Will

“I constantly warn my assistants to guard against worship environments in which people can hear the voices of other audience members. That is why one of the most wonderful achievements of our time is the combination of sophisticated instrumentation and voice amplification. We have elevated accompaniment to an art form, added attractive worship teams, and created a worship atmosphere in which no one need hear her own voice or that of her neighbor. The entire audience—for now it has become an audience, not a congregation—can now lip synch their praise, with confidence that our Enemy will hear, and approve of the worship being offered onstage.”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“We have convinced church leaders and music ministers that classical choral styles are unattractive to the younger crowd, that so-called ‘seekers’ will be—what’s the American term?—turned off by a Mendelssohn psalm or a hymn arranged for choral singing. At the same time we have allowed such music to flourish in secular environments and liberal churches where its spiritual effect is negligible. Many evangelical music ministers now consider it a fact beyond question that radio styles, driven to popularity by clever marketing schemes, are the way to penetrate the hearts of those attending church. Repetitive phrases and a beat that encourages clapping are taken as sure signs of our Enemy working in the hearts of the congregation.”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“In the worship discussions it will therefore be important for us to convince the leadership that they are seeking unity when they are really seeking uniformity. Some of our most significant victories in the last few centuries have been when churches abandon the search for unity (a difficult and elusive search) in favor of a policy of uniformity. Unity can only emerge from the Enemy working in the hearts of individuals. A leadership can impose uniformity. Unity has, at its core, a common conviction and celebrates differences in expression. Uniformity emphasizes appearance—as long as we all meet together and sing the same songs, we must be unified. Uniformity says that our various beliefs about the Enemy can differ or even be nonexistent as long as we do not question the decisions”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“When I was single I learned over dinner, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir