Anyway, so this issue has been on my mind a lot. Not only because we want unity in the church, but because my husband is the program director which means he's in charge of what goes on during the service and gets all the complaints from all areas of the spectrum.
I just read this position paper I found The Music Stinks! and was pretty amazed at this guy's assertions about music in the church. The author is Dave Hatcher who is the pastor of Eastside Evangelical Fellowship in Kirkland, WA. No, I don't know who he is, but given the disagreements in our church over music I thought this would be a dandy article to start a discussion of worship music.
Some excerpts:
At the time of the Reformation, the church was the centerpiece for the
cultural norms of Truth, Beauty and Goodness.In the seventies and eighties, after
over 150 years with no sense of what 'high art' ought to look like, and a
growing consumer mentality within the church, we caved into the demand for
pop-worship styles, along with our sermonettes and skits, for game-show like
worship services.
So, is he saying there has been no good worship songs written in the past 150 years? And 'high art'? I thought we were to praise God with sincere hearts and make a joyful noise to the Lord. Have I missed the verse teaching high art?
And what will the church say of the music of the twentieth century that was used in the worship of God in 'modern' churches? I would guess that it will simply be a quick illustration of how the twentieth century church, lacking any moral or aesthetic leadership, followed after the unbelieving world, desperately seeking its attention and acceptance, like the unattractive woman she had become.
While I agree that we need to be careful in how we might change our worship to reach out to the unchurched and that we shouldn't make our worship service all about them, does he really think that not singing songs that are two, three or four hundred years old necessarily means a church is lacking any moral leadership???
In addition, as worship services become more and more man-centered, focused on 'bringing them in', we serve music that suits the tastes of the God-hating unbeliever. If music were the beverage used to proclaim a toast to the King of kings, we have substituted Bud-Lite for fine champagne, simply because Bubba and his boys never acquired a taste for the latter. All for the sake of 'earning the right to be heard', we no longer have anything to say.
Jesus was a simple man from a simple family. One of the remarkable things about the gospel that touches many people is how it speaks to ALL, not just the upper class or even middle class but that the humblest person was loved enough by Jesus that he made the ultimate sacrifice for even him or her. The author seems to confuse good aesthetics and high quality hymns with holiness and common modern music with being man-centered and God-hating. I am appalled at his elitism.
Solutions. If we are thinking covenantally, then we must understand that 'we' are the problem, not 'they'. We must begin by repenting ourselves. Rather than building on the work of great church-musicians like J.S. Bach, we have gone down a long road of compromises, theologically, lyrically, and musically. These decisions have been made in the orthodox church for the most part, paralleling our compromises in the areas of science and rationalism, the integrity of the Scriptures and translations, and relativism in every area of art and the aesthetics.
A return to the hymns of the previous centuries, particularly the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries when the reformation was making all kinds of wonderful applications in the arts, is certainly the place to start.
Yes, he really is dismissing the last 150 or so years of Christian music.
Including the ones that share the gospel message or that praise God with words straight out of the scriptures. Well, certainly he can't be criticizing all those songs (there's a lot of 'em) based on the words, so it must be purely on his personal preferences of musical style. I'm guessing he'd hate my new favorite, Lead Me to the Cross. It shares the gospel message but our worship team plays it with drums, guitars and electric bass and it sure ain't no Bach:
Savior I come
Quiet my soul remember
Redemptions hill
Where Your blood was spilled
For my ransom
Everything I once held dear
I count it all as lost
Lead me to the cross
Where Your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You
Lead me, lead me to the cross
You were as I
Tempted and tried
Human
The word became flesh
Bore my sin and death
Now you're risen
Everything I once held dear
I count it all as lost
Lead me to the cross
Where Your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You
Lead me, lead me to the cross
To your heart
To your heart
Lead me to your heart
I just can't believe this guy is dismissing nearly 200 years' worth of songs because they aren't aesthetically pleasing to him. I agree that some songs are theologically incorrect or trite. But the rest is just personal preference. I personally don't like singing the same line over 10 times. But that doesn't mean someone else doesn't find it wonderful to really focus on the meaning of that one line. Look at scripture. There is lots of repeating in the psalms. Or how about what the angels sing in the heavens. LOTS of repetition there. :-) I also can't enjoy rap music and hope to never incorporate that into our regular worship time, but that doesn't mean I think it can't be holy and pleasing to the Lord.
What do you think about worship music? Should we stick to hymns? Only hymns that are good quality (like from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries)? Are there any instruments that should be banned from church? Do you think your church service looks more like a game show? ;-)
9 comments:
This topic is so far-ranging that it will be hard to post a conscise comment.
Suffice it to say - I'm probably more in the camp of the author of the article you quoted than in the opposing camp. I am saddened by the lack of quality found in church music these days.
The OT priests were instructed to bring out music that was old and new. So I think we should not reject the old hymns, but should also include music that is more recent. If we take the time to teach our people what "good music" looks and sounds like (God-honoring lyrics, correct biblical theology, aesthetic instrumentation, etc.) they will be able to see which current praise and worship songs have quality and which don't. This is nothing new. The hymns we know today are the ones that survived the test of time. The bad ones have mostly fallen into disuse and eventually were forgotten.
But we also need to hold a high standard for musicianship in our churches. We should not be offering poor quality musicianship to God. I'm not calling for elitism. I am calling for a desire to "give of our best to the Master."
Too many churches are allowing whoever plays a guitar to get up in front of the congregation to lead them in "worship." I think this has had a terrible impact on present-day Evangelicalism.
So - my view is that we should include the best of the old hymns, the best of the new hymns and songs (I'd recommend anything by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend for the new stuff). I think we should use the styles that come naturally to the people of our congregation and if there is an eclectic mix of musical tastes in the congregation, we should present an eclectic mix of worship music. In this way, the music itself does not distract folks from the act of focusing their attention of God. And each group of musical elitists will have the opportunity to humbly endure the other's favored musical style while still not having to eject their own personal musical tastes.
And we should strive, in as much as God has graciously gifted the local church, to use the best musicians and those most committed to their craft to lead the worship. Of course, they should also have a heart for God. It would not be good to have nonbelievers leading the worship service.
Thanks, Richard. You're right, there's a lot to this topic. While I've heard plenty of people express their desire to stick to hymns, it's always because that's what they are used to not because of quality necessarily. So this idea that good hymns are "high art" and what's come in the last 150 years doesn't qualify is very new to me.
I love many hymns and want my children to learn them. I just think there is some wonderful, inspiring modern music, too. Right now our church does both.
What do you recommend churches do that don't have the quality musicians? How should they best worship through music? Accompaniment tracks? A capella singing?
Our church is blessed to have some talented musicians now, but that hasn't always been the case. We found it necessary to use tracks. Not my first choice but better than no music IMO.
I appreciate your input!
K - Striving for excellence is tough in churches, which use volunteers rather professionals. But His strength is made perfect in our weakness.
I see church music excellence as relative - essentially relative to the musicianship of the members. If God has provided the church with musicians who are outstanding, the church should put them to use. (This does not always happen.)
But if a church does not have the ability to, for example, field a decent piano accompanist - by all means use performance tracks, or a guitar, or sing a capella. The problem I have seen through 30+ years of being a trained church musician is that today's churches have for the most part stopped striving for musical excellence. Current praise & worship music has coincided with this shift and I believe has encouraged this shift because it is easy to find a guitarist who can play most praise & worship music well.
I thoroughly enjoy a lot of the contemporary praise music out there, but as a musician I am able to run through most praise music songs for 15 minutes prior to the church service and play it without any difficulty during the service.
So it is easy to find a 15-year-old who got a guitar for Christmas last year who now, after 8 months of playing this new instrument, is fully qualified to lead the praise music.
Some see this as a benefit to churches. I do not. I think we should use this music in church and encourage the somewhat "green" musicians to be involved. But we should also strive for musical excellence and each musician should be given challenges to stretch them and keep them working at their skills. Becoming complacent in church service is not a good thing.
I probably have more personal involvement in this issue than most since I have seen three churches throw quality music to the wind in an effort to be up to date. High quality musicians were cast to the side, choirs were disbanded, organs and grand pianos were sold at auction because these churches wanted to move toward a rock band led music service.
Fortunately, I never got dumped from church music involvement because in addition to my love of high church choir music and my knowledge of hymnology, I'm a rocker at heart and love playing guitar and bass. So I was easily able to transition into the new modes of music. But I still regretted seeing the change and especially felt for those very good musicians who were dumped because their music was considered old-hat.
Hi K -
Anointing and calling have to be an integral part of who leads worship. I've worshipped under the leadership of superb musicians who had no anointing and also worshipped under the leadership of "not as good" musicians who had the anointing of the Holy Spirit in the area of worship . . . Give me the anointed worship leaders any day!
Style . . . ability . . . those things become secondary if someone is anointed and called to lead God's own into a place of worship. I've seen new worship leaders step out in faith and watched God devolop and grow them technically and for His purposes.
As for musical selections, each "camp" needs to set aside their "rights" to "their" music and focus on worshipping their King! Part of what a worship leader does is to bring the Body into an attitude of worship and focus on God . . . someone anointed in that area will be able to strike a balance for the body of believers he/she/they are ministering to.
It has to be all about Him, not us.
Just my two cents =o).
Thanks Richard for your insights. While our church is moving to more contemporary music we have tried to incorporate the organist and pianist into the mix and found them both unwilling to make any effort at all. :-(
The organist was a paid professional and was very gifted and could play more than "just" traditional music but resigned without much discussion. The pianist was a volunteer and was asked multiple times to try new arrangements of hymns or praise music and said no she was not willing to play anything other than from the hymnal or her songbooks "as written". It's a shame because she's a lovely lady and I hate that she feels pushed out. :-(
I just don't know how to resolve this need for music that most of our church members connect to (which is the modern stuff) and all hymns (played just like we always have) for a very small group of people.
I agree joyfullygrowingingrace. There's so much more to worship in music then just technical proficiency. Though we don't want to sound like amateur night every Sunday morning I prefer music that's from the heart to perfect music with no heart.
Thanks.
Oh, and I'm sorry I didn't respond more quickly to comments. I've been out of town for a few days and off-line.
JoyfullyGrowing - You're absolutely right about the leader needing to be called. Unfortunately it is somewhat hard to determine that. There are those who claim the call and anointing of God in music who I truly don't believe have that call and anointing. I think you're right about being able to sense that when you sit under their ministry.
K - I think it is very important to try to not push a style of music out (although folks may think you're doing that when you aren't). None of us should be demanding that others communicate with God in our own chosen mode of musical worship (genre, for lack of a better term). That means that the hymns-only people should be offered the opportunity to worship God through the playing and singing of hymns in the traditional (hymnal) style with congregational singing being part of this and those who are more in tune with contemporary styles should be offered the opportunity to play and sing in that genre. And it should all be included in the long-term course of a church's music. That doesn't mean that we can hit every potential genre that our congregations are used to every week, but we should attempt to mix it ecclectically as much as possible so no one is "pushed out."
This is very hard to do, but I think is part of the calling of a music minister (choir member, worship team band members, etc., all being music ministers in their own way) to teach the congregation how to worship God vertically without harming or disrespecting the horizontal nature of congregational worship.
Does that make sense?
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