The Sound of the Harvest: Music's Mission in Church and Culture - Softcover

J. Nathan Corbitt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900507889 ISBN 13: 9781900507882

Publisher: Baker Books, 1999

Synopsis

Martin Luther, noting music's role in worship, once commented that "he who sings prays twice." Serving as a vital complement to preaching and teaching - and, in a sense, preaching and teaching through it's own medium - music has helped to characterize Christian denominations and spread the gospel to the far corners of the globe.

Presenting an integrative blend of music, communications, and missions theory, The Sound of the Harvest examines music's role in the church and culture today, and also presents a multicultural outlook on this art form.

J. Nathan Corbitt, professor of communications and music at Eastern College, spent eleven years working in Africa in cross-cultural communications and music.

About this title

About the Author

J. Nathan Corbitt (D.M.A., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is professor of communications and music at Eastern College. He spent eleven years in Africa working as a cross-cultural communications strategist and ethnomusicologist, and he continues to travel and minister internationally.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What does God's singing sound like? I had to ask the first time I read Zephaniah 3:17, " The Lord your God is with you...He will rejoice over you with singing." Is there some cosmic song permeating the air we breathe? In 1719, when Isaac Watts penned the hymn "Joy to the World", he surely contemplated how "Heaven and nature sing".

Does the sprout sing when it breaks free of its pod? Do you wonder, if so, whether a bean sprout has a different song than a cabbage. Does the earth rock and roll when a thousand shoots break from its grasp and reach for the sky, singing in cacophonous melody? Yes, all nature sings the glory of God, from the noise clapping of the sea and babbling brooks, to colorful, sprouting bean plants (Ps.98). God's song is manifested in the hearts of humans as well.

Like a vast and fruitful garden music bears its melodies in every space where humans seek to break free of physical and spiritual captivity. A common grace of divine creation, all people sing, play, dance, and chant their joys of freedom, as well as their sorrows and longings. Reflecting the earthground of culture, they express their hopes and aspirations, and praise their gods. As diverse as God's fearfully and wonderfully made creation (Ps. 139:14), music is always cross cultural. Its meanings are so bound to the people and cultures who make it, we often fail to see our commonness because of our strangeness. God's song of a redemptive call and purpose are found every place.

Some of us choose to live in terrariums and never know this beauty because we sing with ethnocentric tongues as opposed to those of celestial angels. Dominant cultures spread their music like pervasive kudzu vine. Carried on floods of digital technology, the gentle songs of remote cultures and ancient hymns are washed away because we perceive them to be irrelevant to our experience or too difficult to learn.

Yet, as a plant is born, bears fruit, and dies, music also exhibits a life cycle. Bound to the context of its original cultural garden, which is ever changing and dynamic, music finds not an immediate death, but a fading relevance to the people who call it their own. New music is born with a cross-pollinated and grafted heritage from tradition and eventually finds its way into the marketplace of the city street. It is from the streets of our lives that we both share and borrow our musical experience.

With this pervasive music, is there something different, unique, even holy about the music of the people who call themselves Christian? Do Christians have a special song to sing? If so, how do we know what is the best Christian music? In 1984 I met a woman who changed my view of God's singing. By many Human standards her music wasn't beautiful, but it was God's singing in the new life of a believer- the sound of the spiritual harvest. From that time, I have reevaluated my concepts of beauty and Christian music ministry.

Recently I gave a lecture at Eastern College entitled, "God don't make no bad music!" It was intended to be provocative and several people took the bait. In the halls I received comments ranging from, "No, God don't make no bad music, but people sure do", to ,"Is this program about the music of the ghetto?" God's singing is about the song He has placed in the hearts of his creation from farmland, suburbs, ghetto, village, and even cyberspace. The Christian's calling is to tend that musical garden in the kingdom with the eyes of the Father, who cares as much for human hearts as the diverse bodies that encase them and live in the markets and city streets.

About this edition

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1900507889
• ISBN 13: 9781900507882
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352