A wonderful spirit, worship music, venue
by LT on 10/29/23Museum of the Bible - WashingtonI loved being able to worship at the Museum of the Bible, a place dedicated to making Father, Son, and Holy Spirit known to the whole world! The morning was full of worship leaders in full regalia of skinny jeans, t-shirts, jackets, and obligatory footwear and the rest of us, lifting our voices together in worship. It was a diversity of denominations, which added a richness to the mix and the requirement to make allowances for those differences--just like the body of Christ. Matt delivered a great challenge; then he introduced Dr. David O. Taylor, who spoke on the importance of our music speaking the theology of the faith, not just what makes us feel good. Great information. One interesting point that he unwittingly made: there are lots of contemporary songs about creation, for example, but because he didn't know about them, he thought they didn't exist. No shade there, just the realization of our own need to step outside our CCLI comfort zone and look all over, in the different language and different denominational settings than we are accustomed to. Overall, though, an excellent lecture which I greatly appreciated. Lunch in the MOTB 6th floor cafeteria (Manna, I think it was called) was delicious and served in good time considering the many customers. Dinner was different because the MOTB food venues were closed at 4:30 or so, and the conference went til 8:30 pm (it had been listed as 9:30 pm...hmm). The panel talk was pretty good, but they kind of strayed into their own mutual memories which totally left us out. The Q and A was worse because they talked so much about their own stuff, which after the first few didn't answer the questions, that people didn't have time to ask questions. It was a good demonstration of how people can be gifted in one area--writing and leading songs of worship--but not necessarily good at another, like speaking concisely and considering that they are communicating with the audience, who paid $150 to get information to help them be better, not lengthy memoirs irrelevant to the topic. It felt as though the last session everyone was tired and would have done better to just go home, except it would have been in rush hour traffic. We sang some of the same songs we had done that morning and then some other "classic"CCM songs. We had communion together, which was nice, but yeah I was glad we got to leave early. It was nice to have time to peruse the exhibits at the MOTB, and the employees were very nice; but at 5 pm everything was closed, even the gift shop, so we had to wait til 6:30 pm...but we were not permitted in the auditorium. There was a Starbucks and a Potbelly open around the block, but that was it. Could have been planned out better, maybe to even sell some merch outside the auditorium. Musically, the cello and violin were beautiful, but I missed the drums. One thing was frustrating that had also happened at a Lifeway songwriting workshop: they said that WE (the worship leaders) need to write all the songs that the songwriters hadn't written yet, but they never said how to pragmatically share them with other worshippers. What do we do? Can someone set up a ministry that reviews songs for quality/potential and help them be distributed? I asked that at a Lifeway conference once, "Can we submit our songs to you?"and the answer was, "No, we don't accept direct submissions."Oh well. Anyway, at least Matt et al. were much nicer about it, not like an exclusive club. Lighting-wise, we couldn't see the two leaders with baseball caps' faces. Perhaps it works in church where they are up on a stage, but they were DOWN on the stage with the audience up. Didn't work. I don't know who was responsible for the slides, but I would have paid $150 to do them myself; the quality, the phrasing, the timing, were consistent--consistently, woefully bad. I understand that sometimes the tech people get lyrics at the last minute, but this was something we paid to attend; come on...also, acknowledging the small size of the screens should have been a factor in how many words on a line. There was one slide on a home-sized monitor that had the entire Apostles' Creed--over 20 lines--on one slide. Disappointingly unreadable for anyone not in the first few rows. The morning started well, but, as the day went on, I left feeling as though the people who put the conference together 1) thought someone else was planning it or that it would otherwise magically take care of itself, found out that wasn't happening, and then threw it together at the last minute, 2) didn't care and just slopped it together (though the two lectures were well-prepared), or 3) thought we were too unaware/stupid?/forgiving to notice. Maybe that's true; it might be just like that at home--it seemed that most people were okay if they got their coffee; in the PM sessions that wasn't allowed, which may have contributed to the tiredness. Would I go again? Not the way it was set up. Nonetheless, God was worshipped. WIN!