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For those of you who feel Oasis may be perhaps spending some time (or its members occasionally having thoughts about spending some time) doing something besides being absolutely, 100% dedicated to singing only gospel/evangelistic songs, may I suggest membership in the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite? There you will find rest for your music- and instrument-weary souls, where anything beyond a nursery lullaby is viewed with suspicion and you will be strongly encouraged to stick to singing proper gospel-centric music, preferably from approved hymnals such as your local congregation's locally-approved Congregational Favorites or the Christian Hymnal.

Likewise, you will not encounter any flash-mob tomfoolery where anyone would take any risk of being captured on social media singing non-evangelistic music (not that any of us would ever partake of watching such a video on social media ourselves, but our roommate/cousin/coworker/excommunicant/younger brother all do, so the risk is high that everyone in your congregation will be up to speed very quickly on your musical misadventures, and we can't help but notice/listen if they're playing some video on their phone).

Josh wrote:For those of you who feel Oasis may be perhaps spending some time (or its members occasionally having thoughts about spending some time) doing something besides being absolutely, 100% dedicated to singing only gospel/evangelistic songs, may I suggest membership in the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite? There you will find rest for your music- and instrument-weary souls, where anything beyond a nursery lullaby is viewed with suspicion and you will be strongly encouraged to stick to singing proper gospel-centric music, preferably from approved hymnals such as your local congregation's locally-approved Congregational Favorites or the Christian Hymnal.

Likewise, you will not encounter any flash-mob tomfoolery where anyone would take any risk of being captured on social media singing non-evangelistic music (not that any of us would ever partake of watching such a video on social media ourselves, but our roommate/cousin/coworker/excommunicant/younger brother all do, so the risk is high that everyone in your congregation will be up to speed very quickly on your musical misadventures, and we can't help but notice/listen if they're playing some video on their phone).

Thanks for making my day Josh. It good for all of us to look at some of our eccentricities at times with a bit of a TIC perspective. We all have some of them.

it would appear that i am in the wrong.
my apologies to all.
i will keep my thots to myself next time.

justme wrote:it would appear that i am in the wrong.
my apologies to all.
i will keep my thots to myself next time.

I like this post, all except for the last line. I'd like to hear more from you rather than less.

I think the choir did something good. And maybe the people in this particular place already know the English hymns, so they were exposing them to something new. A store where plain people shop is probably not the same thing as the town square of a secular city.

I also worry that sometimes it's really hard to do something good if we're afraid that people will think we should have done something else. Fault finding makes it a lot harder to do good, appreciating makes it easier. And I think it's important to be able to live out our faith without always worrying too much what other people might think. Of course, we do need to live with the counsel of the brethren, but that's different. I assume they did discern this. And if anyone has useful feedback for them, it's probably more useful if that feedback is directed to them directly.

lesterb wrote:

justme wrote:it would appear that i am in the wrong.
my apologies to all.
i will keep my thots to myself next time.

I like this post, all except for the last line. I'd like to hear more from you rather than less.

I agree. I miss her posts.

Bootstrap wrote:I think the choir did something good. And maybe the people in this particular place already know the English hymns, so they were exposing them to something new. A store where plain people shop is probably not the same thing as the town square of a secular city.

I also worry that sometimes it's really hard to do something good if we're afraid that people will think we should have done something else. Fault finding makes it a lot harder to do good, appreciating makes it easier. And I think it's important to be able to live out our faith without always worrying too much what other people might think. Of course, we do need to live with the counsel of the brethren, but that's different. I assume they did discern this. And if anyone has useful feedback for them, it's probably more useful if that feedback is directed to them directly.

Thanks Bootstrap. Just one thing. While they may not all be aware I can verify that speaking your mind on here may be more direct than some of them realize.

Hats Off wrote:A group of us old people were together at one of Appleman's uncles' home recently; someone wanted to sing out of the book "Radio Favourites" and I guess just to balance things out, we also sang from the "Church and Sunday School Hymnal." Well, I had this rather mischievous thought "hey this group is going to sing a German hymn as well." Before i got that far, one of the women announced "song number 11 at the very back of the book." When I thanked her for the selection, she said the very thing that I had thought. Well you should have heard us sing "Wo ist Jesus mein Verlangen". We certainly made a joyful noise even though not every one present completely understood what we were singing.

Interesting. You do make me curious as to which uncle that might have been.

appleman2006 wrote:

Bootstrap wrote:I think the choir did something good. And maybe the people in this particular place already know the English hymns, so they were exposing them to something new. A store where plain people shop is probably not the same thing as the town square of a secular city.

I also worry that sometimes it's really hard to do something good if we're afraid that people will think we should have done something else. Fault finding makes it a lot harder to do good, appreciating makes it easier. And I think it's important to be able to live out our faith without always worrying too much what other people might think. Of course, we do need to live with the counsel of the brethren, but that's different. I assume they did discern this. And if anyone has useful feedback for them, it's probably more useful if that feedback is directed to them directly.

Thanks Bootstrap. Just one thing. While they may not all be aware I can verify that speaking your mind on here may be more direct than some of them realize.

I am not suggesting ugliness is okay here, but unless we can express opinions and counter opinions with a degree of freedom without being accused of fault finding we are going to have an incredibly insipid discussion forum.

I have said nothing I would not happily say in person to someone on the Oasis crew, if they asked me...not that this has a chance of happening.
Perhaps if I heard the thought process that led them to choose that song, I would see their point and agree with them! Perhaps not! If they are as closely tied here as you say, let them present their thinking as they wish, and tell me where they think I am wrong or off-base.
We can have a debate about the pros and cons without feeling injured, and slinking off! We are reasonably resilient human beans.
I feel nothing but benevolence toward everyone taking part in this conversation.

Sunbeam wrote:Perhaps if I heard the thought process that led them to choose that song, I would see their point and agree with them! Perhaps not! If they are as closely tied here as you say, let them present their thinking as they wish, and tell me where they think I am wrong or off-base.

It would certainly be more interesting if they were part of the conversation.

Sunbeam wrote:We can have a debate about the pros and cons without feeling injured, and slinking off. We are reasonably resilient.

I think we're having a similar debate about criticizing people who are not present, whose thoughts we don't know. I hope we can have that debate without feeling injured. And yes, we are reasonably resilient.