The Gospel According to the Beach Boys

[shadownoze]

I'm one of the pastors at a large church in Texas and I've been a Beach Boys freak since around 1972. I never really thought much of combining my obsession with Brian Wilson and my profession of teaching about spiritual topics. A couple of months ago, while teaching one of my two groups (which total about 150 people), I casually said, "One of these days I'm gonna do a series on The Gospel According to the Beach Boys." The more I thought of it, the more possibilities I saw. I did several weeks of promotion, creating some cool posters and even a sort of video "trailer" for what I planned as a three-week series. Then I had to start assembling it, a task which took many, many hours. My plan was to break the story of Brian and the BBs into three basic pieces: Rise, Fall, Rebirth. On the first day, there was record attendance in class--something that doesn't usually happen in the summer at churches! Everybody was extremely attentive and appreciative. I realized I was not going to be able to cover what I wanted in three sessions, so I added a fourth week--in between the "Rise" and "Fall" weeks, I devoted a whole session to Smile, leaving it as the legendary unreleased album and saving the BWPS story for the fourth week. Two days ago, I did the final session and it has turned out to be perhaps the best-received thing I've ever done. They laughed, they cried, they asked questions, they actually wanted to go buy music...and they gave me a huge ovation.
I have focused in my pastoral "career" on finding spiritual meaning in the most mundane topics. Doing this series reinforced that mission and encouraged me to use the things I feel passionate about as springboards for finding out a little bit more about God. There are certainly plenty of spiritual hooks in Brian's music and his life. After seeing some of the recent posts on the front of this site about churches having "beach parties" etc., I thought it might interest a few of you to know that one church delved a whole lot deeper into BB history...you shoulda heard the gasp when Charlie Manson appeared on the screen!
I'm fairly new to this board, but I go way back as a BB fan. Sometime soon I'll share that story, including my meeting several members of the group on the first Beachago tour. I've spent several hours reading the threads here...good stuff!

[onkster]

That all sounds terrific...glad it was so well recieved!

I also like the idea of finding the spiritual side in ordinary things...which I find very validating.  Too often, so-called spiritual leaders try to persuade us that the answer is "somewhere else" rather than in everything around us.

You should post a transcript of your BB sermons if you can!

[shadownoze]

These weren't sermons as such; they were actually more like a college class. I used PowerPoint (actually, the Mac equivalent: Keynote) and incorporated a slew of audio, video, and photos with my own narration and transitions. No way to post it, really.
I had one guy come to me afterwards and say that, in the late 60s, he and his friends were into Hendrix and Cream, etc., and they dismissed the BBs as being light and muzak-y. He says he's now ready to re-examine that stance, now that he knows the story. Another woman went out and bought Pet Sounds and said she paid much more attention to it than she normally would. Stuff like that made me very happy. If there wasn't that darned copyright thang, I would have given everyone a CD at the end of the series of all my favorite, little-known BB stuff. But I didn't.

[Jonas]

This is something I would have definitely loved to attend. I hope someday you can convert those powerpoint presentations into a flash movie or something so that we may be able to watch it.

[TylerB]

Agreed. This interests me to no end.
I attend a bible study every now and then and when I speak I tend to relate things to popular culture, or something else that people can easily grasp.

This is a perfect example.

[Chloepaintings]

It's wonderful that you did this... I don't have much to add, just wanted to lend my approval.