{"id":2394,"date":"2009-02-02T19:46:17","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T00:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2394"},"modified":"2009-02-02T19:46:17","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T00:46:17","slug":"not-in-praise-of-praise-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2394","title":{"rendered":"Not in praise of praise music"},"content":{"rendered":"

I note that the bloated plutocrats who run television<\/strong> have chosen to put \u201cHouse\u201d opposite \u201cChuck\u201d on the schedule tonight. Thus am I torn between two monosyllabically titled series that I especially enjoy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have to go with \u201cHouse.\u201d \u201cChuck\u201d is great, and even has a hot girl character named Walker, but Gregory House is the one character on television with whom I most identify. The pain of losing \u201cHouse\u201d will be greater than that of losing \u201cChuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Someday (probably when I\u2019m old, blind and deaf) I\u2019ll get Tivo.<\/p>\n

I went to a different church this past Sunday. Actually I\u2019ve gone to this different church for the past two weeks. I was contemplating changing my membership (same national church body, different congregations).<\/p>\n

As you may have noted from occasional blog posts of mine, my mild enthusiasm for what is called \u201cpraise music\u201d in church has cooled over the years to indifference, and has now settled into plain loathing. Some people hate the music, but I can live with the music. It\u2019s the lyrics that scratch my chalkboard. There are exceptions (I can think of exactly one, which we never use in our church anymore), but praise song lyrics are pretty generally amateurish, banal in sentiment, incoherent in theology, and repetitious. Some of them are like a slap in the face to anybody who\u2019s ever attempted to write a decent song lyric. <\/p>\n

So, since my home church has welded itself solidly to the praise song format, I thought I\u2019d check out another church, which is only a little farther away, and where (I understood) they offer a traditional service.<\/p>\n

I went to the late service last Sunday, only to learn that their late service is a praise music service. Their traditional service is the early one.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I got up bright and early and went in for that.<\/p>\n

It was very nice. I felt far more comfortable in a \u201ctraditional\u201d (traditional by low-church, pietist Norwegian standards) service.<\/p>\n

Right up until the pastor announced that now we\u2019d all be breaking up into small groups for prayer.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s advice for anyone planning church outreach to shy people\u2014we don\u2019t like breaking up into small groups. Especially when we\u2019re strangers in your church.<\/p>\n

I guess I\u2019ll stay with my old church. Maybe I\u2019ll get lucky and sustain a massive brain injury, and come to love praise songs.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I note that the bloated plutocrats who run television have chosen to put \u201cHouse\u201d opposite \u201cChuck\u201d on the schedule tonight. Thus am I torn between two monosyllabically titled series that I especially enjoy. I\u2019ll have to go with \u201cHouse.\u201d \u201cChuck\u201d is great, and even has a hot girl character named Walker, but Gregory House is … Continue reading Not in praise of praise music<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}