Features | Devotionals/Meditations | About LQ
Outdulgence and other Worldly Pursuits | Dancing About Architecture: Reviews
PRISM Editorials | PRISM Features/Interviews

the Fernando Ortega Interview
printer friendly versionby Dwight Ozard

Fernando Ortega: The PRISM Interview by Dwight Ozard

Fernando Ortega is something of an oddity in “contemporary” Christian music. An acclaimed worship leader in the evangelical community, he eschews hype, distrusts emotionalism and jettisons mindless repetition of catch phrases and buzz words in favor of careful, substantive reflection. He also writes real songs for contemporary worship, insisting with Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts and Martin Luther that the collective worship of the church must be, at once, decidedly beautiful, graciously evocative of our shared humanity, deeply personal and rooted in sound theological reflection.

In September, Myrrh records released Ortega’s national debut, This Bright Hour, a collection of songs that we believe to be the finest record of its kind made in many years. It also represents something of a phenomenon in my own world—I have never had so many different people tell me that I must meet an artist. They were right. Fernando is a breath of fresh air in the midst of a rotten business. So much so, we thought you’d like to meet him too. What follows is an excerpt from one of our many conversations.

PRISM: Tell us a bit about your background, how you became a musician and your influences—including musical, theological and familial.

FO: I am from New Mexico, where my family has lived for three centuries, north of Santa Fe. My two sisters, brother and I were born and raised in Alburquerque (proper Spanish spelling). My maternal grandmother, who died just recently, was a bright, witty, stylish woman who was a devoted Christian, a school teacher who traveled on horseback into the mountains to teach her students. My paternal grandparents were farmers and weavers, raising corn, chile, apples and peaches, and making beautiful weavings on two-harness looms. They were also devout Christians. This heritage and way of life has become increasingly important to me as I get older.

My parents started me out with piano lessons when I was eight. I was by no means a prodigy of any kind, but my musical gifts were apparent and ample. Choir and church music have been constant in my life. Some of my earliest musical memories are of Mexican and Italian folk songs that we had on vinyl and also some old LPs of Wilhelm Kempf playing Beethoven piano sonatas, which I listened to daily. I can also remember being mesmerized by Handel’s Water Music, and Smetana’s Moldau. By the time I was 13, I was hooked on Jethro Tull, Janis Joplin, The Beatles and James Taylor. Joni Mitchell’s Blue still gets frequent attention.

I majored in music at the University of New Mexico, which broadened my repertoire and listening habits substantially. The Brahms section of my CD collection takes up the most space, second only to the Medieval and Renaissance choral music section. But actually, I listen to a wide variety of music, and I suppose that on some level, it all counts as influence. That, and life itself.

My church background is almost as rich as my ancestry. I was born and raised Presbyterian, but by the age of 15 was drawn to the mystical atmosphere of an independent Pentecostal church— which was wild beyond all telling. When things there disinte-grated, I sought refuge in a Southern Baptist church, where I worked as a choral director and church pianist. Later, I moved to Pasadena to work for Campus Crusade as a musician and attended a Congregational church, where the music minister greatly influenced how I think about church music. Four years later I became a music director at a large “seeker” church in Irvine. Eventually, I took a part-time position at the First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton where Chuck Swindoll was pastor. Currently my wife and I attend a Christian Reformed church.

PRISM: How have your experiences as a “worship leader” affected your understanding of what “worship” ought to be and look like?

FO: “Worship leader” is an odd term, isn’t it? I wonder where it came from. Perhaps the greatest service that working in so-called “seeker-sensitive” churches offered me was to help me define what worship was not. From there I could begin to ponder what it is. Of course, a discussion on worship would have to go way beyond the subject of music, as worship is multifaceted and encompasses the whole life of the Christian. But since we are talking about music, I’ll stick to that. Music in many contemporary American churches is seen as strictly utilitarian, and the purposes it serves run the gamut. Sometimes it is used for nothing nobler than to give the congregation a chance to stand up and stretch or go to the bathroom before they settle in for the sermon. More often, it is a “set-up” or a punctuation mark for the sermon, or worse, a prelude to the dreaded “drama team.” In such a context, even the greatest music is reduced to nothing more than propaganda or filler. Working in churches like that, I have felt the degradation most acutely. It weighed on me heavily for years, although I didn’t know why.

Each aspect of a worship service must work and have value in and of itself. The hymn that speaks unself-consciously of God’s greatness or mercy or forgiveness causes the believer to worship and the unbeliever to confront an aspect of God with which he is not reconciled. The reading of the Law and the Gospel causes the believer to respond in thankfulness and brings conviction to the unbeliever through the Holy Spirit. But both aspects must be unfettered by each other, otherwise each becomes diluted by its task in the overall picture.

The worship service must be an intimate affair, where the clergy and parishioner are wholly consumed with the adoration of God, not with whether the attending pagan is “getting it” or not. So many churches put on weekly variety shows that end up being a distraction from God, rather than an arena in which a person experiences God. The concern, of course, is that the visiting seeker not be “offended” by a confrontation with the mysterious, living, holy, almighty, judging and redeeming God, but rather feel totally comfortable and at ease. A ridiculous notion, when you think about.

PRISM: It seems that much of contemporary evangelical worship is designed to evoke particular feelings and sentiments in the “audience.” Can sentimentality play a role in true worship?

FO: There is no place for sentimentality. By sentimentality I mean excessive, mawkish emotionalism. It is the stuff most contemporary praise choruses are made of (and a good number of books, too, and is the product of an exalted view of man and a reductive view of God. The notion is that if you are a Christian songwriter, then any reckless, unrestrained feelings or precious thoughts you might have about God are worth writing down and being made into a song for the whole church to sing. Away with theology, reason and history. Flannery O’Connor said, “Everywhere I go I’m asked if universities stifle writers. I am of the opinion that they don’t stifle enough of them. Many a bestseller could have been thwarted by a good English teacher.” This applies to songwriters as well.

The most successful hymns are those that speak of God or to God in a straightforward manner without contriving to elicit some sort of predictable emotional response. It is no easy thing. I love the stanza from “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”: Summer, and winter, and springtime, and harvest, Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above Join with all nature in manifold witness To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

There is nothing here but the simple naming of things, and it’s very powerful. These lyrics evoke certain sentiments in the listener, but they are not sentimental in and of themselves. Because these lyrics are not sentimental they give freedom to the listener to feel or respond in a certain way.

Certainly a well-written lyric can be honest or vulnerable, but not because it tries to do so. This same principle is applicable for the pastor, priest or musician who is planning the liturgy for a worship service. Sentimentality in worship, as in art, is a distraction from the business at hand.

PRISM: History seems to be among the most important elements in your music. Why is it important to look back when we worship?

FO: It is poverty to ignore the richness of the creeds, catechisms, hymns and other writings of the saints of the church. In so doing, one dismisses 2000 years of Christian reflection, thought and struggle.

I speak from experience, having conducted my work in the church for years with little regard for history. Here, once again, I credit my years in evangelical churches for revealing to me the holes in my perspective. I simply longed for something deeper and for a worship experience that had its roots in an awareness of God’s transcendence. One has only to glance at history for a picture of man’s cruelty, arrogance and hatred, and the infinite goodness, patience and mercy of God.

The Psalms, which are largely songs of worship, are filled with remembrances of God’s faithfulness throughout generations. They tell of creation and God’s hand in nature. They recount his dealings with his people, past and present. The New Testament also amply bears out this centrality of his-tory. The book of Acts preserved for us the history of the early church. The apostle Paul’s writings constantly remind us of God’s intervention in the history of his people. Christ himself used history both to encourage and chastise. Each book of the Bible was originally addressed to a specific people in a specific time in history. Our knowledge and worship and devotion are spurious if we ignore that history.

PRISM: As a Mexican-American giving leadership in the largely Anglo evangelical subculture, have you felt at home? Has the movement toward “racial reconciliation” gotten beyond rhetoric?

FO: There is a definite tendency to categorize people according to their ethnicity. I suppose it is true of all of us, and the challenge is to recognize it. It is something I have encountered my whole life, often in the most surprising places.

Recently, I sang for a small conference, and when I was finished, the guest speaker got up and said, “Isn’t it great to have Fernando Ortega here with us? Every time I hear his name it makes me want to run out and eat one of those omelets with lots of salsa.” As if that weren’t enough, he went on to say, “Did you hear the story of the migrant worker who went to his first ball game in America?...” and proceeded to tell the most inane joke. Unbelievably, the audience thought it was hysterically funny. It is not the least bit uncommon for me to be introduced that way and often by very intelligent people, some who are high-profile leaders in evangelical circles.

A few years ago I received a call from an enormous evangelical organization saying they were looking for some male singers to help lead worship at their events. After working through some schedule problems, I said OK, to which the guy excitedly replied, “Great! We have an oriental and a black guy. All we needed was a Mexican guy!” I told him I wasn’t interested in filling a quota and recommended an Anglo friend of mine who sings great and speaks better Spanish than I. He said, “Oh, no, no, no. We need someone who looks the part.”

What ties me to my Christian brothers and sisters is far deeper than skin color or ancestry or heritage, but it surely makes for interesting problems when those things are constant issues.

PRISM: Your music definitely reflects that catholicity, with a wide variety of influences weaving their way through the production—Spanish, Celtic, folk, pop, even some old European classics. Was that an organic, natural process, or an intentional statement?

FO: I am definitely not trying to make a statement, although I was certainly wide awake when, for example, I chose to use bagpipes on “All Creatures of Our God and King.” The bagpipes make that track sound so joyful.

There is a song on that same record called “If You Were Mine,” which was written after my wife Margee and I adopted a newborn baby girl. We lost her when the birth mother changed her mind. In the middle is an instrumental bridge, and we needed an instrument that sounded mournful and full of longing. Irish flute was the perfect choice. Admittedly, I listen to a few of the young Celtic groups that are playing these days—like Altan and Deanta—and I’m fascinated by how much the voices mimic the instruments and by how much both reflect their strange, sad history.

I also own several of the Alan Lomax recordings of Blues, Gospel and Cajun music, which I listen to when I am weaving (a family tradition in which I continue). Many of those recordings are so compelling and moving, how could I not be mindful of them when coming up with recording ideas?

Dwight Ozard is a writer, speaker and management consultant known across North America as a passionate advocate and agitator for relevant, redemptive, playful and frequently irreverent Christian cultural engagement and social "action."