GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The Sweetest Song I Know: Authentic Musical Worship Deepens Our Experience with Christ

Daniel Cerna

What Heavenly Music

Kelli Daugherty

A Mighty Fortress

Music in Worship, Part 1: In Spirit and in Truth

Music in Worship, Part 2: In the Beauty of Holiness

How Can I Keep from Singing?

Well, hello everybody, how are you guys all doing today?

Good, I see a lot of stragglers in the hall.

It looks like there's a lot of people still deciding what seminar they are going to attend.

So why don't we just we will go ahead and start as the last 1 with a song and hopefully that will draw some people in.

So I do not have a PowerPoint for this presentation.

1 quick introduction to me is that I am an academic and I'm afraid that if I give you a PowerPoint you're gonna be in 1 of my lectures that I've given.

So I was like you know we're not I'm not gonna get caught in the weeds We're not gonna have a PowerPoint But if you have questions specifically regarding a lot of the information that I have I have a ton more information I have a lot of research behind it.

I don't want you to get caught up in the weeds I want us to at the end of the day focus on the spiritual component of what we're going to talk about Does that make sense?

Okay, so let's go ahead and start with singing.

Yeah, okay, well if you need the words, we all have phones, so you can look it up.

It's in the hymn notes number 506, a mighty fortress is our God.

Fortress is our God, Our bold work never failing, Our helper here amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe, His craft and power great, and domed with cruel hate.

Did we in naught our strength confide, Our striving would be losing?

Were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing?

Christ Jesus it is He, Lord of all his name from age to age the same and he must win the battle.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abided.

Through him who with us sided, let goods and kindreds go.

Let goods and kindreds go, this mortal life also.

The body they make him, God's truth abided still, His kingdom is forever.

Anyways, let's go ahead and get started with a word of prayer.

Dear gracious God in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity and the privilege we have to be here at this conference, Lord, to come to learn about you and to be in your presence and to be with each other.

Lord, I pray that you'd send your spirit to be upon us, to open up our hearts to hear your words.

Speak through me that they may be yours and not my own.

So I loved a lot of you guys were here from the last session.

I was really thankful for those questions because we're going to go over those things in this presentation.

It's nice to meet you all just a little bit so you know who I am.

I'm actually a graduate student in historical performance.

Basically, I couldn't decide if I liked music performance or music history, so I decided to do a degree that combined both of them.

So, hence music and the Reformation is a great topic for me because that's what I spend my research time on and I spend a lot of my performance also on 16th, 17th and 18th century music.

Also Daniel and I are the music coordinators this year for the conference.

So we really hope and pray that you're blessed by the music this year and the song services and special music.

If you have anything that you want to talk to us about that, like please feel free to come let us know.

You know, we want this to be your conference and we want the music to ultimately create a space for us to meet with God.

So, thinking back to the beginning in scripture, scripture is very much full of art.

There is a very common idea that is prevalent in sacred and secular society that God sung the worlds into existence.

You see him creating things that are good, creating things that are beautiful.

And then as you continue to go on in later chapters of Genesis, you see the introduction of the creation of musical instruments by the sons of Cain.

You see, we see singing, we hear about poetry.

In fact, over a third of the Bible is written in poetry, and many of the words of God, especially, are written in poetry.

Perhaps suggesting that they may have been sung.

The Psalms, it's a book dedicated of music.

But yet, through all of this, we actually don't have a written record of what the music may have sounded like.

There's nothing that says what it may have sounded like.

All we have left are the words and the intention of the worship, But we'll get into that later.

We even have, as Daniel talked about, we have instances of music in heaven.

We hear about Lucifer, how he had pipes for singing.

And there are so many wonderful things that we see in music and scripture.

And as we continue to go on throughout time, a lot of people have a lot to say about music.

So for much of what we know from antiquity, of course, the farther back you go, the less information you have.

But there are so many ideas and concepts we have, and even Daniel touched on this, the idea that there is music in the spheres.

All nature sings around me rings the music of the spheres.

And we get this idea that there are these harmonies of the celestial bodies and of everything in the heaven.

Everything's kind of combining into this beautiful harmony that brings them all together, right?

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the idea of Musica Universalis, the idea of music of the spheres, it actually came from Pythagoras.

He had this theory, or he noticed this theory, and he used it to create ratios of different intervals for different tones.

So the idea, like, we get our perfect fifth.

The interval for a perfect fifth is a 34.

We get that from Pythagoras because he was playing with strings.

Because he had this belief of music from the spheres.

But just because it was Greek doesn't necessarily mean it was wrong.

If you look in Jewish writings, you get a lot of these ideas as well.

We saw that in Daniel's presentation with the music, so we don't need to be afraid just because we see a Greek philosopher writing about it.

And then when we actually get into music, and music that we actually understand and know how to read.

We have ancient tablatures of music, we don't know what it means.

But little very much survives until the medieval era.

And then we start getting more and more and more as we go into the Renaissance.

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Series

The Sweetest Song I Know: Authentic Musical Worship Deepens Our Experience with Christ

A Mighty Fortress

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

What Heavenly Music

47m

A Mighty Fortress

1h 1m

Music in Worship, Part 1: In Spirit and in Truth

41m

Music in Worship, Part 2: In the Beauty of Holiness

47m

How Can I Keep from Singing?

56m

Sound Doctrine