Smart Alec Ministers?

Have you tried to be spiritual and a smart Alec at the same time?

Ever tried to come out with a profound thought on your feet?

Ever tried to create an educative joke on the run?

Chances are that you flopped big time.

Yet do you realize that obscenity rarely has that block? Offense flows out so smoothly that we have to struggle to stop it before it messes a relationship. Even dirty language does not need any effort. In fact what it needs are brakes.

As someone who has been and ministered in many language groups, I can almost guarantee you that should you venture to learn a new language chances are that they will start teaching you dirty language.

What I am trying to say is that sin in man is spontaneous. Nobody struggles to produce the poison that is sin.

On the same vein, righteousness and holiness require work, hard work.

Now imagine this is an introduction on Gospel music?

And why is it?

Many people want spontaneity to define their music. They feel very nice when the crowds clap for them for producing those lines effortlessly. And it gives them great fulfilment if they can sing an unrehearsed and unplanned song.

Incidentally it is the same with many preachers, which is so sad.

Godliness has no smart Alecs. Holiness is never spontaneous.

And that explains why what is nowadays called Gospel Music has very little, if any Gospel in it. It is the reason much of what we call preaching has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

Songs of the past, songs that we love singing centuries later were not composed to please an audience.

Sermons that we love sharing of people who lived hundreds of years ago were not preached to adoring followers.

Those took sweat. They required real sacrifice.

That they rhymed was not the main thing. The theology behind the rhymes was the backbone of the song.

If like me you like going behind the hymn composition you will realize that no song was composed on the stage. And many had a very rich source. Many were actually testimonies of sorts.

But there is something you also will note. And that is many times songs were made from team work.

One wrote the lyrics. One wrote the music and another sang.

There were no streetwise composers. Many were theologians and well versed in the scriptures and ministry.

Nowadays someone thinks that because they can rhyme high and sigh and buy they are competent to compose Gospel. And no wonder they get high and end up touching a thigh because they are unprepared to shy from anointing dry.

Just because someone can produce instant comedy does not mean they can consistently deliver effective ministry.

I know people who made you laugh to tears as the Gospel was penetrating. Hordes were getting transformed by their rich humor.

Years later you listen to them and discover that the ministry died and only the humor remained. The cutting edge that was their delivery in their earlier years became entertainment so that even harlots flock to listen to them, of course because they know it will not challenge their sin.

There are objects and there are tools.

Music is a tool as humor is a tool. And it is the object that wields the tool.

Turning a tool into an object obliterates or invalidates the original object.

That we can use music or humor to share the Gospel is not in doubt. But music can never be the Gospel. The closest it can be is become a carrier of the same (which is what being a tool means anyway).

Focusing on building music therefore kills the Gospel.

However, focusing on growing our faith and enriching our obedience increases the power of the Gospel.

Then, humor and music can become useful carriers for that Gospel.

Forget those rhymes. Forget those beats. Forget those humor libraries you bury yourself under. Forget those recordings.

You are the wielder of the tools that will minister the Gospel to the nations.

You will never produce Gospel if your life is not daily being transformed by the Gospel.

I hope I am understood.

Any questions?