Tom Cannon muses on a novelty pop-song and life teaching the Scriptures to a local congregation week after week, year after year.
The challenge is to keep the message fresh, because we don’t really say anything new.
He begins:
“All the greatest hits from the past 40 years just use four chords. Same four chords for every song. It’s dead simple to write a pop hit.”
That’s the introduction to the “Four Chord Song” by Australian comedy band Axis of Awesome. The YouTube video, hilarious and now viral, is the band playing through snatches of 40 pop hits using the same four chords…
In case you’re wondering the chords are E, B, C#m, A. Some of the songs are transposed from their original key, but the point is that all of them are built on the identical chord progression.
People who know music tell me it’s called a “I IV vi V harmonic cadence”.
This has been running through my head recently as I hit the four-year mark as a parish minister after spending most of my vocational ministry working with college students. Campus ministry follows the rhythm of the academic year which means my preaching and teaching schedule had lots of breaks. Factor in a campus minister’s “congregation” is in constant flux so after four years you have complete turnover.
Not so now. Which partly explains why I’m dwelling on this. I stand up in front of my congregation dead certain they’ve picked up what my transient students likely didn’t. I’m pretty much using the same four chords every sermon…
Read the rest of Four Chord Sermon
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