Preach it!

I remember a phrase from my evangelical youth which went a little something like this: “You need to give until it hurts.”

The phrase was talking about money and was framed by the ancient biblical idea of giving ten percent of one’s income to the religious order. Every now and then there would be what amounted to a pledge drive and the church members would be asked to give more than ten percent, a lot more. I remember something about a 90/10 week where people were challenged to give 90 percent and live on 10 percent of their weekly budget. That is “giving until it hurts”.

I’m not sure if anyone was able to the 90/10 thing but you get the idea.

Why am I bringing it up? I’m bringing it up because people give to causes they believe in. Even more, they give to people they believe in. People will give money to an organization based on their belief in the mission. When people also believe in and are inspired by the leadership of the organization they will give until it hurts.

Let’s apply this to classical music organizations. There are healthy classical music organizations in San Diego and they are the ones that have managed to inspire people who already believe in classical music. The ones which have failed did not inspire and in some cases repelled those who believe in classical music or did not have the ability to produce a quality product.

Classical music has believers and always will have believers. What it needs are evangelists.

To my mind, Leonard Bernstein was the Billy Graham of classical music in the United States. He inspired people of all ages to believe in the classics. He had a “cool factor” because of his popular musicals. He bridged the gap between popular music and classical music with his spectacular abilities. We don’t have a Leonard Bernstein right now and I’m not sure we need one at the national level.

What we do need is leadership at the local level that continues to inspire the existing patrons and actually converts some new ones.

How to do this? I’ve got some ideas.