fe32:


absolutely well said my friend, Christ has won the victory over death and sin for us, into eternal peace with our Father in heaven, yet we are living our lives like we do not need this victory, A bad tree cannot produce good fruits, if the light in you be darkness,how great is it

we have all had this influence sometime in our live but you know deep within yourself that this is not Jesus even if they were rendered in the holiest of churches,

many of our churches today have grown terribly cold, the question still stands, when He come back will He meet faith,

worship is all about our Heavenly Father and to Him, the best of sermons you should hear are those that you really never liked, pricked your heart, and make you wonder about where your eternity will be

if our Lord preach the way it's been done today in many churches, the pharisees would never have crucified him, atleast he will be promising them their "best life now",

image123, will like to refer you to this site, www.sermonindex.net, keep the fire burning, he who endures to the end shall be saved, even the Lord called it endurance cause He knows what our flesh easily respond to

and your contribution to the post is, ?

@OP, it is permissible IMO.

the devil's ministry is that of music!
Christians should be creative nat photocopiers it is even a sin to take some1's musical work and editing it for whatever purpose without the express permission of the owner!

Thanks fe32. I'm starting to love the site already

aomom:

the devil's ministry is that of music!
Christians should be creative nat photocopiers it is even a sin to take some1's musical work and editing it for whatever purpose without the express permission of the owner!

this is unnecessarily alarmist.

who owns what?

Frankly speaking, many people today equate being emotionally moved by music as being moved by the spirit, but these are not the same. Real worship happens when your spirit responds to God not to some musical tone. Infact some sentimental introspective songs sometimes hinders worship because it take the spotlight off God and focus on our feelings. God request that we worship Him in Truth and in Spirit but our biggest distraction in worship today is ourselves, our interest, our worries and what other thinks about us (Fears, Fraustration, Faults and Failures), and once we lets this factors rule our mind set during worship, our spirit life gets de-activated, hence the communication link between us and God gets disconnected, then we find ourselves emotionally gyrating to some so call music either secular/afro juju etc.

As many that are led by the Hly Spirit; They are the children of God. Be led of the Spirit.

@AKO: I also play the keys myself and I understand where you're coming from.First,it's difficult for you to be a good musician without taking influence from these 'secular' guys.Believe me,those guys are terrible(over-good,if you'll permit it).But then,someone said something on another site that got me thinking:

You can't cook GOD's soup in the devil's pot.

That said,my own theology doesn't permit me to adapt secular songs to worship music.Why?For every song in existence,there is always a motive.Now,that motive births the lyrics and a lot of times the tune(or vice versa) and occasionally the instrumentals that come along with it but do not forget that it all starts with the motive.If the general motive of the song isn't 'religious' or inspirational,my theology tells me to steer clear of it.It's better for me to abstain than for me to use my life to find out what would be or what wouldn't. Please,note that I repeatedly say'My Theology'.Theology is ultimately a function of your sociology(who,where and what you interact with).

Now someone else raised the issue of 'Storm is over' and 'Because you loved me' being sung by Potter's House Mass Choir and Juanita Bynum respectively.On close examination,those songs were written with an inspirational thought behind them and not evil-glorification as some songs out there. 'The Prayer',made popular by Donnie McClurkin and Yolanda Adams, was earlier performed by Celine Dion and Andrea Boccelli but because the latter performed them,that did not make the songs 'worldly'.The song is inspirational and so adaptation is easier than twisting lyrics.

I might sound biased but have you picked up some Canton Jones,Kelly Price,Crystal Aikin,Da TRUTH,Izzy Houghton and co lately?Those guys have some very contemporary sounds with great lyrics and tight instrumentals for a youth church.Figuring out the whole song is quite enough work than trying to change lyrics from already established ones,

Summary:There's far more work for you to do with gospel songs than to delve into secular ones

]

tpia.:

this is unnecessarily alarmist.

who owns what?

There's what they call copyright!

Churches would be boring with secular music.

Oh Boy, you need first of all, to define what is sacred and what is secular and determine whether, strictly speaking, there are clear boundaries. The problem of sacred-secular distinctions is the theme of an academic conference which recently brought together, at the British Academy London, religious studies scholars from across Europe, Canada and America (See http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:EBxxySg4tKEJ:api.ning.com/files/XMK0uZ5wHiBAxaZP7Hg92IGtuVcAkPjS2G1Qi6C-l98dLe4JaW0eeEHftRJW7dv6fsXok*g9pkji1G18PQKVju76tE3B2Z*T/Religiou%253Ca%2520href%3D+sacred-secular+distinctions+conference+British+Academy+London&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a).

To your question: I ACTUALLY WROTE A THESIS ON THIS YEARS AGO. WHAT YOU DESCRIBED IS TECHNICALLY KNOWN AS contrafacta. Any good students of hymnology or church music would confirm that many hymntunes deployed in Christian worship today had "secular" origins. For example, following Martin Luther’s reformation (which began on 31 October 1517), church music not only began to employ native or indigenous languages, but also adopted or borrowed popular, folk and secular tunes located in the church’s socio-cultural milieu. This trend continued through to the 18th century. Thus, many of the hymn-poems written by Charles Wesley adopted folk-tunes as hymn-tunes and these have over the many centuries become traditional hymns sang by Christians across the world. It also permeated the Christain church expansionism of the 19th century, and stabilisation in the 20th century, even in the Nigerian environment. I'll cite two examples from the Yoruba sacred music repertoire. First, the song "EPO N BE EWA N BE O" traditionally sung in the context of ritual performance for twin-children, and hence its fetish origin, was adopted by the Rev. J J Ransome Kuti who fixed the tune to the hymn "E T'OLORUN LAWA O SE O." This has been sung in Nigerian Christian churches, particularly amongst the Yorubas, for over a century now. Second, the popular Christian song "O SE O JESU A O MA YIN O" whose text was written by Fr Ilesanmi, a Roman Catholic priest who used to be (and possibly still is) a professor at the University of Ife (now OAU) derives from Boney M's (1978) "Brown girl in the ring"

Brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
There's a brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la la
Brown girl in the ring
Tra la la la la
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Plum plum

Actually, and before I conclude, if you sing the most popular Christmas carol on this planet earth: Hark! The herald angels sing. this is the most classic example of Charles Wesley’s fusion of secular tunes to sacred hymn-texts. What Charles Wesley did was to compose the text and then adopted the melody of a chorus from a secular composition known as Bartholdy, by F. Mendelssohn (1809-47). Wesley chose the melody of this chorus as the tune for one of the most popular Christmas carols – Hark! The herald angels sing.

In view of these and several examples which one can drawn upon from my knowledge of hymnology/church music, my own thinking is that whatever could be given a new label with the power of the gospel could also serve to propagate the GOOD NEWS, and make it drive even deeper into men’s hearts and expand throughout God's Universe.