
I'm an organizational scholar.
If you want to know the technical term, I'm an
organizational scholar.
I study organizations.
They're abstract entities.
They're big.
They're General Motors.
They're Sears Roebuck.
They're the Disney.
ACU is an organization.
It's a not-for-profit institution, and I study
these all day long, how they're put together,
how they function, what makes one succeed, what
makes another one succeed.
I don't fail.
It's okay.
It gets me up in the morning.
You may not get you up in the morning, but it
gets me up in the morning, and it's okay.
As a result, I'm going to bring that expertise
to bear on this issue of Akitele within our heritage.
This is not a biblical talk necessarily, it's
an organizational talk, although I think the
Bible's going to play a role in here.
If you need to note that up front, because
there may be some ways I go with this that
you might say, well, he obviously doesn't know
his Bible like he should, and I don't.
I'm an organizational scholar.
The second thing I want to note is that my main
goal is to avoid division.
That's numero uno with me.
I seek unity within our fellowship.
I seek unity within our churches, and one thing
that I want to do is preventative.
I try to find... I teach negotiation and
conflict resolution.
That's my standard prep at Baylor, and conflict
resolution's a big part of that.
Our reconciliation, so to speak, and unity.
I give this talk as a preemptive strike in some
areas, but I think it might be divisive
in the future as our church progresses into the
21st century.
There's lots of different kinds of issues.
Let me go to conflict... Well, let me start
with my concerns, and I'm going to go to conflict
I'll talk a little bit about the nature of
division and the nature of unity.
I have a few concerns that I want to share with
you, just so you know my perspective
and why it gets me up here talking.
My first concern is I believe our acapella
singing is deteriorating.
We're not as good as we used to be, and maybe
I'm just romanticizing the past.
Maybe it sounded better at the North 14th
Street Church of Christ in La Mesa when I
was a younger kid, but I don't think so.
I've talked to a lot of people around, and I've
given this talk at a few different locations,
at other lectureships, at church leaders'
workshops, and a lot of people go, you know,
we're slipping.
We're not as good as we used to be.
The four parts are all blending together, you
know, the... It's dragging, we're not
as good as we used to be.
And that's a concern of mine, and I want to try
to address that in a proactive manner.
The second concern that I have is some of the
attitudes that I see in the church about
our acapella history.
I've talked to a lot of people getting ready
for this talk, and I see three different reactions.
I certainly see enthusiasm out there.
I want you to know that I still see people who
are very excited about this as part of
our fellowship.
But I also came across some other disturbing things.
One was just apathy.
That's okay.
But we could do something else.
It really wouldn't bother me.
I don't view this as an issue that matters to
me very much.
Another attitude that I see is just boredom.
You know, people who say, well, you know, other
churches, you know, it just seems more
exciting at these other fellowships.
You know, they've got those instruments and
that Jazzy worship leader, and it just seems
more exciting, and the acapella's just boring.
Another one, I should have changed this word in between.
I put shame here, but that's the wrong thing,
because shame is like if you're sinning and
you get caught, then you feel ashamed.
It's really embarrassment.
It's just some people seem almost apologetic
about acapella.
They're trying to reach out to me, and they
say, well, you know, come to our church, and
I've got to tell you something up front, you
know, where you don't seem with an F. You've
just got to know that.
And it's almost like they've slipped in, I'm sorry.
I hope that's not a deal breaker here.
And it's almost an apologetic sense that gets
brought in here.
And those are just some of the attitudes that I
see out there in addition to enthusiasm.
The third thing that I want to say, and this
might be a somewhat controversial point, but
bear with me the rest of the hour as I go
through the talk and the direction that I
take it.
I am concerned that appeals to scripture, the
authority of scripture, might not be enough
to guarantee church unity on this issue, okay?
And let me tell you where I arrive at that conclusion.
Appeals to the authority of scripture on this
issue might not result in unity.
In fact, it could result in some division.
Again, I teach conflict resolution.
I'm a little familiar with the nature of division.
And let me show you my concern here.
And at this point in the talk, I make what I
call the great confession.
And I get nervous every time I do it, because
this is not something that I don't know if
I've ever heard in a public setting in the
Church of Christ, but my own opinion.
I don't speak for the opinion of the
electorship here.
I don't speak for the opinion of the elders in
my church.
My own opinion is I don't buy our scriptural
arguments on this.
I don't do it.
I don't think this is a scriptural matter.
Now, that's the great confession.
Again, it's not shared by the staff here.
It's not shared by my own father.
I asked him, learned in no uncertain terms that
we disagreed on that issue.
Gently, but in no uncertain terms.
It's not shared by other great leaders in our fellowship.
George Pepperdine, for one, like a body of
writing, didn't agree on that.
He agreed on that, or he disagreed with me on that.
But I'm concerned about that.
And I'm not trying to be the voice of my
generation either.
But I want to let you know I have talked to a
number of my friends at my age.
And they agree with me on that.
They say, we kind of put it this way, the theme
that I hear is if I have to go to the
mat for something, if you're forcing me there
to pick and choose my fight,
I'm not going to go to the mat on this matter
from a scriptural standpoint.
You know, if baptism is important to us, you bet.
You know, things that we will fight for, so to speak.
But on this one, it doesn't seem to be there.
That lot that we need, that certainty that we
need doesn't seem to be there anymore.
So with that said, let me go to what I call
conflict 101.
And again, if I've offended, just know I'm not
a Bible scholar.
Maybe I need a little bit of enlightenment here.
Let me talk to you a little bit about the
nature of the vision.
There's issues all over the place.
There's issues in our fellowship.
Issues like the role of women in the church,
hot issues right now.
In my own church, the role of small group home
churches or life groups as we call them,
very controversial issues.
In our church, one way that we could frame this issue,
and this is only one way that we could frame it,
we could say is it a sin to worship with an instrument?
That's one way that we could frame this issue.
Now, around every issue, along with every
issue, there are positions that develop.
And just for the sake of argument, we could say
there's two positions, yes and no.
There might be some people within the body of
your church
or within the body of our church as a
fellowship say yes,
I sinned to worship with an instrument, absolutely,
let's correct the Aaron brothers gently and
bring them back into the fold.
And there might be others who would say no,
it's not, let's not make this a salvation issue.
We've got other things that are more important
to us.
But the thing I want to point out is that we
get into positions,
and the more we're forced to justify that
position, that's where the division starts.
And if I believe no on this issue and you say,
well, Scripturally, then I'm going to start
digging in,
and the other side is going to start digging in,
and then we start shooting our Bible bullets at
each other,
things like singing McMillan in your heart,
shooting across to the other side,
and then we'll say, but judge not, we start
shooting our Bible bullets at the other side,
and it starts to divide.
The same thing might happen with my son, Ellis.
I have a four and a half year old son who might
not always tell the truth to me.
Let's just say he tries to bluff me on occasion.
And the worst thing I could do in that
situation is say, Ellis, you're lying to me.
Are you lying to me?
And chances are, Ellis is going to say no, even
if he did. No.
And I'll say, oh, yes, you are.
Oh, no, I'm not.
And there we go.
We're starting to dig into our positions there, okay?
Now, the good news from a conflict standpoint
is something called interest
behind every position that people can dig into,
roller women in the church, life groups,
archipelago music, instrumental music,
however you want to frame it.
There are interests back behind there.
I am interested, you know, and this is what we
have to fall back on
whenever an issue seems to be divisive.
I'm interested in the unity of the body.
One 100% interested in that.
Like I said, my main goal is to avoid division
with this talk.
And the church as a whole, your fellowship,
the Eucharistic Church might be interested in that.
I'm interested in sound doctrine.
Very much interested in sound doctrine in there,
and that's a fallback position that we can
agree on.
Another thing, I have a great concern for the law.
Other people in the church may have a great
concern for the law.
And the mistake that we make around issues
and how we create conflict when we don't
necessarily have to
is that, you know, we see a position we don't
agree with.
We start arguing and debating and trying to
convert the other side.
And by and large, it just makes me dig in more.
What we need to do is fall back on our shared
interests and concerns
because those are going to be there.
An illustration I want to give, this one, let
me talk about the Barry story.
This happened in my own family about a month ago.
There's those little red berries.
It's called nandina.
It's plants that grow wild in Texas.
We have a lot of them in our yard,
and they grow those little red berries in the winter.
You know the one?
I was playing with the two kids, the Ellis and Miriam,
a four-year-old and a two-year-old,
and we were going to have a berry stomp one
Sunday afternoon.
We were playing, and I was outside,
and we picked a big bowl of those red berries,
and we were going to take them in the driveway
and pour them out and just stomp on them.
They were big and juicy.
They had just come on. Swap.
You know, great fun for kids.
We put on our stomping shoes,
you know, the best felt that we could have.
We're going to have a good berry stomp.
And we're in the driveway,
and we're about to start the berry stomp,
and mom walks out, Sarah, my wife, dear woman.
She walks out, and she goes,
those berries are poisonous.
I go, no, they're not.
She goes, oh, yes, they are.
See what's happening there?
There goes those two positions.
You know, it's the same issue.
Are the berries poisonous?
No, they're not.
And it can start to divide right there.
And now I saw the pattern.
You know, once you see this pattern,
it's pretty easy to pick up on,
but I saw the pattern, and so I changed it.
Well, we have, Sarah and I have enormous shared interests.
What might those shared interests be in that situation?
Yeah, children.
Safety of the children.
Do I want our children to be poisoned?
What's your name, man? Seth.
Seth, do I want our children to play with poison?
Absolutely not.
Sarah certainly doesn't want our children
to play with poisonous berries.
A shared interest that we have.
Other shared interests, we want our kids to
play outside.
You know, outdoors is good.
You know, outside, away from the television,
playing with Dad, very good things.
Enormous shared interests here.
And suddenly we're in these positions.
Now, I could do a number of things in that situation.
I could vilify Sarah.
I could say, oh, well, the wet blanket just
showed up.
Why don't you play with them, Mom?
I'm going in to watch football.
I'm going to stomp into the house.
Or I could argue with her.
Say they are not.
We could escalate.
Are not.
Are two.
And whoever yells last or insults the other person
the most wins the argument.
That's a strange way to resolve disagreement.
Doesn't do anything for the relationship.
So I started questioning her.
I said, well, how do you know they're poisonous?
Guess what she said.
He'll know.
Somebody told me.
Who was that somebody?
My mom said they're poisonous.
Now, her mom's a dear woman.
But she's not a botanist.
She just had heard they were poisonous.
Passed that on.
Never questioned.
I couldn't sign on to Mom's expertise, her
mother's expertise.
I said, well, Bernie certainly is welcome to an
opinion on that matter.
But I don't know if she's an expert.
Is there any way that we could, is there any
standard we could find
that we could both agree on?
And that's the second part of this conflict.
Once you start finding those shared interests,
I don't want the kids playing with some
poisonous berries,
I want to keep playing with them.
How can we resolve this agreement?
We have to find a standard that we can both
agree on that solves this dilemma.
And I want to note here, so the next question
asked is what standards apply?
The best standards are outside the influence of
either party.
That means, like, I can't do anything to change
the standard,
and she can't do anything to change the standard.
It's an objective third party, okay?
And Mom, her mother's opinion, my
mother-in-law's opinion, I couldn't sign on to.
So you need both people to sign on to a third
party standard.
And so we came up with the Southern Living Book
of Gardening.
I said, Sarah, do you have any books?
She's a real green thumb.
I said, Sarah, do you have any books in the
house that would, you know, say,
you know, they're nandina, berries, poisonous?
She said, well, I've got the Southern Living
Book of Gardening.
I said, if it gives us the okay, if we look at
those berries and it says, you know,
it doesn't say do not let the children play
with those berries, they're poisonous,
it doesn't say that can we play.
She goes, sure.
So we looked in the Southern Living Book of
Gardening, guess what? Nothing.
That's good news.
We didn't argue.
We didn't insult.
I didn't stomp into the house to sign a third
party, another book that we could go to,
solve this disagreement.
It didn't say, it didn't say they're not
poisonous explicitly,
but it didn't say anything that they were.
So we kind of took that as a sign.
Now, the better news still, I got to give a
speech in my hometown not long ago,
and I sat by the County Ag extension agent, who
is a botanist,
and I asked her, hey, are those berries poisonous?
The official line from the Texas County
Agricultural Extension Authority says,
no, they're not.
So the botanists say the berries are perfectly
safe to play with,
so next time your kids want to play with those
red berries,
they're not poisonous.
Let the illusion vaccine begin now.
Now, let's go back to this issue of octahelonychic.
Same thing like the berries story.
What standards apply?
The authority of scripture applies it.
But what I want to point out is the standard,
everybody's got to sign on to the standards.
If you've got people who don't think that this
is an authority of scripture issue,
it might cause an issue.
Are there other standards you can reach for
that can hold everybody together?
And that's where this point, this talk goes.
Might there be some re-education that occurs? Sure.
Might some people not be fully aware of how
scripture speaks this issue? Absolutely.
But are there other standards that you can find
to keep new needs?
There are.
One might be tradition.
It's outside the will of every party in the church.
This is just the way we've always done that.
It might just be something we want.
Some people can vilify tradition, just say,
well, it's just tradition.
There's no imperative there.
Why do we have to keep doing tradition?
Another standard outside the will of the
individual parties might be majority preference.
Let's just kind of see how many people like it
in the church.
Now, it's just a government structure I advocate.
But it is outside the influence of any one party.
And everybody may sign on to it because we're a
democratic nation.
Do I think we need to solve all of our
disagreements from the church by church vote?
No, I don't think so.
It might be something that can avoid division
in a situation like this.
The one that I'm going to bring in I call
organizational identity.
And it's because I'm an organizational scholar.
And we've learned that some organizations
succeed and some fail.
Some thrive and stay vital for long periods of time.
Others do not.
And one thing we've learned about very
successful, thriving, growing organizations is
they have a very strong identity.
And they know what it is.
They know where it comes from.
And they stick to it, cling to it, water it,
nurture it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That's just the one I'm going to bring in.
It's very different than tradition.
It's just kind of who we are.
And in fact, I didn't say this in the first
class, but the Good news is there may be a very
legitimate scriptural foundation of this in the
scriptural idea of gifts.
I think individuals are given gifts.
That's pretty clear in scripture.
And it might not be out of the question if they
said organizations are giving gifts.
And our acapella heritage may be a wonderful
gift that our fellowship has been given to
share with other people who don't have that.
And some in the church may believe that this is
sound doctrine, a biblical command that we have
to follow.
And others may say this is the biggest,
grandest historical misinterpretation we've
ever had in the Churches of Christ.
But the net result from an organizational
identity standpoint is we have done this for a
long time.
And you know what?
We are probably the best four-part corporate
acapella scene the world has ever known.
We're as good as it gets.
And in the Churches of Christ, we're not the
top of the heap everywhere.
We don't have the largest numbers or the most
fabulous buildings.
But we are the best acapella the world has ever known.
I believe that.
And from an organizational standpoint, it would
be a crime to throw it out the window, and
that's where we're going to go from here.
Let me start with, let me flesh out a few
things on this idea of organizational identity
to give us some perspective on it and kind of
show how it's useful in this situation.
Identity comes from actions, not avoidances.
Identity comes from who you are, not from who
you are not.
And the example I'll make is my Christian walk.
Let's say I define myself as a Christian that I
don't smoke or dance or drink or chew and don't
go out with girls who do.
And because I don't do all those things, I'm a Christian.
You see the hole in that already.
Because the question that you ought to ask is,
well, what are you doing?
Okay, so that's what you don't do.
And it's Christianity boiled down to not doing
a lot of things.
I think there are things that we shouldn't be about.
But more important, as important, maybe not
more important, but as important as what are we doing?
Yeah, and I want to show you or offer something
kind of quirky about our history, not call it
the not.
I think as a fellowship, we've by and large
defined ourselves by what we don't do.
And this can change.
This can change, but look at this, we've called
ourselves for years non-denominational.
And that's fine, but it's an avoidance.
It's a non.
Better yet not be a New Testament fellowship.
Something, find a positive word to say about it
rather than saying, well, this is what we're not.
We're not denominational.
It doesn't do a whole lot to foster identity
within the church.
Because if we're all about nons, we may get to
the end of the road and not be anybody.
And that's bad news, organizationally.
The second non that I have seen growing up in
the Church of Christ, non-institutional.
We don't do missionary societies.
We didn't support large scale orphanages.
We had children's homes that everybody could
contribute if they wanted to.
Or we didn't have a church hierarchy.
I work among the Baptists now, and I totally
understand it's a different world.
There's a hierarchy there.
There's a mission board and society and the
whole bit, very different situations.
But what we are doing is we are locally governed.
That's our church.
Everybody's independent, locally governed.
And that is a wonderful thing.
Not every fellowship, not every history, let me
just say, has that.
Not every denomination, to use that word, has that.
There's a lot of hierarchy out there.
We typically call it non-institutional.
We call ourselves non-liturgical.
We looked around at one point in time in our
history and said, you know, there's literacy
that people go through.
It's brainless.
It doesn't foster participation.
We can't be about this.
We want to be participatory.
We want people to get into the word, to
participate in the singing, to participate in
the praying.
We don't want a priesthood.
There's hierarchy.
That's great.
But we tended to call it non-liturgical rather
than what it is, which might be participatory,
so to speak.
You know, one of the oldies, the goodies is the
non-fundy school.
You know, we have a lot of non.
So it's just kind of part of our historical baggage.
The final one, and this is where it meets this
talk, we typically call ourselves non-instrumental.
And that defines us on this issue by who we are
not, what we don't do, rather than what we do,
which if you see my button,
it says pro-Acapella, because I am very big
into this identity thing.
And we need to start thinking about ourselves
as pro-Acapella rather than non-instrumental,
because non-instrumental is not going to
sustain us in the long run.
Pro-Acapella might be a tonic that we need, and
I'm going to get to that in a few slides.
How do others view it?
My wife and I were talking to somebody about a
decade ago, and she was unchurched,
and we were telling her about our church
fellowship and how much it means to us and a
little bit about it.
And whenever she found out we were a church of
Christ, she went, oh, you're the folks who seem
without an origin.
And this is almost our calling card.
For better or worse, this is our calling card.
Now, personally, I'd like it to be something a
little bit more me.
I would like it to be something, oh, you're
that church that's broken. Jesus is broken.
You're that church that cares for the lost,
that evangelizes and growing.
But we're the church that doesn't have an organ.
I'll take what I can get, but it is a calling
card, and we need to hear that from what's
being said there.
How do we view ourselves?
This is something that I took from a track rack
in one of our churches here.
It's one of our older tracks, but we view
ourselves as a non.
I'm not going to let go of this issue because
we have defined ourselves by who we are not,
why others use instrumental music in worship.
Now, I think the good news is to find something
that says why we sing a cappella might be a
little bit more positive way to put it.
But again, we're looking at others to define
ourselves, and this isn't going to work well
from an identity issue.
Welcome, Nils. Good to have you here. Thanks
for coming.
A second thing I want to say about
organizational identity is that identity takes time.
It's not formed overnight.
It takes several years to come to who you are,
just like a kid.
I think we're born with some uniquenesses, but
you really learn to see what makes your kid unique.
Over the long run, I'm going to talk about an
issue from the airline wars to illustrate this,
because again, my bag is business. I understand organization.
Also, at this point, I believe the church is a
divine institution.
But I also believe the church is an earthly
institution, and maybe we can learn some things
from other earthly institutions that apply.
I want to talk about Southwest Airlines and
Continental Airlines.
I like Southwest Airlines. I fly them all the
time, and it is a very different airline.
Some of the things that are different about
Southwest Airlines, they're just kind of funny.
They do it differently. They took an airplane
and they painted it to look like a whale.
Now, they're the only airline that's done that,
that Samu plane. Have you seen it?
Crazy, crazy.
They're flight attendants. They wear shorts.
They crack jokes.
Their leader, Herb Keller, one of my faves, he
will go to their shareholders' meeting, fancy
meetings in New York.
That's very dignified, and he'll ride in on a
Harley Davidson, down the center aisle.
He'll be dressed as Elvis. He'll get up there
and give the corporate report.
Crazy. And that whole, it's a fun place to work.
My students, they flock to Southwest Airlines.
They were at a career fair on Monday.
Students flock to the booth. Students know it's
kind of a fun place to work.
Now, that didn't happen overnight.
Southwest was founded in 1971. They developed
this culture over about 20 years, and now
they're known as a fun place to work.
Continental Airlines, let me get a contrast there.
Another Texas-based carrier, based out of Houston.
Continental has filed for bankruptcy twice in
the last decade, been a rough decade for Continental.
And they tried an experiment in the mid-'90s
called Continental Light, L-I-T-E.
And nobody may or may not remember it. It's
just an experiment.
And Continental Light tried to be a funny
Continental airline.
They tried to turn their culture around. They
looked at Southwest and kind of envy them.
Because Southwest has been profitable every
quarter since it was founded. Hard to do in the
airline industry.
So they said, so the corporate people at
Continental got together and said, you know
what, we need to be funny.
And so they said, they basically wrote a memo
and said, okay, it's okay to be funny.
And you can wear shorts if you're a flight attendant.
And if you're waiting on hold for tickets at
the Continental desk, they put a comedian, they
put some jokes on the line on hold.
And they just kind of gave this Edict, okay, be
funny now.
And you know why? It didn't work.
Because it's not that easy to turn an
organization on a dime.
The same thing happens if you want to sing a cappella.
If you've been instrumental for years and you
want to sing a cappella, you know, it's not
going to work real well the first time.
You know what? We're quite good at it because
we've been doing it for a long time.
And opposites prove, and I tell this message to
anybody who wants to go to an instrumental
platform in the churches,
if you want to try to move to an instrumental
platform in the churches, it's not going to
work real well.
That's going to sound really bad because that's
not who we are as a fellowship.
The good news about a cappella, a few things I
want to point out here.
One, it's socially complex.
It takes about - it takes some time.
It's four-part. You've got to know how to read music.
It's hard to do.
Hard to do is a good thing because it's not
easy for somebody else to imitate.
This is something that we do already that, you
know, if you want to try to imitate, it's kind
of hard to do it.
And that's good news.
Southwest Airlines culture is hard to imitate.
If Continental just can't say, okay, be funny,
it's going to take them about a decade of
commitment to get there.
Same thing with Disney.
That's another example that I often use talking
about organizational identity.
They're the best animation studio around.
They can put out a cartoon.
It'll make $100 million like that because
they've been doing it for years and years and years.
And a lot of other studios have tried to put
out cartoons and they just haven't worked real well.
They've tried to put out animated films.
They've all flopped.
Disney just has that socially complex culture
that works.
The other good news about a cappella takes
about a generation to perfect.
You'd say, well, that's not good news.
No, it actually is because if somebody wants to
be a cappella and wants to try to be us and
say, okay, we're going to switch this a
cappella platform,
it's going to take them about 20 years to get
there and really compete with it, so to speak,
as a church.
The last thing I want to point out is that a
cappella is more than just turning off the organ.
So I work among the badges now, and I've talked
to a lot of them about this, and they try to do it.
And it's just all medley.
One friend told me, one of our badges friends,
he said, well, we have the singing Christmas
tree each year at my church.
And it's in a public, it's outdoors, it's like
on the courthouse square or something like that.
And he said, we don't like that.
The stories I'll point out, there's another one
of the Baptist associates I have down there,
talked about his time as a youth at one of
their youth retreats.
He said the youth minister brought his guitar
and it got out of tune.
He was trying to get it tuned up, you know, he
was going to lead them into singing, trying to
get it tuned up.
And he never could get his guitar in tune.
So you know what?
They didn't sing that weekend.
You know, it just doesn't happen at our youth retreats.
The funniest one came through a Baptist
minister that I talked to.
He said, more than once, I've, you know, got
there to the service to preach in the morning
or evening service.
And the choir director has come up to me and he
said, you're going to have to preach longer.
The choir is not ready to go.
You know, we're not as rehearsed as we need to be.
You're going to have to preach longer because
we've just got about one or two songs.
And I go, that's so funny because in our
fellowship, it's just the opposite.
The preacher comes in to the song leader and
says, can you lead a few more songs?
I'm a little short tonight.
And it's just the opposite in there.
So it's more than just turning off the organ.
And that's good news for us because identity is
important in making us different from other people.
We are called to be different.
Different is going to be our calling card.
The bad news about a cappella is that it can
unravel in a matter of years.
That if we don't take care of it, if we start
ignoring a cappella, and it may be too late in
some of our churches out there.
Some may be so far gone.
Maybe we've ignored it so long.
I was talking to somebody afterwards.
He says, I've written off the youth in our church.
We can't get them to do it.
They've ignored it for five, 10 years among
their youth.
He says, we can't get them to sign on to it anymore.
And it can go like that.
It takes decades to perfect, but we can lose it
in a matter of years if we're not careful.
That's the bad news about a cappella.
The last thing about organizational identity
that I want to talk about is that it needs to
be cherished.
Identity needs to be cherished.
And this is really that gift-based idea that I
want to bring in from scripture.
In other words, different has its advantages.
How is our fellowship different from everybody else?
How can we distinguish ourselves?
Our calling card seems to be our theme, like it
or not.
Maybe there's other things we want to be about.
But my challenge to you is to harness what
people know about it and see if we can use that
to promote ourselves into other communities.
I want to give you one lesson from the Cold War here.
Whenever I talk about the Cold War with my
current students, they were all raised in the 90s.
They don't know it.
They don't remember them.
There was a time in the 80s when Coke and Pepsi
went at each other all the time.
It was the Pepsi challenge.
They were trying to duke it out and get market
share from each other.
Let's say you could find the biggest celebrity
to drink Pepsi on TV or drink Coke on TV or
sing about Pepsi or Coke.
And Coke did the legendary move in the Cold
War, the one that everybody remembers.
They changed their formula to be more like
Pepsi, and they called it New Coke.
And it was a blunder of historic proportions.
There's not many things that are, from a
history perspective, that are going to make the
history books.
But New Coke might do it, whatever they write.
The history of the late 20th century, the New
Coke decision does not make the books.
Now, a lot of people look at that and say, boy,
those Coke guys, they were just real dorks.
There's a lot of research out on that now, and
it's actually a very well-informed decision.
The executives at Coke studied the market.
They looked at the dynamics and they thought,
how can we get more market share away from Pepsi?
And the big thing that came out of all their
market research is that people like sweet cola.
And Coke kind of is bitter.
That's kind of their conqueror, that bite and
that bitterness, and Pepsi is a little bit more sweet.
They said, sweet seems to be very popular.
So Coke said, well, the logical move is to
change our formula.
We're going to be more sweet.
Big flop, bad move, because Coke ignored their
core constituents.
They didn't ask the people who drink Coke why
they drink Coke.
They went and asked the community, you know,
what would make you drink Coke?
And it was the sweetness, and it was a horrible flop.
The core constituents at Coke went crazy and
knew Coke is history now.
I mean, it's just, it's gone.
And Coke found out as a result of that
decision, and this shaped their strategy for
the next decade,
that it's better to be a first-rate Coke than a
second-rate Pepsi.
And that has some real implications for our
Acapella fellowship.
And I'm here to say it's better to be a
first-rate Acapella church than a second-rate
instrumental church.
If we try to do it, it's going to take about a
generation to get good at it anyway.
Just if we try, organizationally.
It's more than just throwing a band in to the
fellowship area in there.
Some churches pull it off, maybe.
There might be some successes out there, but by
and large, on a whole, it's not going to work
very well.
If I look at it from an organizational scholar
standpoint, I want to get prescriptive here at
the end.
I want to give you some things that you can use tomorrow.
I call these leadership attitudes, leadership practices.
What can I do in my church tomorrow to make a
difference and preserve our Acapella heritage?
But I also want to share some attitudes.
They're a little bit more abstract, not as usable.
But I think that our thinking about this can
influence our actions about it.
And so I've got leadership attitudes,
leadership actions.
The first attitude I want to share is stop the condemnation.
Let's learn, because in a lot of ways, we have
been condemnatory.
And I just want to point that out if nobody
else wants to say it.
But condemnation is not a great motivator for
change, I can say, from a conflict perspective.
If I condemn the party that doesn't agree with
me, it makes them dig in.
It does not bring them around.
And I suggest that we learn to be pro-Acapella,
not anti-instrument,
because from an identity standpoint, we're
going to get a lot more currency and a lot more
longevity out of it.
So let's try that just attitudinally.
And see, that's just a mindset thing.
The second thing that I want to point out from
an attitudinal standpoint is to learn to
celebrate our uniqueness
and teach our fellowship to celebrate our
uniqueness rather than envying the competition.
And this is the problem that I see more with my
generation, not with the older generation.
Because I've seen a number of friends that I
graduated at ACU with, they've left the Church
of Christ.
They've gone elsewhere.
And I say, well, we like these community churches.
They're kind of exciting.
They're growing, da-da-da-da-Da.
But we're kind of making that cope mistake.
We're looking elsewhere for our identity.
Because one, we might not be providing identity
within the Churches of Christ on what we are.
But we've got to learn to celebrate our
uniqueness, our acapella heritage, our local authority,
our dedication description, things like this.
Let's try to build our identity around that, a
final leadership attitude, and then we're going
to get to practices.
One thing that is a mind shift to me is to use
acapella as outreach to an over-text world.
The world, in my opinion, is getting overstimulated.
I mean, you can't buy a jar of peanut butter at
the grocery store without the shelf singing to
you, practically.
I mean, it's getting that bad.
There's little things on the shelf now that
play songs.
I mean, it's crazy, just the stimulation.
And the music, the music these days.
I teach on a college campus.
I keep up with all the latest music.
And there's some music out there that's got 165
beats a minute.
I mean, that's astounding.
Or it's like this mom.
I know she went to, she had a birthday party
for her son at a restaurant called the Hard
Rock Cafe.
I don't know if you know about that restaurant,
same, it's all dedicated to the history of rock
and roll.
And she said, I said, well, how was the party?
She said, oh, man, I was tense and nervous and
angry the whole time.
I couldn't figure out why.
They're playing all this rock music in the background,
and the purpose of rock music is to make you
tense and angry and nervous the whole time.
And that's just how the world is.
And acapella, it's very peaceful.
I mean, have you had people visit your church
and say, this is the most beautiful sound?
Or they go to a funeral and they say, oh, the
singing, it was peace.
And this is outreach.
The world needs it.
And maybe we can preach peace to the world, but
we can sing peace to the world, too.
And maybe this is one of our best calling cards
from an evangelism and outreach standpoint.
Leadership actions, what can we do?
I've talked to a lot of worship leaders around
our fellowship,
tried to call some ideas from them and ask
them, if we're deteriorating, what can we do?
How can we keep moving forward?
And these are the conclusions that I came up
with as a result of talking to all those people.
One, first and foremost, they say we've got to
provide support for the marginal singer.
Let me help you understand that phrase.
I want you to think about your congregation as
three groups, three groups of people.
Three groups of people, one group reads all
music and sings well with no help.
That's my dad.
He reads music very well, sings great, carries
a tune,
is called upon to sing for funerals and things
like that.
Great voice, great guy to sit by in church.
But he's just one kind in church.
A second kind, well, I'm in this group, too.
I read all music and sing well with some help, actually.
I'm a little tone deaf, so I need to sit by
somebody like that or I don't get the right tone.
The second group reads some music and sings
well with help.
And I read all music, so I don't fit in this category.
But there's another group of people out in your congregation.
They read some music and sing well.
It's given a little help.
The last group is they read no music but sing
anyway, kind of like Neil up here.
I don't know Neil.
I'm sure you know.
Oh, yeah, but sing badly.
I see.
I talked about you in my earlier class.
I'm going to talk about you again here.
That's why you came in.
Your ears were burning.
That's right.
I've got some good things to say about Neil Coates.
The marginal singer is this middle place.
Read some music and sing well with help.
And this is probably a pretty good chunk of
your congregation.
One tempting strategy would be to
professionalize everybody.
That's going to take a little while.
I'm all into professionalizing everybody and
getting people to reading music and singing
well with no help.
But one of the best patches that we can do is
to get to this marginal singer and help them
along as best we can.
So how are we doing this?
Here's some advice.
One thing you can do is help the marginal
singer hear the music somehow.
They can't read the music.
They can hear the music.
They might be an audio learner.
They can hear the song once and pick it up.
Okay, now there's a lot of ways that we can
help them to hear the music.
One way might be to reconsider the use of a
worship team.
This is a controversial thing in some congregations.
It is in mine.
We got that going in ours.
We don't call it a worship team.
We call them mic singers.
That's a phrase that helps.
Just use it.
But they are some of the better vocal talent.
That group one reads all music and sings well.
We sit them on the front row.
We put microphones on them.
And if we could do it with cordless mics, we
just let them do it from their chairs with
cordless mics.
We can't get the sound system to do it.
So we sit them on the front couple of rows.
We have eight people, two for each part.
We give them a microphone.
They're the mic singers.
And I know some people don't like the worship
team idea because they think it's a slippery
slope to acquire.
But I'll address that one a little bit later on
in here.
And it can be a slippery slope, but that's
really up to the congregation.
Utilize recorded music also.
Maybe from Howard Publishing.
This is the ones that I'm familiar with.
Howard puts out a songbook that many of us use,
Songs of Faith and Praise.
I think it's that blue book, that new blue
book, over a thousand hymns in it.
They've also recorded a lot of the music from
that book using Jeff Nelson's group Covenant
and Ken Young's group from Midland, the Halal singers.
And you can get this music from Howard.
And they've got it on CD.
And like if you're teaching a new song to your
church on a singing night, you can say,
let's listen to the song once and see how it goes.
Because some new songs can be pretty complex.
You can play it once.
People can hear it.
You say, OK, let's give it a try.
And that just might help the marginal singer
hear the music somehow in some way.
A second way, a second thing that we can do is
choose your congregational music very carefully.
I think we've been in a little flip shot here.
One thing that I'm concerned about is, well, we
need to adopt music arranged for four-part
a cappella singing.
And this is not all your music.
Because there's been a lot of new music written
and adopted by our fellowship in the past
decade, or the past two decades.
But the bad news is it was written by people
who sing with instruments, contemporary pop
singers, contemporary Christian singers,
contemporary worship leaders.
And it was written in an instrumental context.
Now, do the songs glorify God?
Do they encourage us?
Do they sound?
Yeah, I think a lot of it is.
But the problem is it's not written for
four-part a cappella harmony.
And it doesn't translate very well.
There's a lot of oohs and aahs.
And it just doesn't make the transition.
One fellow in the last class pointed something
out to me.
He said he's from the 21st century publication.
They put out a song book, the 21st century
publishing company.
They put out a song book.
And they specifically arranged all of their
songs for four-part harmony.
So the 21st century song book, he gave me the
name of it.
But it's not the Howard one.
But they say we specifically arranged it.
Maybe one of the best things that we could do
in your church is to get a good music arranger.
We had a good one at my church in California,
the Canale Valley Church of Christ that I
worshiped at.
His name is Chris Stiver.
He could take any piece of music and he could
rearrange it.
And then he'd stick it in the bulletin.
He could take a song that was real clunky in
its previous life, if we tried to just
take it from an instrumental platform, make it
four-part acapella, and it was wonderful.
And so maybe the arranger is the key to a lot
of what's going on here.
The second thing we could do is when we choose
our music, we could play to the strengths
of acapella, especially if we're doing outreach.
Our four-part soprano alto tenor bass division,
songs that do the call and answer on that
and break into parts on the chorus, it's wonderful.
And people really like this.
And so this is one of the strengths of the
four-part arrangement.
Or a repetition, make songs a little bit easier
to learn if they're new.
Repetitive songs work real well there.
Or then there's what I call the glory factor.
On Zion's glorious summit stood, holy, holy, glory.
You get it in a fellowship.
It just chills up your spine.
Or oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent thy name. Glory.
And choose these songs, you know, and use them
more and more.
Finally, get the notes to the audience however possible.
It seems to be a bad move, in my opinion, and
in the opinion of some worship leaders,
is just getting the words on the wall.
Some people are just putting overheads up and singing.
And that's what's killing in part our four-part harmony.
We've got to get the notes to the people.
I'm old-fashioned.
Use a book.
Call me old-fashioned, but hold the book and
sing from the book.
But maybe copy, you know, insert and copy into
the order of worship.
You know, some churches try that.
Some try overheads.
Please try to use the notes if you can do it on
an overhead.
Or some use projectors.
I haven't seen it, but there's a fellow out
west I talked to briefly.
He said he's got a projector set up with a
computer that streams the notes,
and it's big enough for the audience to see.
And it's out there.
But we've got to get the notes to the people or
we're going to hurt ourselves.
Revive music education programs.
I'm a big advocate of music education for a
couple reasons.
One is I don't think we're doing it as much as
we used to.
In the church I grew up in, we'd have singing nights.
And we would learn new songs.
It was kind of part of our fellowship, what we
would do.
And they'd be great.
I have very fond memories of our singing nights.
And I was also taught music in elementary school.
I was taught how to read music as part of my
elementary education.
And that's not happening anymore.
That's not a formal part of the elementary education.
I don't believe it, and this is where I talked
about Neil earlier.
And Neil, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I
think I remember this being you.
Do you teach your children how to sing at home?
No, we do it as far as having families going.
We don't do it as far as formally.
Oh, formally, okay.
But you are singing in the home? Yes.
And I think that's very good.
And I'm holding that up as a role model because
a lot of us say,
well, that's the church's role to teach our
children how to sing.
And I'm coming back to you, and I'm saying, no,
actually, I think it's the Father's role
from a spiritual leadership issue, if this is a
matter that's important to our fellowship.
It already happened in the home, and I want to
be committed to it
in teaching our kids how to sing and what music
is about
and how we can use it to glorify God.
But that's just an aside.
But Neil influenced me on that when he gave me
some ideas early on.
One thing that you could do from a music
education standpoint is call Keith Lancaster.
He's at Acapella.org.
You may or may not know the name, but he has
the Acapella Singing Group.
And funny enough, I've talked with Keith,
and by and large the churches of Christ don't
use him much.
He comes out of us, and there are whole societies,
what I would call a cult of acapella music in
the secular world.
Barbershop quartets, doo-wop, trios, you know,
there's just a ton.
The Contemporary Acapella Society of America is
what it's called.
And Keith is a known expert.
He keynotes at their conferences.
There are whole conferences out there for
acapella singing,
not church-related, secular.
And Keith is like a star.
They call him up and say, teach us how to sing
acapella better.
He's considered an expert, and we don't use him
that much in our churches.
And he's got a website, he works with churches,
and I actually did this presentation up in
Seattle a couple years ago,
and Keith was there, and he's just like, yeah,
I'm not being used.
Please use me.
And he's great, talent all over the place,
really can help you out.
Teach our children to sing and how to lead singing.
Maybe in the home.
I would encourage you to make it a leadership
issue in the home.
Maybe in your, if that doesn't work, use the
Bible Bowl,
or it's called the Leadership Training for Christ,
and really influence it, or do it in your classroom.
You know, what are you doing in Sunday school?
Do it in your classrooms, Ma'am, do you have
something to say here?
Sing to your baby.
Very important here.
Sing to your baby.
But we need to start teaching our children how
to sing
and how to lead singing.
You know, the youth minister last time scared me.
We may have already lost a generation, you
know, a decade of people there,
so we've got to start getting our kids involved again.
Plan singing nights for impact, not capitalize plans,
because sometimes singing night is just thrown together.
You know, I say, well, I'll come to the
building tonight, we're singing,
you know, four guys get up there, they're unprepared,
they kind of shoot from the hip or, you know,
take requests from the audience,
and this is okay.
It could be an educational situation
where we start reviving this part of our
fellowship again for impact.
Teach new songs, be deliberate.
One thing that you could do as part of singing night,
oh, well, teach new songs as part of worship.
You've got everybody there, you don't have to
do a singing night,
but consider that on a Sunday morning.
Take a new song, teach it to the congregation,
let that be part of your congregational worship,
if you think it's an imperative.
One thing that you could do in the congregation
or on singing nights
is to share the history of the song,
and one worship leader has pointed this out to me.
They say, before we give a song, he says,
sometimes I just, not every song,
but I'll just take a couple of minutes and talk
about the history of it.
I'll say, you know, it's written by this guy,
and this is what he was struggling with,
and this is a little bit about history, and
this is what he wrote the song for.
He wrote it to glorify God, or he wrote it to
confirm a theological belief,
or to encourage somebody, or to help us express
our grief.
You know, you're tired of all those happy songs,
you've got to be happy, happy, happy all the time.
There are songs written to lament, you know?
And we can do that, because sometimes people
need to lament.
And he said, you know, just a couple of minutes.
And he says, and it helps the audience sing
with more understanding
rather than it's almost a liturgical thing that
we do.
It's more musical, so we can have ideas,
things that we need to get back to.
Too bad.
Or another thing that some people do is they go
to members of the congregation,
and they would say, you know, like, can you
tell us about this song?
And she says, this song was sung at my parents' funeral.
And every time I hear it, I think of them, and
we walk through the garden,
and oh, you know, and everybody, and all the
kids go,
you know, I always bash those old hymns, and
they're so meaningful
to the older people in the congregation.
And it really sheds some light on it.
A fourth thing that we can do here,
and I'm going to be wrapping up here in about
five minutes,
promote a cappella singing whenever possible.
And I'll just give you some ideas on doing that.
Teach singing as community outreach.
They don't teach it in the schools like they
used to.
Maybe it could be a way that you could bring
people into your fellowship,
bring people into your congregation,
say we're the church that teaches your kid how
to sing.
We're looking for ways.
How can we get people to come in our door?
How can we be a light to our community teaching
children how to sing?
Maybe a wonderful way to do it.
Like Vacation Bible School, you let the kids,
you know,
sing for their parents at the end. Possibly.
And foster that.
Here's just a fantasy that I have that I kind
of promote.
Maybe there's a wealthy business person in your
church that can bankroll this.
I don't know.
But I'd like to see prize money for the best
new a cappella song
written each year in the Churches of Christ.
The sign of a living, vibrant culture is that
they create their own art.
Dying cultures steal art from other people.
And with that in mind,
I wonder if we're a living culture anymore.
Are we writing our own music?
Are we writing our own songs?
And I think there are people in our fellowship
who can do it,
but we don't have some system for getting stuff
out and rewarded and doing it.
It's just a patch, but I'd like to see it happen.
Consider holding an outdoor a cappella peace
rally at your park, your local park.
You know, you think they'll come for a gospel meeting.
You get out there and you preach in a tent.
Maybe, maybe not.
Just get out there and sing in the park.
Beautiful, peaceful music.
People might stop and ask questions because
they're teched out, you know,
and just take your piece out into the community.
Maybe one of the best things that we can take
out our doors,
one of our best calling cards could be our singing.
Host a cappella competitions at your church.
Promote it in the community.
I mean, it's like I said, in the secular world,
it's a huge issue.
They need places to perform.
Maybe you could do that.
Give a cappella prizes to your youth. Www.singers.com.
You can get a cappella anything here.
It's run by the primarily a cappella company.
They sell a cappella music in all genres.
A cappella music that will make you tense and
nervous and angry,
but all kinds of genres.
You can give it to the youth to promote it as prizes.
And then sponsor an a cappella radio show, maybe.
If you've got a local NPR station, have the a
cappella hour sponsored by your church.
Who knows?
Just some ideas.
Finally, I want to close here with the good old
Songbook's Ten Commandments.
Remember these from Howard Publishing?
Thou shalt not bend my back together.
Thou shalt not mark on me.
Third one.
Thou shalt not fold nor tear my pages.
Thou shalt not use me to hit the babies.
That was always one of my favorites.
Thou shalt not use me to hit the babies.
Number five.
Thou shalt not let the children play with me.
Thou shalt not throw me on the seat at the end
of the song service.
Number seven.
Thou shalt not borrow me without returning me
to my owner.
Look at all the knots, though.
That's what I want to point out.
This is kind of one of those non-things.
Thou shalt not use me as a fan.
Number nine.
Thou shalt extend my life with proper care.
And number ten.
Thou shalt use me often and understand with I
heart my work.
Now, to put a new spin on this, I made what I
call the Singer's Ten Commandments.
Maybe we ought to tape these into our new Songbook.
Thou shalt bend over backwards to worship authentically.
Let's stop worrying about bending the backs together.
Maybe we ought to bend over backwards to
worship authentically.
Number two.
Thou shalt use the book if you don't know the notes.
We need to hear that.
Number three.
Thou shalt not let singing night be skipping night.
Number four.
Thou shalt not use me to hit the elders.
Especially if they try to change something to
keep a cappella around like a worship team or
an overhead or something.
I don't know.
Thou shalt not use me to hit the elders.
Thou shalt teach your children to sing.
Sixth thing. Thou shalt not throw me at the
overhead or the worship team, please, or the
mic singers for that matter.
Thou shalt be on the worship team yourself from
time to time.
This is where I'll talk about that slippery slope.
Maybe it is a slippery slope to acquire.
Who knows?
I'll tell you why.
It's only acquired if you let it be.
You say, well, it's just the professional Prima
donnas who get those microphones.
Well, then you take a microphone sometime, will you?
I did it.
I'm not a great vocal talent and I do it just
for that reason.
You know, if it's part of the congregation,
then I do the best I can and I get up there and
I do it.
And I say, well, that worship leader, he just
told the congregation to be quiet and just let
us sing at this one time just for the effect.
It's acquired.
Well, then sing along with him, will you?
It's only acquired if the congregation shuts up.
You don't have to let that happen.
I got preachy there. Sorry.
I shouldn't say preachy.
I got angry.
Preachers are much more gentle than that.
Thou shalt not borrow me without practicing my songs.
Thou shalt spend your life with the joy of singing.
It's good for you.
Give you a longer life and a longer church life
for that.
I think our fellowship will be better off.
Finally, the last one didn't need any change.
Thou shalt use me often and understand with thy
heart my words.
I want to close with the last slide.
This is an outsider looking in, Harold Fickett.
He's a Catholic and he's the religion column
writer for the Wichita Eagle.
He put this out about four years ago.
Outsider looking in on our fellowship.
He said, before I spoke to the Church of Christ
group at my favorite retreats in our laity
lodge down in the hill country, I was warned
that this denomination does not allow
instrumental music.
What I was not warned about, prepared for, or
alerted to, was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,
quote unquote, that exploded into four-part
harmony with the first a cappella hymn.
Our group of 100 sang hymns after traditional
hymns with splendid fervor.
One or another of the better singers led into
the first line after calling out the hymnal
number for those, mostly me, who didn't have
all the verses memorized.
The Church of Christ members did.
Their sound shocked me with glory.
And he went on to write a beautiful column
about what everybody else can learn from the
Church of Christ.
It was fabulous.
And we, I will close and say we may be the best
four-part a cappella congregational singing the
world has ever known.
And I would hate to lose that.
I'm going to do what I can to keep it around.
We may not see eye to eye on every point, but I
hope I've given you something useful today.
Thanks for coming out.
And we have an 11:00 lecture, don't we?
So we better close it up.
Thanks for coming out today.