Links...
Official Something Like Silas site
"Ultimately we want to make great music - and not merely for a Christian subculture, but for the whole world. Years from now we want to see people of all ages and backgrounds engage in our music and experience God." -Eric Owyoung
Melina: You asked about songwriting. There is a song on the record called 'Weight of the World' that came out of after Eric was reading the C. S. Lewis sermon 'Weight of Glory.' We were just kind of thinking about that idea that its so much bigger - that God has orchestrated everything - that He is so much greater than anything we could grapple. That's cool.
MQ: When you sit down and ponder God, what things amaze you most about Him?
Eric: What amazes me about God is that He doesn't reveal Himself as much as we'd like Him to. If I were God I would show everybody, 'Hey, this is the way I do this and let me show you my tricks and everything'. But it is like God is so big and so self sufficient that He doesn't feel like He needs to explain every little detail to me, He remains a mystery. There's a part of me that keeps longing after Him because of that. I just think that is amazing. I think it is amazing that God is so vast and so big that we can talk about Him and write a gazillion books ... C.S. Lewis has so much insight but yet C.S. Lewis knows himself that he has barely scratched the surface of the depth of who God is.
MQ: Do you have any thoughts on the modern praise and worship musement...
Lenny: Was that a Freudian slip?
MQ: Sorry...'movement.' Do you see this being a long term change that will cement how the younger generation sees corporate worship?
Eric: I have some concerns for what they've been calling the worship movement. One of them I think that people are aware of is that worship is about music and its about singing. So we say 'Hey we're going to have a sermon and then we're going to go into worship.' I think people are catching on that that is not what worship is...I'm not as concerned about that right now. What I'm concerned about though is worship being a commodity...worship music being a commodity. Many bands are saying, 'This worship movement is selling now so lets put out a worship CD.' There is nothing wrong with putting out a worship CD at all but there is something wrong with making this worship thing a commodity where it's working - it's selling, rather than simply pointing to God. We'd rather get rid of the title and instead have our music point to God than to have the title and have it be empty...or to have the title and just be selling records.
Lenny: I feel comfortable being labeled as a worship band but I think it's funny how...it sounds kind of funny like, if we were to say we have a 'worship radio host' or we have a 'worship plumber' or 'worship lawyer' or worship...whatever. It sounds funny but when you think about it...why doesn't worship band sound funny? It's because we've associated worship so much with music that we've labeled bands as worship bands now.
Malina: I was going to say that as we sort of formed leading worship together and have continued, one of our great desires is to speak truth into the worship time. Really when we worship or sing music we want to bring people into a truthful encounter of who they are and of who God is. What we see a lot is worship time in music being an escape from reality. Even the expression - people will say 'I lose myself in worship.' I don't really see an example of that in the Bible. We see worship in the Bible as times of being brought into the truth of who God is, the truth about who we are, embracing our doubts, or just bringing who we are in honesty before God. So we really want to speak into what is happening in the church and hopefully to pull away from removing yourself from society, removing yourself from yourself or from God, and being brought into reality. Because God is in the reality. He's not something we escape to.
Eric: Malina mentioned the phrase 'lose yourself in worship.' What about 'find yourself in worship?' I think the tendency of the church is to use the catchphrase 'It's not about you, it's about God.' But it is about a relationship with God. It is about you and your relationship with God. It's about who God is and also about what He has done in your life...how He has saved you...how He has rescued you...the kind of God of Love that He is. Finding yourself in worship means finding your identity in Christ. That is what God wants. He doesn't want us to kind of be absorbed into the nothingness of spirituality. He wants us to find our identity - who we are - in Him. I think that's important. I think that we have an opportunity when we worship to be thinking. We have an opportunity to have all of our gears spinning and to discover things and ask questions and to be in a process where we're interacting with the truth of God.
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