Lingalinga (formerly known as Lingamish) has asked me to promote a comment I made on his blog to a post here. His wish is my command.

His post was a rant about modern rip-offs of the hymn “Amazing Grace”, which he associated in passing with the emergent church, concerning which I had just written in a comment elsewhere:

I think “emergent” has become the latest way for Reformed types to dismiss anyone they don’t like, to be added to “liberal”, “post-modern” etc. They make no real attempt to understand or engage with the people who actually use these labels. They just find one or two things they don’t like in any new movement and then add the whole thing to their implicit index of errors.

I could have added here: And then when they detect anything vaguely reminiscent of the new movement in anyone they don’t like they accuse them of being in that movement and use that as an excuse to dismiss them.

I hope that is not Lingalinga’s strategy for dismissing Chris Tomlin’s version of “Amazing Grace” because it has “an Emergent-style bridge thrown in the middle”.

I will risk even more of Lingalinga’s wrath by admitting to actually liking some of the “Amazing Grace” rip-offs he complains about, including the Chris Tomlin one. The motivation for some of these rip-offs is of course that churches insist on old hymns and musicians struggle to do something with them which is musically interesting and relevant to the congregation. But you can’t please everyone. I know an older lady who left our church because she couldn’t take an adapted version of “When I Survey”.

I suspect that Matt Redman, with “Amazing”, has ripped off not so much the original hymn as Philip Yancey’s book title What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Todd Agnew’s “Grace like rain” is a beautiful song, much more so in the version I know from a friend’s CD than in the versions (all the same recording I think) which Lingalinga links to, sung by someone who sounds like he has gravel in his mouth. Of the Youtube selection, I prefer this version, even though it is just one guy with an acoustic guitar. As for the theological correctness of likening grace to rain, see Hebrews 6:7 where the rain surely symbolises “the heavenly gift” (verse 4), God’s grace which is not irresistible but shows his love for sinners. Anyway, if poets and songwriters are not allowed to introduce their own imagery, their poetry will never rise above the kind of doggerel which I write.

Now for the part which Lingalinga wanted me to post, a comment on his post, starting with an example of my doggerel:

Emerging “Grace”? How sour the sound
That stirred a wretch like me.
I once knew one, but now I’ve found
A hundred songs there be.

When I’ve sung them ten thousand times,
10.30 every Sun.,
I’ve no less times to sing these lines
Than when I first begun.

(Yes, “times” and “lines” is a bad rhyme, but the original rhymes are worse.)

Have I earned myself a free trip to the bottom of the sea?

In a follow-up comment I wrote:

My previous comment was not inspired by this description of worship from Dave Walker, but it could have been. Actually three quarters of an hour of worship sounds like a taste of heaven to me, if it’s done well (e.g. by Matt Redman) and preferably without the dancers and flag wavers. But I can understand the reaction of people who don’t understand what’s going on, similar to 1 Corinthians 14:23.

This is of course the same Spring Harvest and the same Steve Chalke that caused such a stir on my blog, and on Dave’s other one, nearly a year ago.