leonard bernstein - a composer famous for his travelling orchestra of grizzlies, kodiaks, and pandas. i'll let you guess what they were called.
TED talks seem to be a bottomless well of lessons and messages that apply to any number of aspects of business, everyday life, and, although most of the forum comments might try to dissuade you, ministry. Take, for instance, this great talk on conductors by Itay Talgam. The immediate application of his talk is leadership, as you might expect a talk on conducting styles would naturally lend itself to. Itay comments on how much control is exercised by each conductor, what messages they are sending to the audience and the orchestra they conduct through their body language and facial expressions.
But a significant part of his point is that the orchestra works best when the instrumentalists – somewhere between (1) being dictated by a drill instructor on the podium and (2) struggling to read the mind of an unexpressive and unhelpful conductor – are given cues by the conductor to express themselves through the music. As Itay puts it: “I’m opening a space for you to put in another layer of interpretation – that is, another story.”
It reminds me a lot of the Hope/Fear project from (almost, now) a year ago. We formed a question, asked people to respond, and allowed the stories that came from that weave the material of a sermon.
It worked wonderfully – the project engaged the community in- and outside the church; it provided a road to deeper discussion with non-Christians without the pressure or stigma that may normally come from a Christian project; and, because all the stories that compromised the project were incredibly real and incredibly personal, the sermon that came from it was just that.
And so we come to Christmas at Unterwegs. We have decided we want to do a community project like Hope/Fear to start transitioning into a Bible Study after the Winter break – and whatever that project is, we will present it at a huge party on December 10.
Excited? You bet. Nervous? I peed my pants just writing this blog entry. But, hey, it happens to all the great conductors.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Hey you found this video too. That’s so weird because I pulled out the same quote from the conductor and journaled about it. Are we thinking a like or what?
October 26th, 2009 at 7:04 am
well, at least you had your pants on, tyler.
January 19th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
[...] lined up: music, a short talk about Haiti, the introduction of the “Home Project” that I blogged about all those months ago, and a skit – that’s yet to be written by [...]