This is such a useful approach to take in the training of preachers. It always has an impact.
A few years ago I illustrated this from a performance of Stairway to Heaven, with Led Zepellin in the audience. Watch their faces carefully, very carefully. That hint of a smile. That satisfied glance to one another. They are loving this new performance of their song. This is how I’d love Peter or Amos, Moses or Paul, to respond when they hear me preach from their books.
Well, this year brings another example – this time for those who may not be Led Zepellin fans. How about the composer, John Williams, and the way Harvard University’s Din and Tonics acapella men’s group perform his music at their graduation last month?! This time it is a bit different from the Led Zepellin example. Here the singers take so much more liberty with the original score. But still they are faithful to the original meaning. Listeners – and the composer, more importantly – recognise this and can hear this going on. And yet the contribution they make is that in their creative performance they render the orginal significant for a new setting.
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Football helps me train preachers. See, when you speak to me about football—or, ‘footie’—I need to know where your feet are before I can understand what you mean. Are your feet in Ireland, or Brazil, or the USA, or NZ—or in crazy Australia? It must be the most fanatical sporting nation in the world. Within…
Having been born in 1959, I don’t remember much about the 1960s. But I have heard a lot. Hippies. Drugs. Rock ‘n Roll. Assassinations. Moon-walking. A quick trip across to ChatGPT informs me immediately that it was ‘a transformative decade across the world’—marked by the civil rights and feminist movements, Cold War tensions, consumerism and…
I'd love someone to name all the pieces of music – because I can't pick them all!