Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
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Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2003

Grace Church of Burlington May 4, 2003 What are you advertising?                  Chuck Colson wrote in a recent Breakpoint:"A colleague of mine recently went shopping for CDs. He was greeted at the store by a life-sized cutout of a beautiful young singer wearing a tight-fitting, low-cut dress. The size and placement of the cutout made it hard not to look at it. Since he knew that the singer was all of sixteen, he left without buying anything. Sadly, this kind of marketing is all too common in the pop music field. But my colleague was not shopping for popular music. He was in the classical section of the record store.             Here, too, artists, instead of baring their souls for the sake of music, have taken to baring their skin for the sake of sales. Plunging necklines and even partial nudity have become common on classical CD covers. Patrick Kavanaugh, the artistic director of the Masterworks Festival, wonders ‘why so many brilliant classical musicians have stooped to disrobing in order to sell Bach partitas...’ Case in point: violinist Lara St. John. The cover of her 1996 recording, Bach: Works for Solo Violin, featured St. John naked, with only ‘her strategically placed violin to cover her.’ While the cover created a ruckus, the CD sold ‘phenomenally well for a classical recording’ and set a precedent that other record companies were prepared to follow.             Some people may dismiss concerns about low necklines on CD covers as prudery, but as Kavanaugh says, the real issue here may be ‘the future of classical music.’ This ‘sex sells’ approach diminishes and demeans the music. As John Kasica of the St. Louis Symphony told Kavanaugh, this approach ‘draws all your attention to the performers rather than to the music.’ It takes ‘away from the depth of the music itself’ and turns artistry into, at best, a secondary concern. As Kavanaugh points out, artists have been ‘practicing six to eight hours a day from the [age] of five." As if that weren't enough, now they have to look like centerfolds as well."             Ours is a sex obsessed culture, yet you and I are called by God to be a Christian Counter-culture. That includes the way that we dress. Now that the warm weather is here, many will go out with barely enough clothes to cover a postage stamp. Yet, just as our behavior and language as children of the King of Kings should be different, so should our clothing. We need to make sure that we do not dress erotically or in ways that communicate messages contrary to a God of purity and holiness. We also don’t want to dress in a way that draws attention to us and distract from our Savior.             Obviously, this does not mean that we run around in potato sacks. But we do need to be discerning and sensitive to the Spirit. We need to make certain that Jesus Christ is Lord of all...even our wardrobe. It means too that as parents, we have to draw some lines and risk being unpopular with our own children. Everybody else may be dressing a certain way, yet we have a Biblical responsibility to make certain that our children dress modestly.             Sex does sell. Unfortunately, sex outside of marriage and outside of the limits of God’s design sells only pain, misery and guilt. Eroticism is an unquenchable thirst. The only Person who can satisfy our deepest needs, who can provide the "living water" that brings contentment and wholeness is Jesus Christ. A hopeless world is known by its sex appeal; as children of the King may we be known by our Savior appeal.             There are a lot of myths concerning modesty. One of them is that modesty is old fashioned. But modesty isn’t old fashioned, it’s Biblical. As image-bearers of God, we need modesty. God has designed modesty to protect us from being vulnerable with the wrong people. It protects deep, erotic connections between a husband and wife, monogamy. In youth modesty guards innocence and in adulthood and marriage, it preserves profound connections.             As believers, we are called to live modestly. That includes the way that we dress. Our clothes say a lot about us. Let’s make sure that they are advertising the right message.