I Was Only Going To Write 500 Words, Then This Angel Handed Me Some Copper Plates . . .

It occurred to me a while back the Mormons have something on all of us: the ability to not only laugh at themselves, but also in a way that manages to avoid disparaging the touchstones they consider important. Furthermore, I discovered that they have an uncanny knack for generating their own internal creative vortexes. I discovered this fact a few years ago, when I viewed a “friend-recommended” video, titled The RM.

The film’s premise is this. A young Mormon missionary, known indigenously to them as an “elder,” has the perfect job, the perfect girlfriend, and the perfect alignments in life required to keep them. Time comes for him to do his two-year stint. He does. Then, he returns, expecting all the previous situations to be intact. He finds quite the opposite to be true.

From the minute you become aware that his child-addled family forgets to pick him up at the airport with pre-arranged fanfare, I was laughing. Halfway through the thing, I was nearly hysterical—gasping for air. One needn’t understand much about a religious demographic at all to still “get” the cleverly-orchestrated ironies, the well-timed sight gags, and the clever fusion of their doctrinal stands with the situational absurdities that follow. Quite frankly, they are brilliant. They do a fantastic job of transcending every stereotype you’ve ever heard.

Then, I noticed the musical backdrop to which it was set. Acoustic ballads, semi-alternative asides, tight harmonies, direct-and-to the-point lyrics. Their music was well crafted, flawlessly produced, and 100% arc-welded to their fundamental beliefs.

The lesson? They aren’t sitting around waiting for pop culture to start liking them (because despite the fact that they err doctrinally, anything that represents even the faintest whiff of a nuclear family will put Hollywood on the back-ordered, air-sickness-bag manifest). So they’ve created their own. And they aren’t allowing their disenfranchised “backsliders” to do it for them, poisoning the pen before it ever gets to the well. Furthermore, they haven’t sat around, decrying their dearth of Mormon-esque music while waiting for the Osmonds to get back together.

I get a sense sometimes, that a small-but-potent part of our ongoing People Vs. Hymnal tort case stems from a desire for something similar. Our early heritage is rampant with the creative endeavors of others. And somewhere along the way, these pieces were bound with glue and paper, purchased in bulk at an inconceivable price, placed in the pews, and seized upon for decades. But exhaustive, voluminous books can also be somewhat intimidating; they have the air of finality—no one can possibly contribute anything that hasn’t already been considered, right?

Is it not arguable, that anything that arrives “free page,” can be suspect merely because it did not come codified by binding? Or happened to be scrawled on second-rate paper a week before it ever saw the printing press?

The Dead Sea scrolls might have met the same consternation, too, had they been first delivered via a PowerPoint presentation. But my point is this. The apostolic faith carries a disproportionately large talent within its comparatively small demographic. We have singers and players that go unmatched, either across the Trinitarian Tonga Trench or the world in general. But currently, we seem to excel as parrots, rather than perches.

At what point, will the Pentecostal world step out on that creative limb? The one that would make sure that all of our new music—be it praise and worship—or whatever, never ceases to define us, yet makes others curious as to who we are? Or do we sit around, hoping that our Hazelwood catalog is supplemented with the next Tim Spell album, and call it good? Is it his job to write the score our entire experience by himself?

And finally. Just where is it written that a musical big-wig has to write the next Holy Ground? I suspect that someone reading this now has the next Holy-Ghost-laden homerun sitting in their shoebox right now. And just needs the wherewithal to step out and put it off the bat.