Credentials Credentials All Over The Place pt. 2

Steve Caldwell wrote a comment to my original post that I've been mulling since I read it.

In my opinion, the real reason for having professional associations and credentialing for the musicians and other professionals in our congregations is the code of ethics that comes from professional associations.

It's not important if one has an alphabet soup of academic letters after one's name.

But avoiding unethical behavior like a musician violating copyright laws or any church professional using power and authority to take advantage of a congregant sexually is important for our congregations.

As I said in my original post, I understand the need/want for credentialing both ministers and religious educators. But Steve's comment really points out my concern.

When one is talking about the arts (music, writing, acting, etc.), what are the codes of ethics? Pardon my ignorance, but I've never heard of a musician's code of ethics. By their very nature the arts are incestuous (creatively incestuous, not the other incestuous); and music especially so. So the issues that would come up in other professions' codes of ethics do not apply.

And even when you start talking about issues of copyright and so forth, those are really matters of law and not ethics because issues of fair use and what is in the public domain is very different when one is talking about the arts. And they become even more complicated when one is talking about the arts in a church setting.

But my real concern is the message that credentialing musicians might send. As the music program of a church is going to be mostly populated by those who are NOT professional musicians, won't credentialing musicians turn off those really gifted musicians who aren't professional?

Again as I said in my original post, I understand wanting quality music programs. What I don't understand is how credentialing musicians brings that any closer.