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Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith

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Robert Gelinas has a new book! Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith is a joy just to look at, with its well designed cover, and to handle, with its unusual and helpful dimensions conceived for the reader. The book looks like a gem, and in addition to these important aesthetic attributes, it reads like one too. Reading Finding the Groove is like going to a jazz concert with all its originality and vision and then seeing how these grooves apply to living a finely tuned Christian life that matters to and for God, each other, and the world. Brimming with striking harmonies and exquisite orchestrations, Robert's well written words affirm a creative tension in Scripture, while also highlighting the necessity of practicing a lively faithful improvisation on the score. This is theo-jazz at its finest. Readers are invited to find their voices and develop their ears in order to better follow the rhythms, beats, and off beats, which impact and address every area of life, of Jesus the Master jazz theologian. Robert carefully composes these notes with flair, tenacity, and passion as one well versed in jazz and its profound implications for theology. Get this book. Read it. You'll love it. Excellent and highly recommended!

Length:: 3:50 Mins

My name is Pete Gall (My Beautiful Idol), and I'm proud to know and cheer for Robert Gelinas. I met Robert in Denver in the mid-1990s, and I remember going to see him preach at local African-American churches where -- as a very pale and obvious guest -- I would be asked to stand and introduce myself. My response was always that I went wherever I could still see Robert preach for free. I love what he's put together in this book, and cannot recommend it highly enough. Robert's invitation to community, to life in ensemble, makes sense of our differences, celebrates our voices, and holds the promise of meaningful living dialog. Do yourself a favor and buy three copies now -- save yourself the shipping costs you'll incur if (when) you come back for more.

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I was once told by an octogenarian seminary professor that though multitudes of theology texts had been written, every generation needed to write them again in order to find their voice and relate orthodoxy to their world. Robert Gelinas' book, Finding the Groove, is a fresh look at Christian theology through the surprisingly powerful, and uniquely American, metaphor of jazz.

Though not a musician himself, Gelinas has a lot to offer for the outworking of the Christian life through his reflections on jazz and how it works. Among the pleasant surprises along the way, he includes several biographical sketches and anecdotes that serve his thesis well. I have played and (sporadically) followed jazz for years, and I found his grasp of the topic refreshing and exciting.

The book is broken up into a handful of the characteristics of jazz music, and each is used to reflect on living a Christ-shaped life. I deeply appreciated his commitment to sound doctrine - after all, improvisation on a theme only works if the musician is playing with the chord progression laid down by the song. I also appreciated his use of the images of "ensemble" and "call and response" to reflect on how we live in community as people devoted to Christ and each other.

Overall, this is a book on discipleship and spiritual formation with an eye on what it means to live life in community. If you are a musician, I think you will enjoy his insights, and if you are not, you will still have a lot to gain from the book.

In Robert Gelinas' insightful book, Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-shaped Faith, he has found a new and exciting metaphor for our lives as people of faith. Explaining our lives and relationships through the metaphor of Jazz Music is a new and, I believe, acutely accurate view. This book was well worth the purchase and I have recommended it to every friend as a new way of looking at things. I recommend the same to you.

Robert Gellinas is quickly establishing himself as a pastor and writer committed to the exhortation of authentic Christian living. Finding the Groove is a refreshing look at the Christian life. No lists. No how-to steps. Life is more like jazz. A relationship with Christ is give-and-take, improvisation, and fluid. The parallels Gellinas draws between jazz and Christian life are profound. A great-read!

For too many years, evangelical Christianity has tried to put God into a neat little box with a formula for our every need. In Finding the Groove, Gelinas encourages us to be comfortable with the tension and mystery in both the Bible and our lives.

Using Jazz as a metaphor for Christian faith, Gelinas explores our needs as Christians, individually and in community.
For a more complete review, see the WOW devotional site: writingontheword.com

I was really taken by surprise how music and my Christian faith are so related. The author claims that you don't need to be a musician to appreciate his parallels. While that is probably true, it certainly doesn't hurt.
I typically don't like books about the bible and won't read many of them. (My philosophy is to go to the source rather than someone's opinion of the source.) However, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for the music lover who wants to get a better understanding of their walk with God.

Robert Gelinas is not even a musicain, but he "gets" the parallels between jazz and faith: rhythm, beat, syncopation, harmony, call & response, ensemble playing, and Christian life. A thought-provoking and inspiring read.

It's quite possible that all girls go through a jazz phase in college. Mine was named James. He was a senior and I was a freshman, and while I knew his invitation to the Chicago Jazz Festival wasn't necessarily a date, it was nice to be walking toward the lakeshore with an older man within a couple of weeks of moving to the big city for college. And I was very interested in jazz, all of a sudden.

I have no idea where James is these days, but I can still put my hands on the first jazz CD I bought, a compilation of French guitarists he suggested that fall. And I'm grateful that my crush gave way to genuine appreciation for the art form. Wherever he is, I'm confident James would be gratified to know that he's most responsible for the fact that I played John Coltrane for some friends last night.

James and his musings about jazz and faith (we were at a Bible college after all) might also be the reason that I was curious when I heard the title of pastor Robert Gelinas's recent book, FINDING THE GROOVE: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith. Gelinas is the lead pastor of Colorado Community Church and has come to think of himself as the church's resident jazz theologian. He sees jazz not only as a form of art, but as a way of life.

He points to jazz poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison to show that the key components of jazz --- syncopation and improvisation, namely --- could characterize other art forms as well. And, as he writes, "If jazz is more than music, then the jazz-shaping possibilities are endless."

Gelinas studied the Bible as an undergraduate and missiology in graduate school. As he puts it, his first degree was concerned with what the scriptures say, the latter focused on how we communicate and live the faith in the various cultures of the world. But rather than go abroad to explore how to live out faith in another culture, as the study of missiology might suggest, Gelinas has worked to contextualize Christianity in American culture and points to jazz as an untapped resource.

"When I look at our history and culture with `missionary eyes,' I see something indigenous that we have yet to fully explore and apply to our faith," writes Gelinas. "Embedded in our way of life is something that has shown the ability to produce creativity, diversity, community, innovation, and depth. Moreover, it originated in the church though the church abandoned it, rejected it, and has all but forgotten it exists. What is it? It's jazz."

Gelinas goes on to unpack different aspects of jazz, including syncopation, unresolved tension and ensemble dynamics, to show how these ways of playing music can also provide guidance for reading scripture, grappling with the problem of evil and living in true community. Gelinas's passion for jazz comes through loud and clear in smooth prose that might have you nodding your head as though it carried its own beat.

At times the jazz metaphor seems somewhat tortured, which Gelinas might argue is missing the point. Jazz isn't a metaphor, its a method. Or, more strongly put, it's a medium. It's the style, though not the substance, of the Christian faith. And this will resonate more strongly with some readers than others. But all will benefit from this fresh perspective on the rhythm of Christian life.

The book also functions as a kind of introduction to jazz music and a survey of the important era in American history during which this music first flourished. Gelinas does a service to all in introducing otherwise unfamiliar readers to John Coltrane, the world of the Harlem Renaissance, Ralph Ellison, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and others. His story about the almost-partnership between Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham gave me goosebumps to think about what might have been.

But jazz lives on --- in recordings, in nightclubs, and, if Gelinas has his way, in churches and in the lives of Christians across this country. As he writes, "When we embed our spirituality so deep into our lives that it can exist not only when we are doing spiritual things but in the midst of our vocations and avocations, then we have discovered a jazz-shaped spirituality." I can dig it.

--- Reviewed by Lisa Ann Cockrel

Syncopation. Call-and-response. Creativity. Listening. Freedom within constraints. Gelinas harnesses powerful jazz metaphors to cast a vision for a Christian faith fully alive, embracing creative tension while playing in concert with others. Here are a few highlights that may pique your interest to read the book:

Improvisation. Our Christian lives progress not by playing predetermined notes, but by improvising in the company of others. Improvisation is not just about spontaneous originality, because good improvisers draw on rich traditions and practice "in the woodshed." Improvisation is an apt description of our Christian practice, and church is our rehearsal studio.

Playing the blues. All jazz is blues. That is, pain and suffering are the native soil of jazz. Gelinas includes fascinating reflection on the nature of jazz, and how jazz is more than music, but an entire society full of "red, white, and the blues." A jazz-shaped faith, therefore, is a blues-shaped faith, expressing joy through suffering.

Ensemble. You can't play jazz alone. You can't be a Christian alone. Both require practicing and playing in ensemble, which means listening to others, needing others, becoming who we are because of others. We need to find our own voice, but that means playing in concert.

Finding the Groove is a creative, inspiring, vision-casting book. The jazz metaphor is packed with potential for shedding new insight on our Christian lives, and I look forward to future "jazz notes" from Gelinas.