Ep 52: Fernando Ortega on "The Crucifixion of Jesus"

Episode 52 features an interview with musician and composer Fernando Ortega, who releases his newest album The Crucifixion of Jesus on August 4, 2017, which is available to purchase at his website: http://www.fernandoortega.com/. Our talk runs the gamut of topics, from politics in the American church, his love of bird watching, the tension between performing and worship leading, as well as an in depth look at the songs and making of the new album. On top of all that I also get to ask him about his family's history in America and whether or not he's concerned the new album might be considered "too Catholic" by some.

You can stream the episode below.

Crucifixion by Nikolai Ge, as mentioned by Fernando

I have written a number of articles about Fernando over the years, including a brief interview, which you can find here:
Worship Leader Death Match!: Fernando Ortega vs. Matt Redman
Interview: Fernando Ortega on Come Down Oh Love Divine
Arriving Late to the Party #1: Fernando Ortega
Why I Listen to Fernando Ortega
Singing Over Our Children (songs from Rich Mullins, Michael Card, and Fernando Ortega)




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Check below for related podcast episodes and articles on worship.

Hymnals = Vinyl Records: The case for and against hymnals in worship

For music lovers there has been a resurgence of vinyl sales over the past decade. (Or so they say.) The story goes that once tape cassettes and CD's were introduced into the music industry artists put their music on records at a steeply decreasing rate. Now, through illegal downloading services, itunes, Youtube, and through all the many streaming services even the compact disc has become obsolete. But in the midst of the binary age (some) people realized they love their music in a physical form, loved the "warmer" sound of "analog" recordings, and loved spending lots of money on audio equipment. Records are back baby! From used record stores, to remastered reissues of classic albums, to entirely new albums, people are buying and listening to music on records again.

I Am An Irrelevant Worship Pastor

I am the worship and music pastor of a small church community in Peoria, Illinois.  I have been planting this church with another pastor going on 5 years now and thus I am a bi-vocational pastor, taking in very little income from my ministry job.

Every week when I go to select the music we are going to sing at my church the next Sunday a number of immediate tensions rise up within me.  Tensions in the form of questions so high in number that if I let them they would absolutely paralyze my ability to pick the music at all. For example:

Worship Music Should Be Radically Contemporary

Wait...who exactly are we worshipping again?

A recent article is making its way around the worship music circles, "The Imminent Decline of Contemporary Worship Music: Eight Reasons" by T. David Gordon, and by way of it's title it is causing a decent amount of buzz (I'm prone to writing titles like that myself, most especially in my article "The Moment I Began to Lose Faith in Contemporary Worship Music"). Articles such as this also tend to warrant lots of responses, so I figure I would step in the ring and have a go at a round. Musician and church music leader Fernando Ortega pointed it out to me, who I hear might be writing some "contemporary" worship songs himself at the moment. Let's pray for him! We all hope he gets his new songs "right"! (No pressure!) But seriously, lets pray for him—his art is a blessing to the Church.

There is a lot to be commended in the article. That is, there is a lot I agree with, most especially his concerns with the disposable nature of contemporary worship music. It is novelty music, here today, gone tomorrow, and is not excellent enough art to endure throughout generations. I would also want to resound his points about its (general) lack theological depth and poetic excellence in its lyrics (where that is the case), as well as its unhealthy connections to our overly saturated entertainment culture and industry.

However, there are two points in his article I believe deserve a pushback:
1. That the "old hymns" are by default superior.
and
2. That "contemporary worship" as a term is an oxymoron.