Spreading Biblically Inspired Music

The music at the conference was provided by Heart Sounds International.Frank Fortunado did a fine job of taking the Biblical text of Jesus calming the storm and casting the demons into the pigs and turning that into a song for us to sing.

Because the conference was devoted in part to reaching cultures through Bible Story Telling that often have no written language and no "Bible", that means they have no Christian music.

The Heart Sounds International folks are "ethnodoxicologists" who 1. Analyze local cultural forms of song and 2. help local Christians infuse the forms with Biblical content.

Of course in Reformed circles, we have a large body of psalmody and hymnody. Music books emanating from the Reformation period on the continent were known for containing all 150 Psalms set to the meters of the day, then a collection of "Bible Songs" putting Bible passages to music, then a collection of hymns or musical meditations on Christian themes not directly connected to a specific text.

Heart Sounds International has a You Tube Channel where you can see their work.

Unfortunately modern Christian music in the US is very sensitive to the music of our culture, but not faithful in rendering metrical psalms or Bible Songs and some of the meditations on Christian themes leave something lacking.

Maybe we need some ethnodoxicologists in the Contemporary Christian Music industry?

Update: Here is an interesting article by Terry Mattingly on the this phenomenon of how music is shaping the church.

If we were on a foreign mission field and Tribe A liked one form of music and Tribe B liked a completely different form of music, we wouldn't chastise Tribe A for failing to sing the songs Tribe B liked. We have multiple "Tribes" in the US. They tend to be segmented by generational criteria instead of geography or race.