Great Conversations: Pastor Jim Preisig

I have been a member of The Summit Church here in Lee's Summit for more than twelve years now. Pastor Jim Preisig is the reason my family and I selected this church in the first place when we were looking for a church to call "home." Pastor Jim is a brilliant speaker. His enthusiasm and passion are boundless and inspiring. Our church is blessed to have strong musical traditions and exceptionally gifted musicians and singers who serve. I know how important music is to Pastor Jim from many of his messages over the years, and I was so very happy he agreed to have a Zoom conversation with me to talk about his personal relationship with music, the role music plays in worship, and many other topics.

I hope you enjoy it! And below are two wonderful quotes Jim shared during our conversation.

“God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble…

 

The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart… Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true.

 

If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the idols or how to philosophize with a hammer

 

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC

Kurt Vonnegut, a man without a country.