Musical Notes and Thoughts

What do I plan on covering in the new blog series?

This new blog series will likely be more personal than the Thoughts for Today blog. I expect at times I’ll be discussing the “trials and travails” of the process of composing along with the battle to recover concert level performance on the double-bass. But that will not be all.

We’ll probably look at worship music practices, theological concerns—can’t get away from biblical theological interests—leading the congregation, the impact of secular cultural, and the proverbial "other related topics." Given that my doctorate is in worship studies, it is high time that I start doing at least some blogging about worship related topics.

Worship isn’t limited solely to music, though Christians often believe that to be the case, so we may end up addressing other aspects of worship as well: reading Scripture, prayer, baptism and communion, and who-knows-what-else.

For the past year or so I’ve done a number of key series in “Thoughts for Today” albeit those series haven’t been an every week occurrence. I see that series continuing more-or-less as it has. Music Thoughts and Notes will be intended as a stand-alone, second series. How often I’ll be posting, I can’t currently say.

In terms of how God has made me, one of the themes over the years has been that when I’m not spending time doing creative things, meaning in this context composing music and serious instrument performance, I’m often not anywhere near my best (baking also counts). I suspect pastor Dave would concur. Much, if not most, of my theological writing is fairly serious, and the composing/performing provides a much needed contrast (even though that is also serious in its own way <smile>).

On my website: jameswwalraven.com, Music Thoughts and Notes will be a separate blog from Thoughts for Today. On Facebook, the two will be intermingled of necessity.

Onward!