Rohadi 0:02 Faith in a Fresh vibe podcast. Friends. I'm Rohadi. Coming at you from Treaty 7 lands in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This intro is written by singer songwriter drew Brown, entitled number four. Love, you can pick up his series of instrumentals called hymns from the architect. In this episode, we continue our series on deconstruction. The theme in this episode centres around worship or music, the industrial worship complex. Or maybe it's the complex industrial worship or the worship and well, you get the point. We'd spend some time sharing our stories we're both well drew as a worship leader are moments in the engine and also how we imagined things can look like if we get out. What is the picture of better or deeper? Listen in friends. You have a moment, look us up online at row Hatti across all platforms and Drew Brown music.com You can support this podcast, you can buy Drew's music, you can purchase my books. If you're Canada, you can visit the website rohadi.com and find links at the top of how you can support. The best way you can do that is also to share the podcast read it. Share it, tell all your friends. Tell your mom tell your mom Hey, Mom, I'm deconstructing let's join the fray. See what she says we'll let this intro fade out and then you'll join the conversation at the start of this second part in a series on deconstruction. Back at it we were jamming off air lingering around the questions of what this pandemic life looks like. Oh man. Yeah. And I'm I'm I'm kind of constantly weirded out, by the way, some folks. I mean, there's so many intersections but how everyone approaches risk in different ways. You know, Drew Brown 3:45 here we go. Rohadi 3:48 And honestly, as a pastor, this is just the pastor side, but every family you know, every family has their anti vaxxers somewhere, right? Somewhere somewhere. So like even if even in families I know relationships right now with the with the pressures of COVID straining relationships, but then you add vaccines and people will people get in divorce. Yeah, someone wants to get the vaccine, another person their identity is wrapped in whatever aspect of not getting it. And then as a pastor, I struggle I struggle because I don't know what the Jesus way is to approach or handle people who would bring harm on to the community. My answer is where I'm at right now the answer is we don't meet in person. Really hard for community that has been routed around the table. Yeah, just any commute. Oh, that's such a loss, as well. I don't know how to balance our approach in a Christ like way because there's no middle ground. It's like the the racist anti racist one. Tim Keller, there's no middle ground on that homie yet Oh no. And so I feel the VAX vaccine and the way churches approach that it's cut and dry, I can understand the tensions of when do you meet? But thank God like I don't have to contend with trying to figure out the logistics of reopening along with a congregation. Or many people are vaccinated. I don't know what to do. If I'd be fired, what would you do? You're the pastor. Drew Brown 5:46 You know, I think I think you're doing it the right way. I think they're starting not to say that it's wrong to open it saying that, but I think there is something to be said about saying, hey, let's not create more division around, you know, pro Vax anti Vax right now in our congregation, let's just meet online because once you start saying, hey, if your backswing come on in, and if you're not screw you, it definitely creates a line in the sand that right now we don't really need that. We don't need that in our spiritual feelings right now. There might come a point in time where we got to draw the line. Right now it's not it's I think, right now, the idea like let's just join together around this digital table, unfortunately, but if we can all do that we will have you know, somewhat hopefully find some access points to be can actually be there and be present. I think that just sort of, you know, levels the playing field a little bit for everybody. And we need that. Rohadi 6:42 I wonder what the numbers are because my sense is most are back. Yes, Drew Brown 6:50 that is correct. Rohadi 6:52 That's my saying they don't know if they're gonna go back. Like if you're in Alberta, I think many in Alberta still haven't come back but many others are, in the very least attempting some rollout. Right. Yes. Alberta being in the hot mess that it is right now. Hot Mess, Berta? You know, I think most people are. can't just sit online. Drew Brown 7:17 Right. And yeah, who wants you? It sucks. Yeah, right. Yes. Rohadi 7:21 Yeah. I mean, Cypher is going to stay there for a while, and we're doing things around bringing in people from all across the country. That's good. But I know churches, the big churches. So for example, the big churches, how do you contend with this, they have enough space that if you want to physically distance you sit in this section, this occurs all is attributed to the notion that COVID is not airborne. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Lord have mercy. The people who are okay, high fiving. No hugging the kiss of peace. They can go into this section. So they're actually appeasing rugged individualism. I don't know if I like that. Wow. Yeah. At the expense of of safety. Right? I don't know, maybe. So maybe I'm the baddie. Now. Have you felt that like maybe I'm the weirdo because I still have my hand Sandy in my car. Just spray myself as a That's right. Go into the grocery store. That's right. Am I the weirdo? I don't know. Drew Brown 8:30 Oh, my gosh. Rohadi 8:32 Speaking of identity, here we go. I have this line. I hope nobody has said it before, because I'm going to put it in the book that the search for belonging is what catalyses deconstruction. And when you realise you're on the margins, or there's some attribute of you, you have to give up in order to fit in, that causes you to question many things. I don't know if it was necessarily belonging for me right off the bat. But when we talk about identity and what you wrapped him wrapped up into and all the problems was COVID, which I think stem from a lack of identity when your identity is rooted in consumerism and when your identity is rooted and rugged individualism. You have a problem doing things that someone else tells you to do. deconstruction walks in the door. Let's talk about our stories. We hit on the stories but not the individual aspects like the things the things because deconstruction is an interrogation of all the things, all the things that's right. And then you put them in a basket and you go, these ones I keep and And these ones I throw away. And these ones I'll try to redeem right and then this one went to the market and that's right. I was just gonna say we do you know the pigs No, why did the pig go to the market? Drew Brown 10:19 To buy bacon? Rohadi 10:21 No to be slaughtered? Was that pig on the market? To be vegan? Man deconstructed Nursery Rhymes we Oh man. Good podcast most of them I assume are racist. Drew Brown 10:40 Oh, definitely. Rohadi 10:42 Who's the other one? I keep hearing was that all Canadian authors CS Lewis is a racist. Who was the Green Gables author racist? But you know, I'm talking about Yeah, I just basically lost all the white women. Drew Brown 10:59 They logged off. You don't mess with Anne. Anne with an E. Rohadi 11:05 Lucy Maud. That's it. Yeah. Oh, they're just product of their time. Deconstruction. So you had the big basket? Drew? Drew Brown 11:16 Oh, gosh, yeah. Rohadi 11:17 This was a lifelong process. It wasn't you just put it all like laundry day on Sunday. One time, it's ongoing. It is what were some of the highlights and the major pieces that you gave up that you kept? That she thought yeah, maybe maybe I'll hang on to this? Drew Brown 11:35 Well, you know, it's gonna sound really weird, because, you know, part of what I do is, is sort of lead son worship in spiritual communities. But a big thing that I had to deconstruct was Rohadi 11:48 worship. Music, you mean, Drew Brown 11:50 music? Younger than that. But yeah, just like, like, how we, or how I use worship in these spaces. The songs I choose the reasons why I choose them. You know, because I've always been in these mass of evangelical churches, and a lot of times, it's, it's yeah, we want to support people spiritual formation, for sure. You know, the songs we sing today, you know, sort of form the theology, we believe, tomorrow type thing. But also, there is a thing of kind of, like, I want to I want to kind of do the cool stuff, too. I want to like, what's the cool track who's cool band was a cool, you know, backdrop for the slides. What's the cool, but you know, then like, it's a little bit of that, right? All the slides, baby. And so even like, yeah, Danis like, why am I singing the song and why should anybody sing the song and why? Like, just really? So I think for me, it started with, man, I'm allowed to mention, like, names of churches with big worship ministries. Are we going that? Oh, Rohadi 13:02 well, you could stay true. Drew Brown 13:06 Okay, I'm not feeling bad about them. I just disagree with stuff. That's not slander, not slander. Rohadi 13:12 No, I do it. Who knows? We might make the news. Drew Brown 13:15 That's true. Yeah, that's true. I'll make stuff up. Hello. No, I know. I went from a hardcore thinking that Bethel was the biggest thing in the world. Especially in those early days was Jesus Culture Days that how he loves us days. The I was like, This is amazing. There's something powerful happening here. This is great. And immediately I was like, something's not Rohadi 13:40 right. Oh, really? Because when you say that, like I think that's a great song to sing once or twice. Right? Like I get when you see that's power right off the bat because that I get it? Yeah 63 times No. A year saying that. Almost right off the bat. You're like, wait a tick. Drew Brown 14:08 Sounds about right now hold on. The song is great. But just in general, the culture that was there, and that was happening around the Rohadi 14:16 soft for me around Cuz you gotta help me here because I'm out of it. And what year is this? Drew Brown 14:23 First? Yeah, fair enough. So 1995 Right. So Oh, my gosh, this would be like 2002, early 2000 Wasn't six events. Okay. Rohadi 14:33 Okay. And culture you mean the culture around the music or literally like a transplant of of the Calif California, California Bethel Church like that and right Drew Brown 14:45 to their culture or their culture, okay. And in the culture around a lot of the charismatic sort of, you know, like, circles if you will, yeah. Okay. But specifically on Bethel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I had a bunch of friends at Bethel. I set kids down at Bethel. I'm like, Yeah, I was a true believer. Don't get me wrong. I was a true believer. But some things which I'm trying were actually when it when it happened, like which song it was, it wasn't because the song sucked. It was just something about what was happening there. I could not, like, digest anymore, Rohadi 15:18 what you want. Then we complain, Oh, my gosh, and then they'll take down the podcast. Drew Brown 15:26 That's right. And then I realised that this something here isn't working. For me spiritually. It's not sitting right. And, again, nothing happened. It wasn't a scandal just like something about the way of this happening in the lyrics. And like, I don't want to bring it to my church. And actually, I began sort of going, hold on this lot of songs I don't want to bring to my church anymore. And I start going through their discography. And again, I was a true believer, man. I was yeah, I freaking loved Bethel. Yeah. And I liked Hillsong a lot. And I like, but also it was like, oh, wait a minute. I mean, there is something that is more felt than tell it's something that can just feel that something's not right with what is happening. And I think a big part of it was the fact that you know, when I look at the roster of people who are making these music, Masons making the songs, they're all usually one colour. Now all white Rohadi 16:28 you got your skinny jeans and the real hats Drew Brown 16:33 bilevel top hats, baby. I'm like slash, you know, I'm saying give me Rohadi 16:39 I mean that I go for Drew Brown 16:46 usual, always written by the same people. Which is fine. That's me. That's nothing wrong with that. But eventually, when you look at your song list, and you realise it's like, the same, like five or six people on every single song, there's something wrong with that. Do you know I'm saying it's like, Wait, this doesn't seem right to me. Yeah. Yeah. And then even there is something interesting about lyrically what's happening, like what they're teaching theologically, then I was like, Do I believe in this? This is something that I want my people to believe in. And so yeah, so worship, music was a thing that I just had to, and I'm still working through that I'm still still a few times where I'm like, Oh, give me that. Rohadi 17:34 It's a good song is that it's a good song. You just can't play it 63 times. Drew Brown 17:42 Like, what you know why, like, why was that even part of our of our thing? Why was anyway? Yeah, worship was a big thing for me. I had to sort of deconstruct Rohadi 17:50 what catalyse that, do you remember? Because now, you may have already answered that. Because you said it's something you just felt. Yeah. Yeah. But was there something that alerted you? Was there an awareness was Was there a, a musical wokeness now that's not too much. Wow. You're just using awareness? Drew Brown 18:16 I'm gonna tweet that right now. Row just musical wokeness. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think one thing I noticed about these, these sort of worship factories, worship song factors, is that their culture on the ground, if you will, in terms of how they manoeuvre with their artists, or with the people who are supporting the artists. Usually it's done within like a, like a school of ministry setting. Alright, so Hillsong school ministry, the Bethel School of Ministry, I'm sure there's some kind of like, internship thing and elevation sure is great, and that's fine. It's great to sort of invite kids to kind of learn and grow and do what they do and whatever but it's the culture is pretty intense. I don't want to say slave labour because that's just but I said it so Rohadi 19:13 well call it labour trafficking then Right? Drew Brown 19:17 That's much much better. Thank you very much and there's something about that that makes me go home that's that's these massive ministries are built upon the backs of these kids who just kind of learn and grow and Rohadi 19:32 what do you mean Wait, what are what are they building again? I don't know. What are the so they get kids to come through to do what Drew Brown 19:39 you know. So they're doing like the sound the lights the cleaning up the setting up? Okay. The production manager that this that whatever, whatever. Right Rohadi 19:49 or whatever. Yeah, all right. Drew Brown 19:51 So that's, that is the school is gonna come and learn how to write Oh, right. So you're paying to serve Essentially, Rohadi 20:01 oh, I mean, that's greasy, but that doesn't strike. Like how many people goes through that? We're not talking like 10s of 1000s? Maybe? Drew Brown 20:11 I think so. What? Rohadi 20:13 Like over the lifetime thing, it? What? Not hundreds of 1000s Drew Brown 20:19 I wouldn't go that far. No, no. These schools are huge man. The schools are huge because they're, they're supporting these massive massive like worship machines right Rohadi 20:29 for what you get a degree in truth ology from Drew Brown 20:36 now sir, you are shy? That's correct. That's right. I have a PhD in truth ology from Christian tech. Rohadi 20:45 What do you what do you get when you pull out of there? Well, Drew Brown 20:50 you got a degree yearns to get a degree. Actually. Rohadi 20:53 Is that a real degree though? I don't think so. I'm good. Seriously putting the Simpsons? You know, cool. That was good. Come on. Drew Brown 21:02 But a big a big poll is that as you train these people, when you begin, when should you start sort of planting churches, you send these, these young adults off to be the church planters, because you've already settled into the culture of the main mothership, if you will. So it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant way of doing it, like so you can have amazing people who are carrying your vision for the mothership all across the world is plant these churches. And they will look look the same sound the same work the same. So it's brilliant in that perspective. And it's brilliant. I mean, how many like internships do we see entrant models? Do we see in other large companies? Like it happens all the time? Oh, I was gonna Rohadi 21:45 say the notion of church planning or anything around that every denomination does that. They're not as flashy. Right? Or cool? Totally. It's kind of everyone does that? Drew Brown 21:56 Yeah. Yeah. It's just different when you have the machine sort of, like creating these Rohadi 22:05 shows. And that was the so that happened before, like, you're noticing the roof probably concurrently. But while you are also deconstructing the content? Yeah, Drew Brown 22:19 content came first. And the more I kind of sort of, was trying to figure out why am I even going down this road? Doing some some air quotes research in terms of like, what is it about it? Like, what is it I'm finding all these things? I'm like, Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. I'm discovering as I do some self discovery. Rohadi 22:40 How did it go when you tried to I'm gonna guess oh, I don't want to sing these songs anymore. And then quite frankly, what songs are there left? Right. What how did that go with church leadership with congregations you want to shift and pivot? I got stories about pivoting around. Drew Brown 23:00 I think I, when I was I was serving at a church, smaller church plant at the time. Really, really cool spot, great people. And the majority congregation were going through some kind of like deconstructing or reconstructing. So it's fantastic. Like the time the health because there's, there's shorty really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the topic for Rohadi 23:25 a podcast. Drew Brown 23:26 Yes, yes, it is. And we're talking to the pastor saying, Hey, man, yeah, I have no problem leading worship. I'm just so you know, I have an issue with these songs. And I wasn't even like, blanketing like, I won't sing anymore Bethel anymore. Although that did happen eventually. But um, generally speaking, I was like, Yeah, I can't sing. The songs. I just have an issue that I'm working through. Now that they're bad songs, but for some reason, I Rohadi 23:54 you individualised it. Yeah. You said my problem with these songs not passed orally. I don't realise that. Okay. Drew Brown 24:02 Right. I had I felt I had to, I felt like I didn't feel that I had enough evidence to say, no one should be singing these songs. At first. I felt like I had to beat make it personal. And he was just like, Yeah, I don't care. Great, great songs if you want like, I don't like who cares? Just Oh, that'd be so you don't care. So it was a really good safe place. And then eventually, like different artists who are a little more I don't know, safer to saying and you know, like looking at their, you know, their artwork or the website, you can tell that they are multicultural, they the are affirming they are, you know, kind of our people I was like, Okay, these are songs I can sing now. I can sing these songs. With feeling that I'm sort of checking all the boxes like these are songs that I want my people to sing with all their Heart, it will help with a spiritual formation. They're just good songs of saying you don't want to be singing crappy songs. You're just my musical level, you know, I mean, and so it checked a lot of boxes for me. And so I can, I was able to sort of move through that a little bit better. Be I'm still going through it, I'm still like, trying to understand the framework that I want to use in terms of like, choosing songs to sing for my people. Rohadi 25:29 You know, as you shared, I realised that I mean, as I look back, I think a lot of the reason why I've pressed against established institution or systems just because I am me, and I've always not seen my own self reflected in anything within the church. Right. But as you were sharing, I realised that I think, for me, that process of deconstructing and testing came through worship as well. Because that was basically the first way that I know it's, it's not, but I definitely did the worship thing. Piano picked up the guitar to, you know, start getting on to that to that massage poster to learn more. I sure did. And there was just problems with Well, first off, the weird thing is, I can't really worship musically, unless I'm playing. I'm the same way. Yeah, like, if I'm, I don't know if that's an artist thing, or why, but I can't just stand I think I've done it once. It was when Israel Houghton was, was in town, and, and it worked. But other than that, I'm kind of the weird dude who sort of looks around and sees if anyone else is singing, and then I count how many people are and it's not a lot. And it's really weird, because everyone's just watching three people saying, and it's like, why are we still doing this? And I digress. But yeah, I think it was something to do with worship and realising there's only so many stilted Jewish rhythms I could play on the piano, there was only so much Jehovah Jireh that I could like, I'm not Irish, so I can't play all the Who's that guy robbing mark, or who? I can do it, but I can't do it. You know, and there was never one time that I'm going to pull out a gospel song or you know, later in my church plants. In the simplicity of our music, we would just simply pull out simple blues, old spirituals or country music. Just because we wanted some semblance of depth. But also, I guess they were just in the seasons of lament as well, that country and blues provides for us, but it was worship. Yeah. And when I looked at it was worship always trying to test things. I remember fighting with our worship leader, other worship leaders, when I kind of took the helm being like, Why is everything so individualistic? Why are we only seeing songs that are about me, myself? And I? What is the corporate aspect? And what were Why is there everything's just fun and praise and worship? Do we have sad songs in the repertoire? They may have been partly where it started. Drew Brown 28:34 Yeah. The whole met thing was huge for me too, in terms of like, it's weird to be in church world and lament not be a part of our communal expression. I was like, Rohadi 28:49 I can I love contemporary worship guys. Drew Brown 28:51 Yeah, right. We were we were, I remember, when 911 happened. I'm the community I was a part of. There were a few families who had friends in those spaces who like, some of them died. Some of them survived. And so we were like, you know, like, you're in it and doubly connected. Yeah. And so I remember talking to the pastor and saying, Hey, let's create a space of screaming romance. It's kind of just chill and breathe, and then we can move into you know, like something else. Or no, I know. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. And he was like, Nah, man, we gotta we gotta celebrate. We gotta celebrate. Yeah, I'm like, that was like for me, like kind of the first okay, something's not right. Like, if we can't You can't make space. Yeah. Before this. Like, you can't even if we did going through the songs, what songs can we do? Like, oh my gosh. So that was a big thing for me to Rohadi 29:44 can't, you can't. It's like the prayers of holding and I even see this now. And it might be reflections of where people are at in their journey. And this is a product of formation, especially out of the praise and worship generations. Is that you are are always looking for resolution. But maybe you need to hang on to those minor keys. Drew Brown 30:09 Yeah, baby, you Rohadi 30:11 need to just hang on if you got the blues, then you got to sing the Drew Brown 30:14 blues. Right? Yes. Yeah, man throwing Rohadi 30:19 a major seven there on the five a comeback down. Don't resolve that. Drew Brown 30:24 Oh, man. Sit there lean into it, you know, I'm saying. Rohadi 30:29 So the deconstruction of of worship, which I don't know contemporary churches 99% of that is from white people. And then 99% of that is praise and worship. It doesn't really come in any other package. No one is better than that. Anyway, question that actually sounded like, I Yeah. Some people might have been nodding their heads. I can't imagine what would be better than this. And you say, good, sir. Drew Brown 31:04 I think it works for me. Rohadi 31:06 It does work for a lot of people. That's why I don't want to throw it away and say, you're, you know, you're gonna sing the same battles tonight. Like it brings a lot of joy to people. I think it's done to your growth. I would have. I think I've tweeted this. But I think part of the reason why we have a formation problem in so many contemporary churches, white evangelicals that we can pick on but you know, other evangelicals, too. And Pentecostals charismatics, for sure. Yep. You know, is you're getting Where did where was I going with that? You're we're getting stuck in a space where bad art is actually producing bad formation? Oh, gosh, and our inability to envision anything in corporate worship beyond singing. There is more and also to reimagine what that scene can look like, is crippling formation. I think I think it goes hand in hand with our with our lack of discipleship. We just have people who are only capable of consuming an individualistic approach to musical worship. Great. I'm not here for it. Right. I'm out. I'm out. Saying I can pay for Easter and for Christmas. Drew Brown 32:24 Sure. I'll play that game. Sure. Right. Twice. Yeah. Yeah, that's yeah, it's good. I'll Rohadi 32:32 learn the new stuff, you know, twice a years. Cool. Yeah. Give me the production. That's fine. Drew Brown 32:37 I'm in Yeah, Rohadi 32:38 it's what you do. 52 weeks? No problem. Do it for epiphany. Do it for some time in the middle. What's in the summer? Nothing. Ordinary Time. Do you know what I'm saying? Okay, but what can be better? Do you have a picture of that? Because there's one thing to throw away the bathwater baby and bathwater and kitchen sink and say the emperor has no clothes, payments a better way. You have some pictures of what Deepa can look like. Drew Brown 33:12 I think for me, and I'm so thankful that there are artists who are doing some really, really good, like content for churches. They're writing the songs they are, you know, whatever. Like, for me, I'm I've always been a big fan of like creating my own liturgy. So yes, the Scripture and so yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's a good thing and hymns. Rohadi 33:36 Tech, what would part one, part two? How many? Drew Brown 33:39 Come on now? Come on. We'll see. We'll see. But yeah, just like, I think like, like reading Scripture together, praying together. I think that's kind of cool to cool to do. I think that's important to do. Write your Rohadi 33:51 own prayers together. Yeah, he really corporately do like and there's power in the lectionaries. Right. But write your own stuff. Create. Yeah, yes. Come let's keep it coming. Drew Brown 34:06 I think that's important to me. And that's key. And even now, like as I'm sort of combing through some older songs, songs I want to incorporate I'm totally changing lyrics to make it something I can sing. And just making work. I'm like, I don't care. I'm doing this. And so yeah, I'm just, I don't know. I have no ideas. But I know for my community, I'm trying to do something that is high nutrition, low junk. And something that is can really be helpful in terms of spiritual formation. And so I'm like, pulling from all the areas from all parts of church history and trying to make something that is beautiful and wonderful and creative and Rohadi 34:58 Okay, give us an example though, because So you have examples of music you have created. So that's certainly in the realm of artists and I concur. Like if our, if our most artistic people are on the worship teams, we should let them loose to create. Yes. Period create new things. Yes. Yeah. Now maybe everyone can't create an instrumental record an album. But what are some more things that that local, small community can do? Drew Brown 35:36 You can, so like, I write my own liturgy, so you can write your own. So like, whether it's, I'm a huge fan, just taking scripture and has been rolling with it. And so I'll take whatever a Psalm and I'll like, modernise it, or personalise it to the story that we are, we are sharing and then insert certain phrases from the Psalm and have that be so now we're, we're not just reading scripture, we're reading scripture through the lens of our story as a community. And that's beautiful and helpful. And it just sort of it brings. It brings the Psalms and scriptures kind of like, to a place that we can engage in from a heart space, because we all kind of know from a headspace, we've been reading this stuff for years, a lot of us a lot has been written stuff for years. But now it's kind of like changing the lens, and we're like, okay, I feel it, I feel this. And when you change it to something that you can feel as you sort of revisits in your life, if you just read it different, you look at it differently. It's not just these words, you can read on a page or your life now it's like this, this is home. This is home from, you know, wherever scripture might be. So I do that a lot. And then liturgy, invite people to do prayers, especially if we're doing like a. Like, if we have moments of romance or moments of celebration, or, you know, like, let's have people especially if their stories are tied to those things, and they feel comfortable doing it. Like, like you want to get you want to. There's nothing, I won't say that there's something extremely powerful to get someone who's willing to do it, who's in a good headspace for it. Get someone who is grieving a heavy loss to write a prayer lament for the church. That that hits different domains, because now it's not me saying, Hey, we all experienced grief. I know I do. It's not me saying that. It's someone who is like, openly in the darkest season of their life, full of doubt, full rage, and saying, God, what that are you doing? But I'm still gonna trust you for some stupid reason. I'm still gonna lean on you in this moment. And pray something around that, that just hits different baby. And it's something like, again, that like spiritual formation piece can like, like, we're allowed to feel this way. At the same time, we are trusting that God will come through will he will and that's part of faith. That's part of faith. For me that I had to go through. I'm like, I don't think I can trust God. That was my story. Like, I don't trust this guy. I don't trust this person. And so that alone was super can be very healing for people. But also can teach people like, okay, yeah, I'm allowed to doubt I'm allowed to be angry. I'm allowed to do this, while still leaning into the everlasting arms of God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Things like that. Because, I mean, I've never experienced that in church before ever in my life. Rohadi 38:49 Yeah, and I would, I would venture to guess that most Christians in a contemporary context or a modern context, the would not know anything beyond music. Right. And usually craptastic music like there's, I mean, so accurate. I mean, it's not it's generally not good, but we still do it. That's why I have a big problem with with the way we centre music as the only story for worship, and you use this term and it's and it's bang on and it's what's what were missing spiritual formation. I don't know. And this is through our lenses, other traditions that are better. Yeah. How many are being formed? Spiritually formed, right? With depth, right in the kind of repetitive craptastic music that we're doing week in and week out. I'm serious. I'm serious. Edit is hilarious, but it's Like, if if it's hard to listen to Now someone might shoot back and be like, well, it's you know, the community is celebrating our imperfections. It's like, if you can't do it well, and this might be the artists it'd be, I could be wrong. But don't do it. Right, right. Or do it really simply, like have one person up there have just an instrumentalist have just, you know, what we've tried to do in Cypher church. So we didn't do this in in Calgary church in the first church plant we did, we did pull all the way back from praise and worship. Like I said, we would still have maybe a component of it one or two songs, country music, like really simple stuff, but it was always kind of weird, because how do you really do this in groups of like, 2030 people? Right, right. Yeah. And then Cypher comes along, which was an awesome example of attempting new things. And that was our we didn't I don't know if we intentionally pulled it out. Because at first Cypher was just like a hip hop Cypher, and that it was crashing bang, we had, we ensured we brought in talent to undergird the whole thing. So we had a band of exceptional drummer, maybe guitar and piano, and then everyone else filled in, and the expression of worship through this, and that's what we call it, it was incredible. You never had anything like that people moving dancing. That's the other point that everyone is moving now, not in a Pentecostal wave your arms kind of way, but in a dance in a rhythmic kind of manner. And people are participating in that whether you're far away from the centre, or you're in the middle, you're still part of this expression, this circle, lyricists, rappers, singers, instrumentalists, dancers. So we have this huge example, which would be like the big church and their awesome band on Sunday morning. And then that sort of petered out after a year and a half, two years, we came hard to keep up. So we went to the opposite end of the spectrum. And this is kind of like the age of social media and Facebook, you know, people will lose their minds, if you change the look and design of Facebook, but they'll get over it after a day or two. So we just built that right off the bat, like, we don't know how we're going to experience faith in a fresh vibe. But we're going to make the hotel, we're going to make the attempt. And so we have been trying and went while we were meeting, of course, all sorts of different things. We would have spoken word evenings and let the let the poets in the writers speak through their words, we would have poetry evenings, we would have paint expressions through abstract art we had and I remember this, because it was unlike anything I've ever experienced, would be something that you could just never replicate and any run of the mill church, we had a a, someone designed this. And We reinterpreted it through the lens of our community. Empathy through movement. You can imagine a formative event of surrounding empathy, how and through movement, which means people who say they can't dance, you're bringing them up. So we probably had 20 people come through and maybe more. And it was literally a movement in a way to mimic and see one another to literally move, but then that's a vulnerable piece. But to look into the eyes of your partner, or the one moving across from you. And oh man, the the the experience in that evening was unlike anything I've ever experienced before, and it was totally an exercise in ICU, right and empathy. And so these are moments that we just haven't tested or made an attempt, we're gonna fail at so many, but we don't have space for them. And that makes me so sad because the way we worship is as numerous as there are people I think are high, and we want to hit up on each and every one of them. Spiritual Formation, man, I like before we trail off the localised. liturgies so when you're talking about writing your own stuff for your own community, that's the power man. I know there's power when you pull out the lectionary and you earliest reading the same stuff. All churches around the world are reading in this moment right now. You're not forgotten. We're together. Yes. Not less powerful now, right? Easter and Christmas. I mean, you don't have to do these things every week. And so on the other week, test out, man, why can't the artists write songs about your neighbourhood? About the monuments on your land? That's right. Why can't you just sit and listen white? Well, I'm an introvert. So a lot of the things are just sitting Be quiet. Right. But, oh, this was the reorientation and the hopefulness I think of we are going to use the word reimagining what worship could be. let's reclaim that. Come on. It was just reimagining Drew Brown 45:51 reclaim the words that we say. Rohadi 45:54 Well, we can reclaim some aspect of worship. It's beyond music, man. Drew Brown 45:59 It totally is. Totally is That's right.