A mission team from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY recently took the Gospel, and some bluegrass, on a mission trip to Newfoundland.

The team consisted of 19 students and faculty members from the seminary. The team put together a bluegrass band comprised of seminary students, and used the music as a means to draw a crowd. Other team members then interacted with listeners and attempted to steer conversations to the Gospel.

My impression from the article (available here) is that the music enjoyed a warmer reception than the message. The students did learn valuable lessons about sharing the Gospel in another culture. Newfoundland may not be that different from American culture in general, but from the culture of Louisville, KY there is considerable difference.

Sometimes you can take something that seems incongruent, like bluegrass and Canada, and those two actually have a common denominator in that they can tie together to get a hearing for the Gospel.

It seems bluegrass and the Gospel can cross cultural boundaries.

If you’re interested, you can read the original article here.

In the lyrics from the opening track (Show ‘EM Your Sermon) of his 2004 album, The Gospel In Black And White, Marty Raybon insists that your life may be the only sermon someone will ever hear. If that someone is a bluegrass fan, then the statement doesn’t hold true. You can’t listen to bluegrass for any length of time and not hear a gospel song. And what is a gospel song, other than a very short sermon?

Homiletics has to do with the art of preaching or writing sermons, and gospel songs could certainly be studied on that basis. Dr. Richard C. Stern seems to think so.

Dr. Stern has enjoyed bluegrass music for the better part of 50 years. As a young man he was fortunate to see Flatt & Scruggs perform more than once. He played banjo in a Pete Seeger style, and a little guitar as well.

The young music enthusiast grew up to become a man of the cloth, serving as a Lutheran pastor.

But when I left the parish in 1983 to go back to graduate school I stopped playing both guitar and banjo until about 1998. So for 15 years I didn’t play anthing, but I had not played banjo for 10 years before that.

For the last 18 years this Lutheran pastor has been teaching preaching at a Catholic seminary just 35 miles north of Owensboro, KY. He began attending a few local festivals and decided it was time to pick the banjo up again, this time in the Scruggs style. Dr. Stern began taking lessons from Joe Sumner, the father of two time National Banjo Champion, Mike Sumner. He even played with a local band for a while. A few years ago the members all got to busy with work and the band disappeared. That didn’t stop Stern though, who has attended Sonny Osborne’s Banjo Retreat for the last four years, and has already registered again this year. He even plays one of Sonny’s Chief banjos. And every day Dr. Stern makes a point of picking up the instrument and picking, even if just for a few minutes.

Filling the roll of instrumentalist in the band, Dr. Stern didn’t pay close attention to the lyrics, until his theological training started to surface.

I noticed when I was playing in the band that, as a non-singer, I never paid attention to lyrics. I never was any good at memorizing lyrics. Then, because I am involved in theology, I got especially interested in the lyrics of bluegrass gospel music. So a few years ago I wrote a paper for a convention of people who teach preaching (as I do) using a method of theological analysis on a collection of Ralph Stanley’s lyrics to see if his theology was consistent across the songs he writes and also those of other composers whose songs he might sing as well. He is very consistent.

A meeting with noted bluegrass author Neil Rosenberg at IBMA, convinced Dr. Stern to adapt the paper into something that could be submitted to the Bluegrass Music Symposium at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY.

I submitted the revised paper; it was accepted; and I went down there for the conference in September 2005, I think it was. I even got my photograph in a Bluegrass Unlimited article on the Symposium. That paper was subsequently published in The Covenant Quarterly last summer. So, that first paper started out as a way to demonstrate the use of a method of theological analysis of preaching that seemed rather obtuse and complicated, but I wanted to try it with a simpler genre than sermons to see if I could get the hang of it. I thought it would be fun to apply it to the gospel lyrics. I think it worked rather well. Plus, I got to listen to bluegrass gospel lyrics all one summer and actually label it as work. I am interested also in ways of analyzing the theology evident in other cultural “artifacts.” I read and review books on pop culture and media for a journal. The method I used with the Stanely lyrics is transportable from medium to medium, genre to genre, and artist to artist. The author of the method (John McClure) adapted it from structuralist literary criticism - all of which is over my head. But he plays guitar, likes bluegrass and thought my idea was worthy.

It wasn’t long after this that Dr. Stern started noticing similarities, but also differences, in the undergirding theological framework behind the compositions of banjoist Ron Block, as compared to Stanley. Accordingly, he set out to study the two artist/composers using this same critical techniques used in his original work. (more…)

If you’ve ever read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, you’ve run across these stories he would tell called parables. They are stories meant to teach a lesson.

Sometimes modern day readers might find difficulty connecting with the cultural context of the stories themselves though. Introducing Modern Parables. These are Jesus’ stories retold on film in modern day settings.

They are produced as teaching tools and are accompanied by lesson plans, teacher guides, student books, and more. Available as both DVD hard copies, and digital downloads at three resolutions, these are very well produced films. The digital downloads are available as standard definition (DVD quality) files, High Definition, or a free version that is iPod compatible and for personal use only.

As I was looking them over the other day I notice one of the films is based on Jesus parable of The Shrewd Manager in Luke 16:1-8. The “cover” art looked interesting so I pulled up the trailer and was surprised to hear a bluegrass soundtrack. I subsequently downloaded the free iPod version of the film and watched it in its entirety.

Each film they produce has a different cinematographic influence. Here’s what they say about The Shrewd Manager.

Our ironic comedy, The Shrewd Manager tips its hat to Woody Allen with its long takes, simple zooms, and dry humor. We shot the film in Adairville, Kentucky and used a number of townspeople for extras. (Film length - 17 minutes)

I got in touch with Thomas Purifoy, the producer of the films, and asked him a few questions. Of course, my first question was about the choice of bluegrass music for the soundtrack.

I felt that bluegrass would give this short film the right feel. I am a personal fan of it, and the singer whose voice I used on Samaritan (Vanessa Batts) is really a bluegrass/Appalachian singer/songwriter. She was the one who advised me as to the type of music to use, introduced me to the Clack Mountain String Band, and worked with me in finding the right piece.

One of the important aspects of the song was that it communicated a lot about the story simply through the feel and the words. The whole film is based on irony, and the song is an important part of that. Obviously the farming/rural community played into it as well. To me, a film works organically in all its parts, with music playing a key role in the organic whole. It should just seem right, and Penny’s Farm gave me that feeling immediately.

Penny’s Farm is the tune that functions as a theme song for the production. (more…)