Page CXVI Hymns-- Free Music!

You will definitely want to check out an emerging phenomenon in current contemporary hymnody: anonymous, hymn-loving indie rockers. This group or rather project is known as Page CXVI hymns. They have already released one project and are on the cusp of their sophomore record. I haven't gotten the full picture yet as to why they don't release their identities. They actually do if you invite them to your church to play. And they have the requisite Twitter, Facebook and My Space presences. Nevertheless, I appreciate the intentional anonymity of the project's drivers b/c there are way too many "rock stars" in the Christian contemporary music world (pun intended).

This music isn't just skull candy. This is the old stuff w/ some counter-intuitive sounds, yet the new tunes aren't distracting. The substance of the text remains powerful, and most if not all their arrangements can be sung by the English-speaking church. These brothers and sisters are amongst the ranks of those restoring hymnody back to the church. I pray their tribe increases.

Get the whole first album for free just this week only! Then go ahead and download their newest recording which includes among the selections How Great Thou Art, Jesus, I am Resting, Resting and The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Why the name? From their website:

The name comes from a reference to page 116 in our copy of The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It is a poignant passage where Aslan begins to sing Narnia into creation out of a black void.

It starts, “In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction is was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.”

Speak Up!

A clever marketing campaign is going on near my house via a billboard (I'm a student of urban marketing). It is a Greater Than Aids drive. There are race and ideological factors that drive this campaign, but that isn't the purpose of my posting.
The campaign aptly uses the greater than symbol to send a plethora of messages related to AIDS/HIV. This particular board tersely says: Speaking up is greater than silence (in a golden font; I assume after the Chinese proverb that eloquence is silver and silence is gold). The point is two-fold, I believe: speak up if you have HIV/AIDS and speak up against the epidemic.
My American society calls for people to be bold and unashamed about their illness. I totally expect that.
Why, then, do I shut up about Christ, the Savior of the world; the Savior from sin; the Judge of all the earth?

It's time, my friends, that we speak up with the message that truly transforms. Open up your mouth. Speak up!

1 John 4:4- Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

The Problem with Evangelical Sola Scriptura

I live in an ecclesial world that rightly touts the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone!). I have grown up in this tradition (after my early years in a tradition that held to Scriptura et Magisterium). A lot of ink and spiritual sweat has been spilled over clarifying the fact that for the believer in Jesus Christ, the Scriptures alone as breathed out by God are the final authority for faith and practice (I sometimes refer to that as Scriptura Ultima). As I understand it, this doctrine doesn't snub the fact that truth can be presented via common grace in other earthly texts. And insomuch as they accord with the Sacred Writ, they are true statements. The Scriptures are the final arbiter of all other writings.

Not too many card-carrying evangelical Christians have a hard time disagreeing w/ the above understated formulation. Nevertheless, in the day-to-day life of the Church, I sense perhaps an all too often tendency to take Scriptura Ultima in a literal chronological sense. That is, we read and are heavily influenced by the voices, authorities, and texts of our culture (NY Times, Bono, Oprah, the Academy...you name it) first. Then (!), we run the noise through our evango-high def sola scriptura. No doubt, this isn't as mechanical as I'm making it to sound. I am asking: is our reality that we literally sometimes listen to the Word of God last (or finally, ultimately)?

I guess I am proposing a practical and daily return (yea, application) to the Scriptures not just as our final court of appeal but as our first consideration.
The problem with evangelical sola scriptura in the life of the church is that it often makes the Bible the last consideration (almost like throwing a bone at God). Maybe I'm proposing that embedded in this great historic doctrine is Scriptura Principium. The definition would then be that Scripture is our first and final authority in faith and practice. This allows for common grace and culture "conversations" in between, but it properly keeps the front and back doors of the Gospel well-protected.
Thoughts?

100 Cupboards Trilogy

Both my son and I are enjoying and heavily entrenched in the first of the 100 Cupboards trilogy by author N.D. Wilson. N.D. (Nate) is said that his goal is to "bring fantasy to America". To be honest, having just previously finished two back-to-back classics (The Last Battle and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), this first has been harder to close each night. That is not at all to deprecate C.S. Lewis. That's just saying how good N.D. Wilson already is as an emerging author.

Check out the trailer below.

Trailer for "The 100 Cupboards" Trilogy - by N.D. Wilson from Yitz Brilliant on Vimeo.