Introducing Sage Owen Linne

On January 5, 2012 at 8:42 p.m. EST, Sage Owen Linne entered the world, to the astonishment and joy of his grateful parents. He weighed in at a sleek 6 lbs. 4oz. From the moment he got here, he has lived up to his name, as far as having a low-key, seemingly thoughtful demeanor. He's been a very chill and relaxed baby- (except when he's hungry!) As you can see from the pic, I will teach him well what his proper sports allegiances should be. In other words, I'm teaching him how to endure suffering! But seriously, Blair, Sage and I are all doing well. It's already been quite an adjustment. I'm fighting to trust God's wisdom, goodness and provision in this season. Your continued prayers are greatly appreciated.

grace and peace,
shai

Sooo...We're Expecting

I don't normally post a lot of personal stuff on the web, but I did want to share with y'all that my wife Blair and I are expecting our first child in a few weeks. Those who are close to us knew this (as well as those who watched the "Perfection of Beauty" video closely lol). But to this point, we haven't really broadcasted it publicly. Btw, it's a boy and his name is Sage. We want him to walk in wisdom and to know Christ, who is the source of all wisdom. I share it with you now because I'm grateful for your partnership in the gospel. God only knows how this will impact my music moving forward! I also would like to request your prayers. I have three specific requests:

1. Please pray that God would give me the grace to honor Him as a faithful husband and father who regularly points my wife and son to Christ and the gospel.

2. Please pray that, as a family, God would meet all of our needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

3. Please pray that God would save Sage at an early age and that he would only know of a warm, loving home with two godly parents who love Christ deeply and who model the grace of God as we serve one another and raise him in the fear and knowledge of the Lord.

I have to say that as I anticipate Sage's birth in a few weeks, I feel a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Excitement because I've wanted to be a dad for a long time and I'm so grateful to have an amazing woman of God to share this experience with. Nervous because, like many African-American males in the urban context, I grew up without my father in my life and had very few models of godly manhood and fatherhood growing up. That, along with an awareness of my own sinfulness causes me to deeply feel my insufficiency. At the same time, I know that God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work in us and that He can more than make up for what I lack. It's a daily fight for me to believe this, so I covet your prayers.

It's good to be able to share this with y'all. Thank you for supporting my ministry through music and for the many ways that you have encouraged Blair and I over the years.

grace and peace,
shai

Attributes Sermon Snippets

One of my favorite parts about putting out albums is exposing people to the resources that have helped to shape my thinking about the content of the songs. One way to do this is by putting snippets from particularly helpful sermons in the songs themselves. A good number of people have asked me about the original sources of the sermon snippets heard on Attributes. Here's a list of the snippets, along with links to the original sermons.

D.A. Carson on Perfection of Beauty

This is from a sermon called "God" that D.A. Carson preached at the 2010 Next Conference. You can find that sermon here. Scroll down to the 2010 Conference.

John Piper on All-Consuming Fire

This is from a sermon called "The Greatest Thing in The World- An Overview of Romans 1-7" that John Piper preached as a part of his series in Romans. It's one of my all-time favorite Piper sermons. You can find it here

Sinclair Ferguson on Self-Sufficiency

This is from a sermon called "The Lord our God, The Lord is One: The Simplicity of God" that Sinclair Ferguson preached at the 2004 Ligonier National Conference on the Attributes of God. It can be found here.

Thanks again for all the feedback that y'all have given me about the album.

grace and peace,
shai

The Challenge of Christian Music Videos

As we've considered which song from The Attributes of God to push as a radio single, the idea of doing a music video has come up. Those who are familiar with my music know that I've never done a music video up to this point. It hasn't been for lack of opportunity, but because of an internal wrestle I've had about the idea. Now, some people might think, "What are you talking about? How could there possibly be anything wrong with doing a music video"? Well, I know it's often assumed that music videos are something we should do because they're popular in our culture and it's standard protocol for the (secular) music industry. However, I don't want to take my cues for the rightness or wrongness of something from our culture or the music industry, but from God's Word. So let me share two challenges I see with music videos done by artists with explicit Christian content. One challenge is artistic, the other is biblical.

1. The Artistic Challenge

Simply put, I never want to do a music video if I can't do it skillfully and creatively. I go into some reasons for this in a recent post that you can find here. I have a background in professional acting and theater production, which has given me a sense of how some things work behind the scenes. Video can be a very challenging medium. It takes a lot of time, skill and resources to do it well. This is why the music videos of popular secular artists can cost tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. It makes sense if you think about it. If you're going to do a video that doesn't look like it was shot on a camera phone by your cousin in your backyard, you're going to need at least the following things:

1. An excellent camera (Ideally a number of excellent cameras to do multiple angles)
2. A skilled director
3. A skilled writer to storyboard the shoot
3. Quality lighting
4 A skilled editor(s)
5. Skilled actors
6. Extras
7. Skilled make-up artists
8. Skilled wardrobe artists
9. Skilled set designers
10. A skilled crew to do all the necessary handiwork the day of the shoot

These are just the first ten things that come to mind. There are many more things that I could have mentioned. It can get really expensive when you start putting dollar figures on each of those things. One high quality camera alone can cost thousands of dollars! Even if you can get a bunch of volunteers to do as many things as possible, it can still be costly and you run the risk of producing a video that looks like it was shot and edited by a bunch of volunteers, rather than paid professionals. Over the years, it has become a lot easier to produce quality music videos for cheaper than what they used to cost, but it's still a challenge.

Also, from a creative standpoint, I was never interested in doing a video with me simply looking into the camera and rapping one of my songs. In my opinion, 1) That's not very creative and 2) Most of my songs are about infinitely big ideas (God, the gospel, eternal destinies, etc.) that I'm afraid will immediately become diminished if dwindled down to a guy rapping into a camera. I always wanted the medium to do justice to whatever is being communicated in the song, and if that wasn't happening, I didn't want to do it at all.

With all that said, the artistic challenge hasn't been my main concern with music videos. My main concern is a biblical one.

2. The Biblical Challenge

The biblical challenge with music videos is that it is a visual medium; that is, a medium of images. The Scriptures have a lot to say about the dangers of images. The second commandment says:

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God..." Exodus 20:4-5

I know that this verse was written during a time when pagan idolatry was prevalent and people actually worshiped statues. However, I don't think that bowing down to a statue is the only way to break this commandment. What this commandment is forbidding is elevating any created thing to the place that should only be reserved for God. For some reason, images make it easier for us to do this. I suppose that it's because images enter our hearts through our eyes. As it says in Proverbs 27:20,

"Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are the eyes of man."

There is a very real biblical category called "the desires of the eyes" (1 John 2:16). The very first sin committed in the Garden of Eden was connected to the "delight of the eyes" (Gen. 3:6) and the millions of clicks onto pornographic sites each day is just one proof that the connection between the eyes, images and idolatry is alive and well today. Check out the following verses, which make this connection explicit.

Numbers 15:39, Ezekiel 6:9 and 20:24

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that music videos are inherently sinful. Not at all. I believe that like every medium (and everything else in the world), video exists to bring glory to God and show off His creative genius at work in His creation. What I am saying is that music videos are an image-based medium and that any image-based medium should at least make Christians cautious in light of the many warnings in the Bible about images. While images themselves aren't necessarily sinful, images can (and often do) tempt the human heart to idolatry in a way that other things don't.

The secular music industry is very much aware of this and is very intentional in using music videos to make idols out of the artists they promote. What we see in music videos is not real. It's actors playing a role. It's 4 minutes of scenes slickly edited and crafted to make us see what they want us to see (and only what they want us to see). It is an idealized (usually either hyper-sexualized or hyper-dramatized), airbrushed, strategically postured, surgically enhanced image designed to capture our hearts through our eyes. Stadiums filled with thousands of people screaming, hyper-ventilating and fainting during secular concerts that are nothing less than worship events demonstrate powerfully that the idol-crafting, superstar-making formula employed by secular record companies is working.

When record labels do this, they are simply capitalizing off of a truth that was communicated in Scripture thousands of years ago: Within each fallen human heart, there is an idolatrous tendency to make idols out of images. We're being naive at best and negligent at worst if we don't acknowledge this tendency. When we fail to see this, what we'll inevitably see (and are seeing now) is the rise of the "Christian Superstar", which should be an oxymoron. There shouldn't be any room for a "superstar" in a universe that also has Jesus in it. However, we shouldn't be surprised if we use an image-based medium in the same way that "superstar-makers" use it and we end up with a Christianized version of the same thing, no matter how pure our intentions.

In addition to the idolatry factor, we have to consider that both words and images speak. An argument can be made that images speak more loudly. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Music videos for Christian artists become challenging when what we see on the screen is at odds with whatever the song is about. So, for example, I may be saying in my song "Glory to God alone!" while the image on the video has me jumping out of a limousine, flashing money at the camera and looking like a rock star. It's an extreme example, but the problem here is that there is a disconnect between the words and the image. This is an easy error to make and I see it happen a lot (to varying degrees) with music videos by Christian artists. I don't want to make that error.

Well, this post is longer than I intended, so I should end it here. I haven't ruled out doing a music video, but if I do, those are some of the things that I would want to address with the director to make sure we're on the same page. And if I never do a music video, I'm OK with that as well. I'm still working through some of these things, so if you have any wisdom or resources to point me to, I'm open to that. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

grace and peace,
shai

Attributes Lyrics Now Posted

For those who didn't get the physical cd with the booklet and lyrics, the lyrics for The Attributes of God are now posted on this site on the right.

grace and peace,
shai