wfn.org | Personal identity found in soul music, speaker says

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 13, 2001 News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{530}

NOTE: A photograph is available.
 
By Linda Green*

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - Soul music is the music with which you are encoded
- the music that helps you make it through the day, according to a United
Methodist clergyman who specializes in the study of blue-collar and poor
people.

The Rev. Tex Sample emphasized that message as the keynote speaker at the
United Methodist Association of Communicators gathering in Nashville Nov.
8-10.
  
Sample, a speaker, consultant and writer, currently serves as a coordinator
of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles, which focuses on
understanding people in the United States. The network studies such
"communicative lifestyles" as oral culture, literate culture and the
emerging electronic culture. 

It was fitting that Sample's message related to music. Nashville is known as
"music city," and varieties of music were highlighted throughout the entire
meeting.

"Soul music has an enormous complexity of beats," he said. "In a sense, you
find your identity in that music." He told the 120 communicators that the
music of his soul revolves around country music because he identifies with
that genre.   

An ordained United Methodist elder, Sample is a member of the Missouri West
Conference. He was named after Texanna Gillham, an African-American woman
who was born in slavery and helped raise his father near Center, Texas. He
is a former academic dean at United Methodist-related Saint Paul School of
Theology in Kansas City, Mo.

All people are encoded with music associated with powerful and formative
events in their lives, significant relationships and important periods, he
said. It is music of the soul and tells your story. "It is the way in which
we are partly formed by music." Most people can talk about the music that
somehow tells their story, he said.
  
Beats and rhythm are central to music, and when those elements are changed,
the experience is also changed, he said. Sample gave examples of shifts and
changes in music by focusing on popular artists of the '60s and '90s, and on
the ever-growing popularity of Latino music. "When the beat of the music
changed, it changed the music of the soul." Each generation has its own
story, their own struggle.

The music of the millennial generation is a dimension of multi-sensory,
multimedia experiences, and it is more than beats and sounds, he said. Sound
is most important in conveying meaning because sound enters us. The soul
music of today is a convergence of image, sound, beat, light and movement. A
shift in performance has occurred between the 1960s and today, he said. He
compared the style of 1960s singer Janis Joplin, whose only movement was the
stamping of her feet, to that of Tina Turner today, who moves around in her
high-energy stage performances.

Sample told the communicators that part of their responsibility is to find
the connection to God's story. "I try not to put God's story in the world's
story. I try to put the world in God's story so that the way in which the
world is ultimately understood is in terms of God's story."

Putting the world in God's story becomes central, he said. "It also becomes
central in terms of soul music." All of the yearnings and desires of the
world find their aim, he said. "It is the way of searching for our ultimate
home."

One of the ways we touch the hearts of people on behalf of Jesus Christ is
by learning their music, he said. When they can't sing it sing it for
themselves, we sing it to them in the stories of God, and in that process
they begin to feel the power again, he said.

Before the communicators' meeting, 27 people met for the foundational
meeting of the United Methodist Web Ministries Guild.

The guild, an "open source" online community, represents the many Web
ministries in the United Methodist connection. It is designed to offer
technical and spiritual support to those actively involved in Internet
ministries and to bring unity through the denomination's Web ministries. 

Susan Peek, online services manager at United Methodist Communications
(UMCom) in Nashville, received the first annual "United Methodist Web
Ministries Award" for her dedicated service in online ministry. Peek is
retiring from UMCom after 27 years of service, with 18 years in computer
communications. The guild considers her a founder of United Methodist online
ministry, said the Rev. Jerome Smith, director of communications for the
Southeastern Jurisdiction in Lake Junaluska, N.C.

A transitional leadership team will guide the guild during the year. The
organization plans to have an organizational meeting next November. Officers
will be elected, and a mission statement, bylaws and programs related to Web
ministry will be adopted.

The new group's purpose is to establish, educate and enable members in
developing and enhancing their capabilities and Internet ministry. The guild
was formed to encourage members to use all available Internet tools to
minister to people outside the walls of the local church and to reach people
where they live. The guild also anticipates contributing to the development
of the Web and technical standards and guidelines within Christendom.

Membership in the guild is open to all people, clergy and lay, involved in
Web-related ministries in the denomination. A Web site at www.umwmg.org has
been established and will include a monthly list service, monthly online
conversations, discussion boards, links and other available resources. "We
hope this site will become a community center for United Methodist online
communications," Smith said.

The communicators also:
7	Welcomed Cionna Rouse, the fourth recipient of the Judith L. Weidman
Racial Ethnic Minority Fellowship from UMCom.
7	Learned of a bequest from the Rev. Charles Lerrigo, a retired
clergyman and retired communicator from the California-Nevada Annual
Conference, to provide an annual $2,000 grant to a selected United Methodist
communicator for enterprising mission reporting. The money will support
communication projects related to church missions by helping pay for the
recipients' travel expenses. 
7	Heard representatives of churchwide boards, agencies and annual
conferences talk about their response to Sept. 11.
7	Listened to Wendy Whiteside report that the United Methodist
Committee on Relief will unveil its long-range plan for disaster at the
beginning of the year.
7	Heard representatives of racial and ethnic groups discuss
communicating with diverse audiences.
7	Affirmed progress reports about the denomination's Igniting Ministry
campaign and its impact.
7	Learned that a billboard with a pastoral message will be placed at
ground zero. 
7	Learned of 20 Igniting Ministry training events to occur in 2002.
Three national two-day events are planned by UMCom's Igniting Ministry
office in cooperation with the United Methodist Board of Discipleship. They
will be March 6-7 in Orlando, Fla., May 2-3 in Troy, Ill., and Sept. 12-13
in Dallas. A regional "train the trainers" event will occur Feb. 25-28,
followed by a local training event Feb. 28-March 2, both in Nashville.
# # #
*Green is news director of United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn.,
office.

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United Methodist News Service
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