Rhythmic or Repetitious?
I came across this quote today:
“Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm”
It was one of those sentences that for some reason set off an explosion of thoughts in my head.
Now, as some of you know, I lead a movement in Sheffield called Mosaic. Within that movement is a core of followers of Jesus Christ. One of the things we have grappled with perhaps more than anything has been finding the right sense of rhythm.
We want to be a community of Christ-followers who engage with God and each other through scripture, prayer, and worship, but we want do that in ways that are natural and integrated with life; not separated from it.
All to often, following Christ becomes nothing more than attending the weekly service on Sunday (and, if you’re super great, a ’small group’ mid-week too).
Sadly, this ends up becoming something very repetitious. It’s the same thing week after week. So the question I’m grappling with is when does something shift from being rhythmic to repetitious? How should any organisation find a healthy sense of rhythm whilst protecting itself from becoming repetitious?
September 27th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Just some thoughts. I suspect that the answer is jazz and improvisation. I heard recently that classical music was originally meant to be the basic tune on which the player improvised. JS Bach wrote his music for improvisation but musicians now play it repetitiously rather than getting the rhythm and flowing with it. Jacques Loussier, a French musician, has returned to playing Bach’s music and that of some other composers such as Satie. It sounds right and is definitely not repetitious. Could we do the same for community and followers of Jesus? Some rhythm comes from patterns that are repeated by with variations. Religion comes from a dependence on predictable form and structure so the introduction of some unpredictability could also help.
I will keep thinking about this.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
That’s a great insight Rob. Thanks for sharing that.
And you’re right about adding unpredictability too. People get both bored (and comforted) by predictability but I think one of the roles of leaders is to not allow people to end up in that place.