CCM: It’s the worldview

On a recent broadcast of The Paul Edwards Program, I asked Jay Swartzendruber, the editor of CCM Magazine, if he and his staff had arrived at a philosophical definition of what Christian music is or isn’t:

It’s a very difficult thing. For one thing – Christian music – we’ve really made it this thing where it’s a genre in our industry and if you look at it honestly, Christian music is not a genre. It’s a description that we use to describe music made by Christians in all kinds of genres, from hip-hop to jazz to hard rock to soft pop, and so it’s not really a genre. If you want to call it a genre, then it’s the only one defined by its lyrics, which is a really odd thing. And we can’t say truthfully that we’ve defined it by who’s making it because what about all the Christians making music that aren’t distributed into Christian bookstores. So we’re saying, “It’s Christian worldview music.” It’s music that has a biblical worldview of life reflected in the lyrics and created by believers.

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Advice on direct-mail fundraising appeals

Joel Belz in the May 12, 2007 issue of World Magazine has some practical advice on what to do in response to all of the direct-mail fundraising appeals we all receive from worthy nonprofits:

  1. Cut out the small gifts. You’ll just encourage them and the reality is that over the long term it will cost the organization more to send the appeals for your money than what they actually receive from you.  “You can count on that organization sending you several dozen more appeals – maybe even every single month – costing the organization a minimum of 50 cents each. Do the multiplication.”
  2. Reduce your list of giving ‘targets’ to no more than half a dozen organizations – including your local church. “Start by designating 10 percent of your income to your local church…go on then to pick two, three, or even five other organizations you also want to give to – and right away designate 1 percent of your income for each one.”
  3. Set aside another 1 percent of your income for relatives and friends who appeal to you for support of short-term missions trips.

But what about all those other nonprofits who make appeals to you but you didn’t choose to support?  “…start sending a simple form letter. Tell them lovingly that you’ve picked a handful of organizations to support significantly; that you like what they’re doing but you can’t support everybody; and that for your mutual good they should remove you from all mailing lists. You’ll be saving them some money and yourself some future frustration.”

World Magazine: Junk the junk mail

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Handel’s ‘Messiah’ Anti-Semitic?

Michael Marissen writing in the April 24, 2007 issue of The New York Times thinks so.

…”Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the “Hallelujah” chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel’s day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God’s promised Messiah.

Marissen argues that the author of the libretto, Charles Jennens, was “deeply troubled by the spread of Deism,” and the deist belief that Jesus was neither the Son of God nor Messiah. Through a leap of logic, Marissen sees Jennens intended target as not the deists, but rather “rabbinical scholars” (the Jews) who supposedly gave the deists their “anti-Christian ammunition.”

In other words, Messiah was never intended merely as great art, but rather as a subliminal message to Christians everywhere to hate the Jews:

Like Arius, who won popular opinion for his views with catchy anti-orthodox jingles in the fourth century, Jennens resorted to music, approaching Handel with his libretto.

By publishing Marissen’s piece, The New York Times continues to display its own anti-Christian bias.

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Managing Money

The Bible certainly warns us against the desire to be rich, and those warnings ought to be heeded (1 Timothy 6:9,10). Contentment is the hallmark of the genuine believer in Jesus who lives on limited resources. 

If, on the other hand, you are already rich, it is not the fact that you are a millionaire that in the end messes you up.  It’s the fact you trust in uncertain riches which becomes your undoing (1 Timothy 6:17) . So Paul distinguishes between the non-rich who desire to be rich (they should be content) and the rich (they should guard against the temptation to trust their wealth rather than God).

That having been said, GenX Finance has an interesting post that is worth a read: The Top Five Ways to Become a Millionaire  (HT: Hugh Hewitt).

Is there anything about what we believe that prohibits Christians of simple means from managing their money in such a way as to become wealthy? What are the benefits? What are the pitfalls?

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