Changing tunes, or just more of the same?

I was at the Changing Tunes conference not so long ago for work, and spent most of the afternoon plenary session listening to people make the following comments about music education:

1 - the majority of activities are still "come to us", venue-based opportunities to engage
2 - it is attractional to people like us, but we need to work on diversity and outreach through audience development
3 - we need to move out of silos with regard to the current cultural offer, and provide mixed-economy opportunities
4 - we can only provide models and principles, not blueprints
5 - we must insist on sharing learning, esp through storytelling
6 - we must out-think the orthodoxies
7 - sometimes it's difficult to tell the baby from the bathwater

You see, it got me thinking about the sort of conversations that happen so often on blogs and around the emerging church, so allow me to "translate":

1 - the majority of churches are still "come to us", venue-based opportunities to engage
2 - it is attractional to people like us, but we need to work on diversity and outreach through mission
3 - we need to move out of denominations with regard to the current spiritual offer
4 - we can only provide models and principles, not blueprints
5 - we must insist on sharing learning, esp through storytelling
6 - we must out-think the orthodoxies
7 - sometimes it's difficult to tell the baby from the bathwater

Spot the difference?

4 comments:

Myn said...

Attractional is not a word.

Rob (the ergonomist). said...

The alternative is to be incarnational, but I'm not sure that's a real word either...

Fat Roland said...

Attractional is not a word, and I just can't quite think of an attractive alternative...

...oh hold on...

Fat Roland said...

...on a more serious note, I agree with most of this, especially (1) and (7).

Does (6) mean we simply have to be more cunning? More clever (otherwise known as "clevererer")? Does it imply an intellectual superiority? Aren't we The Orthodox, considering we use a lot of traditional elements and much of the 'emerging' stylistics are old NOSisms* rebranded? You've got me (out)thinking there.

*NOSism is a new word for things similar to the alternative worship scene of the late 80s, early 90s, the most famous of which was the Nine O'clock Service (NOS).