So again, another evangelical writes with dismay about the superficiality of praise songs, with the usual complaints about "happy-clappy" and limited theology. Heck, I've done it myself years ago. But I am minded that better Christians than I sometimes think differently, and remember Retriever's comments years ago.
Yes, of course. Trained musicians are going to find it too simple, and word-people are going to want something more substantial. So what? Do you not realise that you are putting outsize importance on the music portion of worship? Sing the songs. It's not all of worship. The old style of five verses of complicated imagery carried its own death in its obscure references. "Here I build my ebenezer..." always made me think of Mr. Magoo.
I don't know, man. Some of these songs are horrid. Dad29 told me to think of it as a chance to serve some Purgatorial time up front.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably missing the point of your post, since I'm certainly not a church-goer. But one of the most contentious elements of planning my father's funeral was music. From one part of the family, there was pressure for Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain". I despise that song more because of the music than the lyrics, but even the lyrics didn't seem to fit my father's life. From another part of the family, there was pressure to find something, anything, by Neil Young. No... just no.
ReplyDeleteAnd then... when I thought everything was settled with one recorded song at the beginning of the service ("Daddy Sang Bass", which was both joyful and meaningful because Daddy did sing bass very badly on every road trip we ever made) and a live performance of "Amazing Grace" which was one of my father's favorites... the minister informs us the evening before the service that we need music at the end of the service when the mourners are departing. He suggests Garth Brooks' "The Dance".
Thankfully, my younger daughter was present, saw the look on my face, and quickly suggested "Rock of Ages" instead. Even the funeral director looked relieved.
I am a trained musician (and my minor was English). Granted my training was in piano and voice with a classical and operatic emphasis, but even there I always disliked the gratuitously sad, or compositions that seemed designed primarily to elicit sad tears... or a shove toward slitting one's wrists.
I wish there were a music-free service I could attend. I hate the clappy happy music and I hate the Marty Haugen/David Haas crap that is so popular in the Catholic church today. (Note that the Lutherans, to whom Haugen belongs, do not even sing his music.) All I want is an efficient get in and get out service with no BS. And no hand-holding during the Our Father.
ReplyDeleteRock of Ages, Fall on me,
ReplyDeleteWash my body, Out to sea...
Our book had "Here I raise mine ebenezer".
ReplyDeleteFunny how songs morph, or don't. I went to a Christmas carol singalong in Geneva populated largely by English folks, and forgot my magnifiers. The songs being in microscopic type, I went from memory--and found that 10 out of 11 had significantly modified lyrics. In most cases they got rid of archaic language. I wondered if that was because CofE is hierarchical, and could update things at will; while the US baptists are more congregational-driven, and most of the congregation is fine with the words they grew up with.
A church that will accept third rate music and lie to me that it is good music will accept third rate morality and lie to me about that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought this one would be controversial.
ReplyDeleteI went to a small church that had a very high educational, biblical educational, and musically educated background. I was on worship committee and we agonised about using music that was singable but profound, deep, quality...all that stuff.
That church died, and that was part of the reason why. When you do that, you have a sort of elite congregation. One interim pastor mentioned how difficult it was that she had to keep ratcheting up, because (almost) everyone got what she was saying, right from the first week, and wanted more. It sounds perfect, a slice of heaven.
Except that a year later, no visitors stayed beyond a week or two - and we tried, we really did, to be welcoming and interested, and willing to get involved, because really, we were. We were primed and loaded.
Once you start down that road there are no signposts telling you to go back. There are less-educated people, there are children, there are unmusical people - hell, there are developmentally disabled people and drunks and depressed people, and they deserve good worship more than you do, because you can go out and compensate with reading or recordings or stimulating conversation.
The ancient liturgical churches could be complicated because repetition was their ally, not their opponent. To a far lesser extent, now that they are doing weekly experimentations as well, they can do it now. Everyone else needs to sing to weakest link. You can always be looking to raise their standards, but two years later, you've got to remember you've got a whole new crew whose standards haven't been raised. They grew up on hip-hop, mindless oldies, or death metal and they are the only children you've got.
"Gentlemen, this is a football."
ReplyDeleteMy wife and children are under strict instructions. In my family it is customary during the wake to place some grave goods in the casket. A bottle of favorite booze, a deck of cards, etc., etc. In my case, these are to include a baseball bat.
ReplyDeleteIf at any time during my funeral the organist starts to play "On Eagle's Wings", they are instructed to open the casket, remove the bat, and pummel the organist until they stop.
There are less-educated people, there are children, there are unmusical people
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, beware of equating "easy to understand" with "horrible". Even when I was a child I couldn't stand most hymns, and it wasn't because I was some kind of prodigy; it was because they were sappy, senseless, and ugly. Surely there is music that are pleasing to the ear and mind without being impossible to understand and/or sing by anyone other than trained musicians with a master's in medieval history...?
This is one of those "I can see your point but" topics, and I do lean against you at least a little bit.
ReplyDeletePeople know that high church folk are going to look at their shoes and kick the ground when the subject of worship music comes up. It becomes a good way of politely declining to continue attending without really offending anybody (we're pre-primed to be apologetic about it). So even if you found the pastor boring or difficult to understand, or some of the congregation off putting for one reason or another, "I just couldn't sing the hymns" is a polite way to ease out the door.
I don't see that praise songs are necessarily free from misunderstanding. The words might not be archaic but they seem as likely to use unfamiliar idioms (to some of us), and poetic license can lead to confusion. This seems especially true when using Christian pop songs which add the difficulty of being written for professional performance, not group choral singing.
I've also run across a few people of my own years or younger who grew up singing hymns and would really like to have them included in worship but wind up at the 'contemporary' service because they don't want to get up at 0-dark-thirty in the morning on Sunday, or stay until after brunches have close down, in order to attend the traditional service.
I think AVI is raising a good point, although I'm inclined to agree with this:
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, beware of equating "easy to understand" with "horrible".
Several of Bach's pieces are both easy to understand and beautiful. One of the things you might be able to do, even taking on board that every week new people are walking in the door, is to show them a better world. Even if you have to show them just the first stair step to it.
Yep. You can. "Blended" worship is not really worst of both worlds, though it can be. But with skill, you can at least live on the third or fourth rung up the ladder. As most older church music isn't consistently above that anyway, a skilled worship leader can juggle this.
ReplyDeleteOne of our church's examples is frequent use of "Be Thou My Vision" in contemporary ve5rsions. It works very well.
Why sing at all, when you can just pop in a CD?
ReplyDeleteActually, the singing part is big. If you can get people to participate in worship rather than be receivers of it, that is worth a great deal. See new post.
ReplyDeleteIronically, I do prefer to participate in the music rather than sit and listen to it--unless it's happy-clappy garbage, in which case I'm afraid that the cost of including others is to exclude me. I'd as soon hum along to margarine commercials. Earplugs are the only solution!
ReplyDeleteI'd hope there was a compromise position, old standards or something. Otherwise it's looking more and more as though I'll need to start attending the 8am service, which is music-free.
This blog was sent to me and I have never participated in any blog comments before, but as I read this it makes me wonder.... were not the songs that you are arguing about at one time called contemporary "happy- clappy" or whatever the term is that you used? Change has always been hard.. never easy... but necessary if we are going to grow- not just at church, but in every aspect of our lives. Walk through the denominational churches that are dying and you will find people so afraid of change that they will hold to the "way we have always done it" until the last one dies and his/her relatives turn out the light and lock the door behind them when the funeral is over. To every thing there is a season- welcome the change of seasons, or die in that ditch. Are we more concerned about "elevating them to our standards" or telling the story of Salvation by whatever their level of understanding is? Ask yourself that- and in the quiet of your heart- listen for the answer.
ReplyDeleteThe songs from the past that people are preferring were not considered "happy-clappy" songs, no. They were criticised on a number of grounds, but i don't that was one of them. They might be considered too black, too country, too simplistic, too formal, or too ethnic. I suppose some might have been considered campfire songs from children's summer camp, but those were often sung in a context where their availability to children was being embraced.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is refusal to change that is killing the denominational churches, but the changes they do embrace, which are doctrinal. Many people like the Lutheranness or Espiscopalianness of the services, but dislike the embrace of native spirituality or the ordination of gay bishops. That is a generalisation on my part, certainly. I'm sure there are some who are moving to the nondenominational or smaller denominations because of the freer, more informal worship.
We tend to like the music of worship when we first found Jesus, in whatever context that was.
I will preface this with this is only my opinion of course. Because I come from one of those "dying denominational" churches, and my own personal experience has been that I have watched these churches turn into closed places- closed in the sense that we only want people exactly like us- they must dress like us, smell like us,and believe exactly the way we do. We want children, but they must not be noisy, they must be seen and not heard, and they certainly must behave appropriately. We only want songs that we like and have been singing for all these years- to me that is whey the denominational churches are having such a hard time, not that they have loosened up, but they have turned into places of un- acceptance.
ReplyDeleteI think we must ask ourselves who did Jesus hang out with- was it just the people of the Jewish Faith or did he come to hang out with the not so pretty people, who did he embrace, who did he tell us to embrace?
I believe that you cannot have open conversation when we are only having conversation with people exactly like ourselves. We let all the hot button issues, (gay, native spirituality, etc) separate us, when they should bring us together so that we can talk. I am not sure what we fear so much.
Once again, I will say that this is only my opinion and I believe that everyone is entitled to express how they feel about all this.
I agree with a good deal of that. We left the Lutheran Church in the 1980s and we did indeed see that attitude among them - among the denomination as a whole when we visited or went to conferences or met others at church camp - even more than in our individual congregation. CS Lewis called it "the dry husks of religion." But we did not end up leaving for those reasons.
ReplyDeleteThere may be a different kind of difficulty for those who leave a church versus those who never come in in the first place. If you continue to visit here, you will find the stock-in-trade is "Yes, that is what many people say and it sounds reasonable, but is it really true?" We try to get behind the conventional wisdom here, and are sometimes quite dismissive of it - and I am especially guilty of that. You don't in the least have to apologise for having an opinion, but we will ask you what it is based on.
I don't think I was as much apologizing for having an opinion as I was explaining that while I have strong feelings about this subject- I also am willing to sit across the table from someone and have an open discussion about our differences, in the hopes for understanding and a consensus that we can have a discussion and agree that we just don't agree without having to fear or hate.
ReplyDeleteYou asked what my opinion is based on and while there is some doctrinal basis for it- I also believe that I am intelligent enough to not have to be told what to believe-- I call my faith one that lives by reading and studying scripture and my faith leads me to love- not judgement, not traditions, but to love God and love one another- I truly believe it is that simple. Judgement is not my job.
Goodness I have strayed from the original blog- immensely. But I so feel strongly about what is missing in this world is love (and I know that sounds rather Hippyish). Hate and fear are easy emotions to feel, but love and compassion (the active kind of love and compassion) not the words, but the actual action are what is so desperately needed in this world and it begins with me in my little corner. "God made a million, million doors for His love to walk through, and one of those doors is me"- a line from one of the clappy- happy contemporary songs.
Thank you.
One other perspective to consider is that for at least some people, more traditional music is a change. I grew up with "happy-clappy" hymns plus pop songs plus folk music with a political message. For me, the idea of reaching back into the 2000-year tradition of sacred music was almost revolutionary because it wasn't something I grew up knowing as part of my religious heritage. In a lot of denominations it's been decades since this was common, and for all except the oldest people, it comes as a revelation.
ReplyDeleteThe "closed places" around here have congregations dominated by Baby Boomers, and have the happy-clappy music and the felt PEACE banners and the inspirational quotes on a rainbow background that were popular when they were young people. And tend to have a great deal of trouble tolerating any other form of liturgical approach. So that's my perspective.
All of us who haven't led charmed lives have probably attended something billed as Christmas caroling only to find that the crowd intended to sing "Frosty the Snowman" or "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" over and over and over all evening, because that's what their six-year-olds like, and they want to be inclusive. There are some groups it's not possible to find musical common ground with; it puzzles and grieves them even to try to discuss it. As there's no requirement for music in any worship service, it may be best to find a service that omits it. In my church, the early service is mostly music-free, thus eliminating friction. Even at the later service, only one Sunday per month is given over to the really intolerable material, like (my favorite) the words of the Sanctus set to "Suicide Is Painless," a/k/a the theme music from "M*A*S*H." Any month now, I expect "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," but with the same words in every line, to make it easy to follow along.
ReplyDeleteI think congregational singing is going the way of homemade music. It's a culture that barely survived the advent of readily available recorded music. We've split into professional performers and audiences. Audiences no longer feel quite comfortable participating, and if they do, the level they're prepared to jump in at drops with every passing decade. It's not that complex, interesting, beautiful folk music is unreasonably difficult for the average man in the pew, but it is something that requires practice, which people used to radios and recordings don't often get any more. A hundred or two hundred years ago people thought nothing of making their own music at home for an evening's entertaining, but only eccentrics do that now.
The hymns have become something like a Hot Pocket you can pop into the microwave, which may not be haute cuisine, but it's quick, it gets the job done, and it won't chase off the kids.
Well, of course I can only speak to my own experiences, but the churches that I have attended the past few years (3 and all Methodist) are not filled with baby boomers--we as a whole(me included) find it difficult to remain in organized religion. Several of us have started home churches because we are uncomfortable with the "business" that church has become. Our leaders have become more concerned with salaries, retirement packages, and health insurance than perhaps this being a "calling".
ReplyDeleteAs far as the music- the way I understand we are to make a "joyful noise", it does not say in 3 part harmony, or even in the correct key. So does it really matter whether is the "clappy- happy" kind or the ancient- as long as you do it with joy. I think we get hung up in the minutia and forget to look at the whole picture. It has been going on for so long that there are a vast number of different churches to choose from. Find one that fits your "minutia requirement" or heck just start one of your own.
I agree. It's just that some music is misery rather than joy. Then it's just distracting.
ReplyDeletePerhaps sort of like "beauty being in the eye of the beholder" joy is in the "ear of the listener". I personally think that God is quite pleased with any attempt to make a joyful noise!!
ReplyDeleteOh, I never had a concerns about whether the noise pleased God. I seriously doubt that's an issue for Him no matter what we sound like. I'm concerned with the experience of the human worshippers. Just as some would be jarred a heavy-metal service, some would just as soon skip the Seals-and-Croft sound. Them as likes it can very well keep it up!
ReplyDeleteI am glad that we have the freedom to worship as we please and that we all don't have to agree. We can agree to disagree and walk away still friends. No enough of that in this world right now-- so much "right fighting" and fear mongering.
ReplyDeleteExactly. It's a terrible idea to try to force a particular style of worship on anyone, in the name of inclusion or anything else.
ReplyDeleteOf course we can walk away friends, simply because a person you can have an actual conversation with is already likely near to your thought.
ReplyDeleteI came out of the 70s Jesus People idea of "make a joyful noise," but I think it has been overinterpreted in the service of emotion over intellect and will. Certainly banging on pots by five-year-olds (I have organised and supervised exactly this in my day) is as pleasing to God as Bach's "Mass in D minor." But there are deeper lessons in this. The Hebrew carries the meaning of battle cry, shout, horn blast, https://biblehub.com/hebrew/7321.htm rather than a mindless pounding. Also, it is the lands, not the people who are performing this in the poetry of the Psalm.
An extended analogy: For the communion elements, God can make any wine and bread into Himself, and there is nothing in action by humans that can make the Eucharist better. On the other hand, once you are the baker or winemaker who is chosen to provide the elements for this week, you will not send over a cast-aside bottle or a day-old loaf. You might for theological reasons send over a humble loaf or vin ordinaire so as not to draw attention to the earthly aspects of the Lord's Supper, but even then, you will select the best of that category. Because you just will. It is only "meet, right, and salutary." Music is the same. We do as well as we can, not only as individuals but as a congregation. There is a growing tendency to bring in recorded music because it is more professionally done and to our ears "better." I would not forbid it, but I would tend away from it. Worship should be an expression of the worshiping community. If Karen is at a house church, the music is unlikely to be professional quality, but that is fine. There are simple musics, such as Taize, or familiar, learnable pieces that suit that. If a talented musician joins the group, that should be incorporated. If none comes, we worship with what we have.
I will say that this is the theory, but music which is well-done and uplifts is an enormous gift to a congregation, and music which is bad enough to distract (or good enough to distract!) should be eliminated altogether. I have fought through hard, discouraging years of worship leader of a small congregation when every Sunday is an enormous drain, and one goes home depressed and tearful, clinging to the hope that God does mean what he says about the sacrifice of praise, and trusting in His ability to inspire, because it has been a long winter of dryness. To now be attending a service where there joy flows more easily, not because people are necessarily more holy, but simply because they are more talented and the music is a vehicle rather than an obstacle, is a great blessing to me. I do recognise that beauty is a snare as well as a blessing, but it is a risk I am embracing in this decade of my life.
I have learned at a difficult school not to be quick to criticise the worship choices of others.
I am more than happy that you have found a place to worship that suits you. I hope that all of us can do the same. But to state that one is better than the other is where the problem is. Once again I will state that I firmly believe that that we are all different and we should encourage difference. The "dry husks of religion" of my experience are those that do not celebrate our differences to the same end. God did not say you must come to me exactly this way. We all find our path to him and music is just one aspect of that journey. Clappy-happy, good ole hymns, spirituals, Bach, heavy metal worship music-- whatever music makes you feel that leads you to a personal relationship with God is good.
ReplyDeleteI guess one worshipper's dry husks are another's beloved traditions. I agree it's not a good idea to keep insisting that one is better than the other for everyone. It's the attempt to impose a particular style on others that leads to disappointment and friction, which surely is no part of worship.
ReplyDeleteAmen and well said
ReplyDelete