[aron]

Originally Posted by OBW

But when we take the metaphorical edict of Hunky and Dory in the Land of Food as the all-encompassing edict about what methods are acceptable (on all or even just defined portions of the text) we have added yet one more problem to the mix. ... we have effectively eliminated all methods of "meditation" but one. The parable which provides the metaphor takes eating and makes it in opposition to all other methods of considering the scripture. Studying is not allowed. Meditating on the words is not allowed. Analyzing the words is not allowed. Only something that is defined as "eating" is allowed and that has been defined as not studying, analyzing, and meditating is not allowed. Only something that is determined to be eating. And pray-reading was just about the only version of eating that was considered valid...

The "Oh Lord... 'today'..... yes, Lord.... 'today'..... amen, Jesus... 'today'..... Hallelujah, 'today' " method of "eating the Word" is certainly stilted. Arguably, most methods, left to themselves, can become unbalanced. Repeating, singing, declaring, shouting, murmuring... even reading and studying can become merely a mental exercise, lacking reality.

In both your critique of the fixation of one method to the exclusion of others, and mine of declaring which passages are "edible", there's a common thread, of a narrow, exclusivist group which takes the "leadings" of one person as the equivalent of God's speaking from the throne.

The result, well... I won't bore you.

Here is an account of a current "praise and worship" leader of his experiences during the Jesus Movement in the 1965-75 time period. The WL account of "the history of the church and the local churches" would ignore this. Especially that there were others out there "enjoying Christ" during the so-called glory years of Elden Hall and the migrations.

Wayne Drain was born in 1951 in a small town in the foothills of the majestic Ozark Mountains located in a bend of the Arkansas River aptly called Ozark, Arkansas. Wayne has Scottish and Cherokee blood in his veins. His father was a labourer in a small truck company. Said Wayne, "We were pretty poor, but I didn't know that. I had a great Mom and Dad that loved each other and she loved the Lord. My whole family was quite musical, I had an aunt that was on the Grand Old Opry and had an uncle: I don't know if you've ever heard the names Jean Shepard and Cowboy Copas but they were somehow kin to my family. My dad's sister, Aunt Marie, was being prepped for the Grand Old Opry then she got married and backed out of it. So they'd always had this desire for some of us to be involved in music. But there were only two kinds of music, you know, country and western. . . I've got three brothers, and they're all younger than me, all musical: drummers, guitar players. At our family gatherings after dinner we would all gather round and my grandpa would take out his banjo and one uncle would play a mandolin, another uncle played a guitar and we would all just play. That's what we'd do all afternoon. I'd sit and watch. So it was quite musical, growing up. I had a good childhood, I played sports and I was all about wanting to be a baseball player until an Ed Sullivan show: I'm walking through the house and the Beatles come on and I think 'that's it - that's what I want to do right there.'"

With some high school buddies Wayne formed a band, the Stingrays. Like the British beat groups they copied, The Stingrays' repertoire was dominated by twangy guitar renditions of black R&B standards. The Stingrays with 14 year old Wayne singing lead played around their immediate area and even got to make a record, cutting a rudimentary version of Eddie Floyd's R&B hit "Knock On Wood". Wayne laughingly commented, "It was a hit in our town: of course I was in charge of the Top 10 radio countdown every day, so I'm sure there was a little bit of help there."

With styles of rock changing The Stingrays evolved by 1968 into The High Tide. Continued Wayne, "I remember thinking, 'I've got a better chance of making it at music than I do at sports', although I had an athletic scholarship offer. And so as I went along music became much, much more important to me and we got a lot of immediate feedback, which is good for teenagers. And you got the girls. I mean that was always an exciting by-product of being a musician."

Wayne recounted how he became a Christian. "I was raised in a very fundamental Pentecostal church, and it was a church that believed there was no assurance of your salvation unless you spoke in tongues and I could never do that. I tried from the time I was five, and I finally gave up at 15. I just thought it was not going to happen. So actually I went to church to please my parents until I was about 14 and then I rebelled and just thought, 'Well if I'm not going to get to Heaven I might as well live the other way.' And that's sort of what I did for a while. But then there was a sweeping move of the Spirit going across our country when I was a senior in high school. I went to a little Methodist lay-witness mission with a bunch of my friends: we started getting together and just talking about 'is the Bible real, is Jesus real.' So I started getting interested again, but very cautious.

"I was at a beer bust for a fraternity, where a bunch of guys get together to pledge a fraternity and start drinking a whole lot of beer and either start getting into fights or talking about their Moms or something. This one guy, he came in and he didn't bring any beer, he brought some milk: he had a gallon of milk. I thought, 'What is this about?' He was the president of the student centre of the university I was going to and ended being my big brother in the fraternity. He started trying to witness to me that night. I saw it coming a mile away and I said, 'I've done all that, I've tried all that, it won't work for me'. He heard my story and he said something very profound. He said, 'You don't have to speak in tongues to be saved.' No one had ever said that to me. And so two days later I knelt beside my bed and I said, 'Lord, if you're real, show me.' I had a real experience with the Lord that I'll never forget. Not long after that I was filled with the Spirit."

The High Tide band didn't last beyond high school. Explained Wayne, "We were graduating in 1970 and were going to different universities. I went to a university about 75 miles away from my home and I got into another band there called Summerfield. That band was sort of a soul rock band. It was the era of Chicago, Blood, Sweat And Tears, Edgar Winter, people like that who had horns in their bands. We had a great horn section. We started off in college when I was 18 and I got a job being their lead singer. We travelled around southern parts of the United States, and colleges. It was a really good band and we had written some songs and everything looked like it was going to be a successful venture. We were having some money people approach us about doing an album and things like that. Then one night we were playing a gig at a bar in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and I was looking around, looking at the people in my little group, in my entourage. It was people that I did not want to be around anymore. One guy was practicing witchcraft, somebody else was a strong drug addict and I thought, 'I don't know if this is what I want to do'.

"So I'm having that question, I'm driving home that night by myself and this conversation starts happening in my head. It went, 'This is going to be good, you're about to get everything you ever wanted, you know, the money, the girls, the music, the albums, all that stuff', and I'm going, 'Yeah, and getting up for it again'. Then that voice went a little too far. It said, 'But you'll have to forget this Jesus stuff.' I kind of knew that probably was not God. . . I pulled the van over and I just stood beside the road on that stretch of highway and I said, 'Lord, show me what to do'. The the Lord spoke. He said, 'Trust me and follow me.' Two weeks later we played the last gig that we had on the current contract. I quit the band and within a month the Jesus Movement hit the university."

The revival amongst tens of thousands of American young people known as the Jesus Movement had begun in California but was making a profound impact across many American states. Wayne, who had recently married his teenage sweetheart June, was swept along by the exciting move of the Holy Spirit. "There was the revival happening out in Kentucky. There were some things going on up in Chicago. The Jesus Movement was all up and down the West Coast. Everyone wants to take credit of where it started. But these kids, they were very nomadic, everyone was hitch-hiking everywhere and going from festival to festival. So these kids that got saved, they just started going to colleges and high schools all over the nation, they just spread out. We had a group of kids get involved with Campus Crusade and they came to our town and started witnessing on campus, playing their guitars. We started gathering together to hear what they had to say and a revival swept across our campus: college professors getting saved, students, jocks, band people, military people, everyone was getting saved. It was just a wave of the Spirit going across the nation."

Actually I find the guy's music kind of simplistic. The whole P&W thing doesn't do it for me. But to go back to OBW's point, who am I to say what is THE method for approaching God?!? Who am I to measure the validity of someone's worship style?

I will say that I feel cautious of any approach that says, "Get out of your mind", and tries to get you in a froth. That goes to much of the Charismatic, P&W, and the LC church. I don't like people that scream in your face continually. I think they prey on the weak and unstable. But at least Wayne Drain didn't say, "This is THE way for Christians to worship God."