The first article in this series seemed to have raised some hot bottom issues. I knew that some of what I said would not go over very well, but it did what I had hoped it would and sparked a very productive discussion on the forums. The main concern that evolved in the discussion over last months article circled around one issue… a fear of inflexible central control. Let me assure all of you that such a thing was very far away from anything I was considering when I wrote the article. It has been a fear that I have been aware of for years now and it is one that I believe has kept us from growing and developing as a scene. In fact, you could make a very strong and convincing argument that there really isn’t a Christian EDM scene… there is seemingly only Tastyfresh when it comes to a global movement.

What Do You Mean There Isn’t A Scene?

In many ways, I’d have to agree with it as well. After all, we don’t see Christian club nights or outdoor raves popping up everywhere, we seem to only have a slow trickle of new blood flowing to this site, and none of us can make enough money to live on simply by selling our music in Christian bookstores or DJ services to churches. From a numbers standpoint … we don’t exist.

There are just two main counter arguments to this line of thought. The first is that when you attend the Cornerstone Festival, the dance barn is always packed with 250-300 people each night, most of whom have never even heard of Tastyfresh, but yet love dance music and are looking for ways to have some sort of Christian dance ministry in their area. If this is the case, it’s hard not to believe that there are ten to a hundred times as many out there looking for Christian dance events. The second point is that an ever-growing number of Christians are extremely active in the secular scene and that the Christian scene is really just a transparent one that exists wholly within the secular one. The primary examples of this would include the DJ and production team of Shiloh, Q of Uberzone, Stryke and Alexandar East, better known to us as Sonic Boom of Love. The amazing thing is that the more I research I do … the more people I find out are believers in the secular scene. The argument that the Christian scene is transparent may actually be the winning one. Keep this argument in mind for later.

Clearly, one thing we will need to think about in the future is just what exactly is our scene, can we even call it that, and how well do we really want to define it? Regardless of those answers, right now it is hard to argue that our known group of supporters is fairly small. Because strength comes in numbers and we need to or desire to grow our numbers to help better define our scene, we need to have some sort of leadership in place that will keep us focused and united. And with that, we’re ready to get to the meat of this article which hopefully will outline what I am seeing emerge as a possible leadership structure for the scene.

The Tenth Amendment: Neal Boortz Is An Inspiration … Of Sorts.

Anytime you talk about leadership ultimately it becomes a discussion involving politics. It’s simply the nature of the beast. Since I have already stated that the last thing I want to see happen with the leadership of this scene is for it to become an inflexible centrally controlled structure, I think it’s best to quickly explain what I mean.

Several hundred years ago now, there was a war fought between 13 individual colonies and a nation that for all practical purposes and rather quite literally was on the other side of the world and trying to control just about everything that happened within the colonies. The war was triggered mostly because the leaders in the colonies were feed up that this controlling nation that had no clue about life in the colonies and did not give them representation. They felt that they should be free to live the way they wanted to and after a brutal seven year long war, they were free.

Each colony had their own constitution and for all intensive purposes was it’s own nation or state. They chose to ban together to form the United States of America however and draft a constitution for how the states will interact with one another and handle issues that involve all of the states such as defense. After the constitution was created (by the way, I mean after the more successful SECOND constitution), there was considerable pressure to amend it to give the people and the states guaranteed rights that had purposefully been omitted early. These amendments became known as the Bill of Rights.

Neal Boortz , a nationally syndicated political radio talk show host, reminded me the other day of perhaps the most important of these amendments. At first, I thought he was referring to the First Amendment, which gives us the rights to have our own religion as opposed to state run one, freedom to say what we want (except for fire in a crowded theater), freedom to write what we want, freedom to gather together peacefully (although permits may be needed in some cases), and the freedom to ask the Government to right a wrong. I really did think it had to be the First Amendment. I mean, with all of that, how could it not be? Well … the First does not do the most important thing, which is to limit the scope of what the Government can and cannot do. Enter, as Neal reminded me, the Tenth Amendment:

Powers of the States and People. – The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Simply put, if it’s not in the Constitution of the United States of America, then the US Government has no right to make a law regarding that issue. Now we could write some rather thick books as to how "well" the Federal Government has really followed that Amendment, but that isn’t the purpose of this article. By now you should be wondering what my point is with all of that. Well … here it is:

Tastyfresh and the global dance scene represent the federal government. Groove fellowships are the states. You are the people. The powers of the global dance scene should be limited so that it frees up the local scenes and an individual to do what they view is their ministry or purpose. Tastyfresh and the global dance scene simply exist to help facilitate the growth of the local scenes and individuals as well as facilitate co-operation and other forms of support between them. The last thing this scene needs is an overbearing federal government and there are plenty of examples in the world to show why that is bad.

The Powers of Tastsyfresh

Truthfully, Tastyfresh only has as much power as people are willing to give it. It’s all about love and submission. If Tastyfresh proves itself worthy, then it makes sense to submit to the leadership of the site when and where appropriate. If nobody is willing to do this, there is no Tastyfresh community to grow and the site simply becomes one of the million unread blogs already on the web. Everything, despite whatever the leadership here says is dependent upon your participation in this community. If the community ceases to exist, so does this site, and probably the global Christian dance scene as it will continue to shatter into smaller and smaller fiefdoms that do not interact or play well with each other.

Given the above, Tastyfresh does have a few powers. Just a few of these include the power to build an international community, the power to help the international community to establish local communities, the power to help decide what the scene’s purpose is, the power to determine what goals should be met each year and the plan to achieve it. Again, none of this can happen without you and your fellow community members. Now let’s take a quick look at each of these powers.

The Power to Build an International Community

If there is any one goal that Tastyfresh has met, it is this one. Every month, the site has visitors from countries from just about every continent on the planet. Granted most people are from the US, but we have people visiting from places like Ghana, Qatar, Ethiopia, Honduras, Algeria, Azerbaidjan and many more. We have long standing forum members from the US, the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada and more. Tastyfresh in effect asserts this power simply by existing and providing a forum for discussion and articles for reading, but it is still empowered solely by your presence on the site.

Should you and the other 6,200 unique people who visit this site a month simply stop showing up, you revoke this power. In the past, N*Soul Records was one of the main online communities. That faded once Tastyfresh opened its forums. There was and still is Dance Music For Christ (DM4C) on yahoo groups. In 2001, this group close to 100 messages a month. That’s not bad for a mailing list. In 2005 however, there were about 5 messages posted per month. There was another forum on christianraves.com for a while, but now it too is gone. People make the community and empower the ones they want to survive. Right now, Tastyfresh seems to be that community. One day, it won’t be though and that is all right.

The Power to Help the International Community to Establish Local Communities

There have been people trying to establish local Christian dance groups since the first disk came off the presses at MYX Records in 1992 (or was that Metro One). There were probably a few people trying to do just that even before then. In the past, we have seen groups like Fusion, Amplified Life, Found and more than a handful more just within the US. Almost all of them no longer exist. In many cases, the leadership of the group was lacking. We’ll talk more about that in a future article by the way.

Last summer, Tastyfresh started a LONG and slow going process of establishing local communities that are connected to Tastyfresh to help legitimize them and to help set-up a base structure for the groups. The point isn’t for Tastyfresh to dictate what should happen in these communities, but simply to help them gain access to the support and resources they need to do whatever ministry they choose to do, be that simply praying with each other, fellowshipping/hanging out, putting on an event or something else.  Coming late this year will be groove.tastyfresh.com, which will be a new site to centralize information about each fellowship.

The Power to Help Decide What the Scene’s Purpose Is

To start off with a quote from Hazey on bluelikejazz.co.uk: “I would take issue with TF administration seemingly thinking they define what the ‘Christian dance music scene’ is … but you know what? As of right now, they do!”  Like it or not, because we have the majority of the community built here, we the community, not just the administration of Tastyfresh define what this scene is and determine its purpose. We should have a long discussion and determine these things, write them down and post them on the site. They shouldn’t be some overly specific twelve-step plan. It also should not conflict with the purposes of the local communities. In the past we have simply avoided this topic each time it was raised out of fear that such a purpose would conflict with the local communities. In many ways, each local community is a leaf in a stream floating wherever the stream takes us rather than fish with a purpose within its school. Do not you think it is time that we put some solid framework around why we are here?

The Power to Determine What the Goals Each Year Are and Create a Plan to Achieve Them

Having a purpose is great, but you have to actively move in accordance with that purpose or it is meaningless. The Tastyfresh community needs to determine and set reasonable goals each year to help continually move Tastyfresh in the direction of its purpose. The goals are not just to give the scene something to do, but to keep us focused on why the scene exists. Again, these should be rather high-level and not interfere with any local community goals. These goals should be traceable though. We need to be able to look back on 2006 and see what we have been able to do through a spirit of cooperation and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

What Simply Doesn’t Matter

Up until now, I’ve talked about what matters and what I feel is important. Hopefully, it will spark another good debate on the boards. Now that I’ve laid out a very high level idea of what I think we need to discuss and determine over the next few months, let’s talk about a few things that simply do not matter in this discussion and shouldn’t even be factored in.

Politics and Religion

First, this is a debate that should be outside of any politics and theological issues that do not directly relate to this dance scene. In other words, my like or dislike for George W Bush should not even factor into this debate. Likewise, neither should my preference in baptism practices or theological position on the rapture. This isn’t saying that we shouldn’t consider the theological ramifications of what we are deciding, but that debates that lay outside of the dance scene shouldn’t be used as excuses to not work with one another in resolving our purpose and goals.

I say this knowing that I may be the worst example of this, as I know I have allowed walls to be built between others and myself because of their positions. That was wrong and well … part of bringing unity will eventually mean I have to confront and resolve these broken relationships. Feel free to pray for me about this issue.

Who Should Participate in These Discussions

We could honestly stand around for days debating whom the core leadership of our scene is and who should be involved in determining our purpose and goals. The only thing is we have never established a system for determining that leadership. At this point, if you have some free time to chat about these issues, you are a leader; from those who participate in the discussions will naturally come our leaders. Some obvious examples of leaders in our scene now are the people who write articles for the zine on this site, the people who discuss the articles in the forums, the artists, the label representatives, and the Djs with residencies. Eventually, it would be cool to have a counsel of 12 or so to discuss and make final decisions about these issues, but we really don’t need that at this time.

Submission

This is the toughest. Many people in our scene have issues with church leadership. Most of them do for good reasons too. I’m not trying to knock that here. The fact of the matter though is that the Bible does establish a clear leadership structure in the New Testament for the Church. Tastyfresh may not be a church, but in some cases, it is all the church some people get on a regular basis. Also, if we are going to grow in a goal-oriented manner, we will need to determine some type of leadership structure with various delegated duties and responsibilities. We need to not let our issues with submission stand in the way of accomplishing something God wants us to do. We should submit to one another in love as Christ submitted himself to death for you and me. This goes for leaders and followers as well.

Limiting the Definition of Ministry or Evangelism

As many local communities will no doubt have their own views on everything from politics to theology, the larger scene centralized at Tastyfresh should avoid forming ridged definitions around what can be considered a ministry and what cannot. The same goes for evangelism and probably a few other terms as well. When we say that only passing out water at a rave counts as a ministry, we limit our ability to accomplish what God desires us to do. We may want to focus on a water ministry, but we should not force another local group to do the same when they feel they are called simply to provide a spot once a month for people to hangout together and fellowship. Both are valuable ministries and have their time and place.

Well, that’s the end of this book. Hopefully the next installment will be shorter and have some illustrations. The topic will be on the importance of actually having some form of leadership and hopefully focus on the consequences of having ineffective vs. effective leadership. Also at some point in the future I will dedicate space to dealing with our differences and disputes while maintaining our individualism. In other words: dealing with homogeny vs. hegemony. Until then, keep thinking about those questions I asked last time:

• Who do you think are some of the current leaders in our scene today?
• Are these the same leaders or have they changed over time?
• Do these leaders seem to be listening to God’s leading or their own?
• Are you listening for direction from God and the leaders of the scene or are you searching yourself out?
• Where do you think this scene is heading at the moment?
• Is it where God wants it to be?
• What is keeping us from reaching it if we are falling short?
• Are we moving as one body or many?