Posted on 03/21/2017 3:30:30 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It was a joy to finally visit your church a couple of Sundays ago, and to worship with the believers there. You know I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. Just as you promised, the pastor is an excellent communicator and a man who loves God’s Word. His sermon was deeply challenging and led to some great conversations with my children.
Now, you asked me why it looked like I wasn’t singing. I know that was probably a little awkward, so thought I’d send along a brief explanation. Primarily, it’s because…
…I was not familiar with the songs. Your church has a tremendously skilled group of musicians leading them and it was a true joy to hear them play and sing. They sound as good live as they do on their album! But, unless I missed something, all of the songs on that Sunday were drawn from their own music. There weren’t any hymns in the service or even any familiar worship songs. So it’s not that I didn’t want to sing; it’s just that I didn’t know the songs. I want to be fair—every church has some of its own songs, and there is nothing wrong with that. I tried to follow along the best I could so I could learn some of yours, but even then…
…the songs weren’t congregational. Most of them seemed to have been written with the band in mind more than the congregation. What I mean is that they were unpredictable and often went beyond my vocal range and ability. This made them tough to learn and difficult to sing. Sometimes I would just begin to think I had it, but then…
…your singers would ad-lib. Twice through that final chorus they sang it one way, but then on the third they did something I didn’t see coming and just couldn’t follow. Was I supposed to follow them up the scale as they went high on that final chorus, or was I supposed to stick with the original melody? I didn’t want to mess it up, so figured I’d better keep it quiet. I might have had help there, but…
…I couldn’t hear the congregation sing. I wanted to learn from the people around me, but I couldn’t hear them. A lot of them seemed to be singing along, but they were far quieter than the band. Don’t get me wrong, I love loud music and often crank it to silly levels when I’m at home or in my car. (I’ve even got it at an obnoxious level as I write these words.) But as I understand it from Colossians 3:16, a key element of congregational worship is hearing the congregation. Singing is in the realm of “one-another” ministry, meaning that we are to sing for the other people there. But that was tough because…
…it felt like a performance. We were in a darkened room sitting on theatre-style seats. The band was on a brightly-lit stage at the front of the room, singing their own songs with the volume cranked right up. This set a context that struck me as more concert than church. I really enjoyed watching the band and listening to them, but it felt to me that they were doing rather than facilitating the worship. So finally I just sat back and enjoyed the show.
Now, please don’t think I’m trying to rekindle the old worship wars. I believe there is room in congregational worship for both traditional hymns and modern worship songs. I love them both! But the way the music was structured and implemented in your church was just not conducive to congregational worship. It was good, it was professional, but thinking about it now, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps it wasn’t a bit too good and too professional. I wonder if the desire for excellence may have robbed it of much of its usefulness. It’s worth considering: If our desire for excellence puts the music out of reach for the congregation, perhaps we’re pursuing a wrong definition of excellence.
The old hymns, actual hymnals, the organ, piano, NO “worship leader”, NO band, NO 7-11 choruses, NO performers prancing around the stage fondling their microphones... We found that church. And it took FOREVER to find and we love it.
A B Simpson, founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance wrote many songs/hymns. The verses were the outline of his sermon. Great theology in all of them. Most (but not all) were very singable.
Did they reach to the level of the Wesleys? In my mind they did. But I love the Wesley hymns also.
Rock and or Roll!
https://youtu.be/qSCUhqsy4Nk
~Robert De Plante
#inchristorege
I am afraid I cannot agree with your juxtaposition:
As a trained chorister and an ordained minister, I entirely agree that worshipful singing is about the Lord.
As a student of music history, I do not consider Charles Ives a good example of that principle: I consider him a lover of worldly chaos, not godly order - like so many that came out of the anti-Christian late Nineteenth Century.
I’m the worship leader/music director at a small church. It’s usually me and the guitar. The pastor and I work together to develop a service that works seamlessly. The songs are chosen to enhance and complement the sermon. I draw from many sources, including contemporary Christian music, if the song is appropriate. I have no problem re-arranging the music and changing the key to make it easier for the congregation to sing.
This past Sunday we had a special service which included our choir. Myself and another church member researched the stories behind the hymns. The whole service was telling the stories and singing the hymns. It was amazing and people were so moved. We’ve been asked to do the program at other churches already. There is a thirst out there for something that real. Many of the old hymns come right out of life.
Not to say that there are not good contemporary songs. I write for the church from time to time, usually inspired by the scripture we’re covering or the sermon. Some of them get worked up and sung at secular events by my band. God’s word does not come back void!!
I am extremely well acquainted with the institutionalized church - of many denominations.
I have found that the use of modern music often (no, not invariably) correlates with “liberal” (read: heretical) doctrine.
Singing and worshiping is what we will be doing for eternity, and it’s an awesome thing to sing as unto the Lord while we are still here on the earth. All of scripture speaks about singing to the Lord. It’s good for us to hear sermons and read our Bible, for sure. But in eternity, what we take with us is our singing, and won’t need our Bible. Singing is the most fulfilling way of worshiping the Lord we love so much. I don’t think it matters much to God whether you have a great voice, it’s your heart He is looking at. There is nothing like the sound of the Redeemed praising the God that saved them!
congregational singing is an important part of worship. In the church I attend the hymns are selected to augment the day’s Scriptural readings. So you hear Scripture read, hymns which concur, a sermon which take words written 2000 years ago and explains what the same words mean in today’s world. It’s all part of the package called worship.
I was so glad hear you write about this issue of church musicians so personalizing worship music that it excludes participation by churchgoers. I thought I had read related comments in a 1991 book “Why Catholics Can’t Sing”. But I doubted my memory, coming to suspect my own opinions has muddied the water.
My recollection is that an account of church music changes starting in 1969 was that congregations were purposefully excluded by introduction of Broadway show type music not of a high standard (I say facile) but too difficult for congregations to sing.
In my Mother’s childhood from her birth in 1910, there was no radio, Victrola was too expensive, but sheet music sales were high, prior to WW 1 there were 200 piano manufacturers in the US alone. If you wanted music, you made it. This was until radio came in in 1923. After that you see the Waltons usually crowded around the radio instead of the piano. (My clip of Walton’ s composer Alexander Courage repurposing some authentic old Appalachian music https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=KiETwztU3cA )
Now we musicians try to sing and play at the Christmas party, you’d think the children would be curious about live music close at hand, that they would want to sing, but, no, live musicians are just courteously tolerated, either disdained as not having the high gloss of commercial music or, if they’re good, receiving the opposite reaction of worship, some few may sing with gusto some mass marketed popular music (their real religion involving them intensely), but no in between, certainly no participation based on any real personal familiarity. Music is a commodity that comes out of the phone. You change it with a button, louder, softer or off.
Eric Blair/George Orwell wrote about machines which automatically programmed music for the proles. Neil Sedaka quit Juliard after a year, moved into the Tin Pan Alley Brill Bldg., “bought the three biggest hit singles of the time and listened to them repeatedly, studying the song structure, chord progressions, lyrics and harmonies—and he discovered that the hit songs of the day all shared the same basic musical anatomy. Armed with his newfound arsenal of musical knowledge, he set out to craft his next big hit song, and he promptly did exactly that...”. Now music algorithms operate with the equivalent of bio-feedback to calculate within less than a minute what gets a positive reaction from a targeted listener, Pandora on steroids. People who get immersed in machine music become ever more like robots.
This isn’t the experience of people in numbers of widely dispersed cultures. Central East Asian countries, (China, Korea, Japan and Viet Nam), give good support to everyday music education. My workmate Venjamin from Russia, a jazz improvisor, piano technician,and qualified violin technician, has more music in his little finger than I have in my whole body after a lifetime of dedicated study. I have a CD of an ordinary, volunteer German song club, singing the Song of Songs in versions from 1200-1800, breathtaking quality. People in these cultures live much more intensely than we techno-barbarians.
It’s not just that some progressive musicians have arbitrary taken over in church, our human nature also abhors a vacuum, something will fill it, but good or ill, our people will be oblivious to the quality of the results, just ready to open their gullets to be trash-food pate de foie gras geese.
We moved to our present town back in ’14, and spent months looking for a fit. Rather than the church of the same denomination which we attended before the move, we finally decided to go to a church with two services, the nine o’clock service using hymnals . . . and which has a pastor who does not put me to sleep.
Praying in set rather than improvised prayers is not necessarily heaping up vain repetitions (Mt 6:7). In the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord Jesus prayed multiple times to the Father using the same words (Mt 26:44). And in Rev 4:8, the angels “never cease to sing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty’.” Just as a husband doesn’t say to his wife, “I told you I love you once already, at the beginning of our marriage,” but says “I love you!” often, hopefully, many times every day, so sincere and devout, repetitious prayer to God – in time-honored phrases better than any we could ever improvise – is never wasted. We are guided in praying meaningfully and devoutly in the Mysteries of the Rosary, meditating on the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and His mother..
I’ve had some of the same thoughts in a few churches I have visited over the years. It’s supposed to be “praise and worship” time together not a rock concert where the group/choir shows off. Special music? Sure...maybe before the sermon, but it doesn’t need to be the whole P&W time.
And many of the Psalms repeat simple refrains such as "His steadfast love endures forever," almost as if they were designed to be easy for a large congregation (with no song-sheets) to sing along.
True music comes from the heart. It may not "sound" pretty.
"praise him with the clash of cymbals,That is the basis for his view: "What has sound got to do with music?"
praise him with resounding cymbals." (Psalm 150:5)
Singing, sitting, standing, sleeping, speaking in tongues, and dancing in church are not things you should or shouldn't do. These are things you may do if you are moved to and don't do if you're not moved.
You witnessed corruption there? Paul ripped the Corinthian Church for a variety of bad behaviors.
One of my younger brothers attended a United Pentecostal Church in Ft Collins thru the 80s and 90s. His pastor was a straight shooter, and wouldn’t have tolerated the stuff that you say happened where you attended.
For a few years my family attended a UPCI Church in Davenport, IA. The old school pastor retired, and a young, intelligent man was voted in. It was his first pastorate, and in no time, he was drifting off into the showtime Assembly of God style. Nowadays the guy isn’t even a pastor.
I know that Paul called out the Corinthian church for a variety of carnal behaviors. They shaped up pronto.
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