I have been thinking about the topic of music and worship for some time. In particular, I have been bothered by the fact that music in the Church is an area of division for many Christians. Musical style in congregations vary enormously, and those who advocate one style are often ignorant or even contemptuous of the musical offerings found in another church down the road. There are a number of sensitive issues of culture, musical taste and theology in these divisions. I am not aware of anyone discussing the damage caused by these gulfs in musical traditions. There is a need for serious writing on this topic as musical traditions play a major part in Christian worship and life . Music has to be considered a theological issue since it plays such an important part for so many in their Christian pilgrimage or journey to religious maturity. Something so important for Christian experience and growth should not be left to one side as ‘a matter of taste’ or something optional for those who like that kind of thing. What I want to do is to write a kind of introductory piece to this conundrum connected with the place of music in Church life. It will not answer all the problems. Rather it may help us to approach the subject with fresh eyes and see the discussion as important for the Church as a whole.
There is, I believe, a ready acceptance of the fact that some form of music is normally to be expected at most acts of Christian worship. The question then arises: what sort of music? Are we expecting to hear the music of Hillsong or Bach in our churches and cathedrals? What kind of hymns do we sing? Should we personally choose a church that offers the kind of music that we can appreciate, and should we avoid those churches that are jarring to us in the music they chose? The answers to these and many other questions on the musical offerings we find in our local church settings, depend in part on such things as local resources. Also, the music we hear and sing has to accommodate itself to that mysterious entity summed up in the catch-all words ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’. Each of us also knows that, while music in church can help to weld a congregation together, for other individuals the same music can be a serious stumbling block in finding peace or any kind of inspiration.
Up and down the country there are churches that invest considerable resources in the music they provide for their congregations. In some, the offering is what we can call cathedral-style music. This is found not only in actual cathedrals but in the increasing number of parish churches that aspire to near cathedral standards of musical offering. Each sung service is, from one point of view, an aesthetic event. This musical offering has some of the features of a performance, like that found in a concert hall. The presentation of such music requires dedication and commitment by all concerned. Where such musical traditions have been preserved in Anglican worship, there has been considerable investment of money and time over a long period. All too easily a musical tradition of this kind can be destroyed overnight by a Vicar or a PCC who decide that such an ‘elitist culture’ is unsuitable for their congregation. There may even be a conviction that the music of Byrd, Tallis and Bach is somehow spiritually harmful to those who attend.
In contrast, another church, particularly one in the cultural orbit of Holy Trinity Brompton or Spring Harvest, may invest considerable resources in a music band and provide music suitable to a more contemporary style and tradition. The vast range of ‘gospel music’ is not a type that I have experienced or studied. It is, however, hard to avoid the offerings of Graham Kendrick in ordinary parish churches. A few gospel songs make it into our hymn books, but I have never attempted to keep up with this huge repertoire beyond the few classics of this genre. I was reading somewhere recently that 1.5 million worshippers around the world are currently listening to or singing the music from Hillsong in Australia. I note in passing that singing music from this source has now become a more contentious act, since it is apparent that the royalties obtained by using this music flow back to Australia, enriching the entitled leaders of this church network. Hillsong is, nevertheless, still one of the musical gospel traditions that has, in some places, superseded the music provided by organ, hymn book and traditional church music.
The content of the blog could effectively end here, with a concluding remark that church music has to be a matter of individual and congregational musical preference. If you like the English Hymnal you need to search for a church that uses it, and the same can be said about Mission Praise. In fact, the discussion needs to go further than appealing to individual and group musical preferences. Music is an important part of human life and we need to be aware of how it can affect us at quite a deep level. It has the capacity to create emotions and moods and these, as we are all aware, can range from the wholesome to the potentially harmful.
The first observation I must make is reasonably uncontroversial. Music has a power to give pleasure and it does this by evoking pleasurable emotions. Recently, thanks to Netflix, my wife and I have developed a taste for foreign language films. This is not a prelude to learning Korean, Spanish or Turkish but we find the emotional tone of foreign films is quite different from those made in America or Britain. All these foreign films use subtitles. When music is played as part of the background, the subtitles indicate which human emotion is supposed to be evoked at that moment. So, after the word music, there appears a single word to indicate the mood that is being expressed. Words like romantic, suspenseful, mysterious or tense are used. The editor of the sub-titles wants to help a deaf viewer to know what mood is being evoked, at that part of the film, by the background music. The adjective used to describe the music mood also hints at what is coming next in the drama. Helping to create mood is also what is going on when music is used in church. Thus we have, for example, cheerful music and sombre poignant music when this is needed. This is as true for the Tudor composers of English church music as it is for the output of modern praise bands. The sombre music of Bach’s Matthew Passion is for me an important part of the observance of Holy Week and carols perform a comparable role in the Christmas season.
Human emotions play a vital part in religious experience and insight. Through them we can be led to a glimpse of a deeper sacred reality. At the same time, we are aware that the same emotions could simply be the stimulation of pleasure centres in our brain. When a worshipper is caught up with the words and music of a Tudor motet or the strong emotional resonance of a Hillsong piece, who can definitively say what is going on? Is the worshipper being let into a religious experience or not? There is, as one would expect, no easy answer to this question. One thing that can be said fairly safely is that feelings of a religious kind are not inevitably religious in substance. It is thus dangerous for a religious leader ever to claim that religious emotions are inevitably given by God. Religious feelings may indeed give us access to the divine. Alternatively, they can, as we suggested above, merely be the activation of pleasure centres in the brain.
What will help distinguish between the real thing, music leading us to an apprehension of God, and mere aesthetic appreciation? The answer has to lie in discovering whether the music and the religious feelings they evoke are changing us over a period of time in some tangible way. Is our spirituality and apprehension of the divine taking us beyond ephemeral sensation? It is a question that has to be asked in Anglican cathedrals and in large crowd events where the music is loud and catchy. Both kinds of music, that of ‘high culture’ and popular worship songs can help Christians in the path to genuine transforming religious insight and growth. Equally, both may be mere entertainment and stimulation of the brain.
In this piece I must confess a certain bias against the output of praise bands. My theological and musical instincts tell me that a constant musical diet of the offerings such as are heard at Spring Harvest, or some other charismatic festival, might be leading listeners to a form of faux religious experience. This is not an inevitable outcome, but I see two particular hazards making this possibility a prevalent possibility. In the first place much religious music of the gospel variety is taught initially at mass events. Large gatherings or religious festivals are notorious for emotionally ‘softening up’ the participants and making them susceptible to feelings that belong to the crowd rather than being their own. The second danger of this kind of music is that much modern gospel music is attached to ‘heroes’ of the genre, like Graham Kenrick and the music composers responsible for the massive Hillsong output. The institutional power of Brian Houston, the recently disgraced Hillsong leader, could be said to have been sustained by the musical offerings of this international franchise. Once a charismatic church is identified with the ministry of a figure who is only glimpsed in a highly choreographed role on a stage, it is all too easy to draw the attention of the congregation to the glamour of the man (normally men) at the front. Projection or hero-worship is not a healthy dynamic for any church.
My self-allocated number of words has now been breached but I hope very soon to return to this discussion in a future blog. For me it is also a real problem that the Church, even the CofE, is divided over the issue of music. We somehow resist discussing the topic for fear that issues of culture, class and snobbery may be raised. Such topics are hard to deal with easily, so we retreat into our musical ghettoes just as we hunker down in our theological bunkers. This blog is a small offering to contribute to a debate on which we all have feelings and insights. Perhaps I am hoping to start a conversation. I know it is a topic on which everyone in any church has an opinion.
I think his name is Kendrick! Don’t you think an intense experience of Bach or whatever can have the same effect? This coming Sunday, we’re having a full orchestral Eucharist. It’s fabulous, but it is an indulgence. To what extent does this sort of thing form rather than follow our spiritual experience?
Thanks Stephen. As an organist, piano teacher and keyboard player, I have accompanied church music all my life, and had a lot of fun doing it, whatever the style. I am also aware that music, indeed worship is a distraction for followers of Jesus; he sang just one hymn that we know of and spent the rest of his time in showing practical love to people. That’s the heart of the gospel to my mind.
I would be astonished to discover that Jesus only ever sang one song. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and it is clear from the Gospels that Jesus worshipped in the synagogue.
As for worship being a distraction for Christians, I believe the opposite to be true and that worship is the work of Christians. It depends on here you set the limit of what you consider to be worship.
Thanks Toby. Agreed about evidence of absence. Nicely put. To me following Jesus is about absorbing what he wanted his followers to do and doing it. Copying his lifestyle is not it. Matthew 28 verse 20. If it was about copying him, then we would all need to become rowers and sailors, as he spent a lot of time cris-crossing the Sea of Galilee!
I have argued this carefully in my two books The Priorities of Jesus and Follow Jesus available from Amazon. Details on my website.
Music is an important part of being human. Growing up in the conservative tradition, with hymns and organ, the quality was usually really high, but the expression of any kind of emotion strictly taboo. I initially preferred this as it tallied with my school and home life (although not completely). We had a worship group to which privately we attached the moniker “croup”, to show at least that we were not, as a congregation, out of touch with the “youth of today”. But we were.
Over two decades I reluctantly emigrated to charismatic Anglican. To be honest there is actually very little real “charismata” going on, but the music is band-led with organ accompaniment if you’re lucky enough to have a good organist available. There is some emotional expression in this genre but nothing like as much as outsiders to this genre might fear. Each church has its own unwritten rules as to the amount of hand/arm movement, swaying or (perish the thought) dancing that is socially acceptable. It may be thought of as completely different, but can often be as strict as the stand-sit-kneel routines of standard orthodoxy.
Music changes the way we feel, which is often why we listen to it. So, to some extent, we are submitting ourselves to being manipulated, but hopefully in a good way. We want to feel good, or better. That this is mixed up with trying to praise God, is typical of his rich gifting to us. I bet he doesn’t mind.
Personally I’ve realised I prefer to be involved in music rather than a more passive congregant. From scratch singing a “Messiah” in St Paul’s to extempore harmonising with a microphone, it’s all good to me. That said, with increasing musical ability come diminishing returns of enjoyment from what I can see. There must be some sweet spot of ability where almost everything sounds good quality. Even something slightly “off” can seriously disrupt your experience of the service.
Large tent worship at the Christian festivals can occasionally induce a sense of elation. On the face of it, to many this verifies the presence of the Holy Spirit. However I have it on good authority that the same feelings can occur at heavy metal concerts.
I suspect God is very happy for us to use our hands and voices. And to enjoy doing so. I suspect there is less pleasure with our regular bickering about styles. In assessing the quality of our efforts, I wonder if the heart, the sensitivity to others and the enthusiasm we employ are more important than the tuning of the sopranos or the hymn book we prefer.
Well said. I’ve never had a bad experience with a music group, but it would spoil my day!
I did have people holding hands over their ears and grimacing whilst we were singing! I suspect we were spoiling their experience. Of course sound levels front of house were controlled by the mixing desk, not us, but perhaps they weren’t to know this.
Thank you, Stephen, for opening this subject up. I think most of what you discuss is about the emotional content and effect of church or worship music. I’m also interested in the words. You could term the content of hymns and songs as ‘insidious theology’ – statements of belief that we absorb almost without noticing. Occasionally it surfaces, as in the debate over ‘the wrath of God was satisfied’ in ‘In Christ alone’. In the Lent course I started in 2020 (but never finished because of the lockdown) we looked at the words of favourite and other hymns and worship songs. People looked seriously for the first time at what they were singing – and for many it was an eye opener.
In the song “Spirit of the living God” there’s a line: “break me, melt me, mould me, fill me”. I stopped singing these lyrics because, having been broken, I had no desire to repeat the experience. I’m not praying/singing that. Perhaps this was an overreaction. Perhaps my theology is all out of kilter. But no.
Lyrics are vitally important. Overtime an experienced musician taught me to consider the up coming lyrics of the next verse as I considered how musically to render my voice. For me this involved changing harmony, pulling back, emphasising phrases etc. he did this with a keyboard, brilliantly.
We must acknowledge that some lyrics are frankly drivel. Some are deeply profound yet perhaps too complex for the many and thus off putting. The same can be said for music.
I agree lyrics need careful consideration.
I like your term “insidious theology”. Didn’t John Wesley (or his brother) say something about Christian truth being most easily (or perhaps memorably) taught through hymns? Of course some of those early Wesleyan hymns are intensely theological!
I’m sure sure that many people who read this will want to talk about the “drivel” of much worship-song lyrics. I did read an interesting book from someone within the worship-song movement who suggested that this is because not many people are both accomplished composers and wordsmiths, and a lot of modern worship music is driven from the ‘music’ end. Compare this with traditional hymns where often there are two separate people involved.
I agree about the emotion at large events. This is nothing newe: the late Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones talked about ‘the demon of the singing’ in large Welsh chapels, where emotion was easily confused with spiritual experience.
One final thing I would say – and this is very relevant to this blog – is that the worship leader, whether ordained or lay, in fact can exert a great deal of power or even manipulation during services. This may in fact be unconscious, so it’s something that they ought to be made aware of.
Thinking of you, Andrew, I recall many years ago taking my band to a Baptist church to lead the music. As a rookie leader the challenge was not, “can I fill the church with my voice”, but more “can I avoid emptying the place”. I recall the congregation being welcoming and enthusiastic worshippers, so I guess “it worked”, whatever it was we were doing.
And whenever I was in the music, I always gauged the fruit of our efforts as to whether we enabled worship or inhibited it. Of course some can press the manipulation pedal quite effectively, but I don’t think I was ever in that league.
Your remarks about Lloyd-Jones’s observations are valuable to those who think mass emotional/“spiritual” outpourings are recent phenomena.
The quality of the lyrics could not be lower. One aspect of this is the similarity to pop music where the music side is all. A bit mindless.
Some disconnected personal thoughts.
I belonged to a liberal catholic church for about twenty years which had a good organ and a near-professional choir. Musical families were attracted to the church and the children became choristers and were trained to high standards. This drew them into the Sunday School. In many cases a parent joined the choir too and the whole family became involved in church life. The choir was in effect a tightly-knit fellowship of adults and children. All well and good. However, the musical side of the church, which gave the church a flourishing appearance, was the one thing that had status and continuity. In effect, the church’s existence revolved around its music. Non-musical children felt excluded from the charmed circle of the junior choristers. Nothing was permitted to interfere with the choir’s arrangements, such as changing service times or introducing new services. Children’s and youth work flourished at times when there was a talented person to run them. While there were occasional social events, study groups (Bible or other) gradually became smaller and more intermittent. Of course there was no shared prayer. And none of this seemed to bother the clergy or most church members.
In general I feel that there is an inbuilt danger in church music. The better it is, the more people it attracts who are interested in music first and religion second or not at all. So the more the music side dominates the church, the less commitment to spiritual life there is. The thinking seems to be that because music is the vehicle of worship, the better the music, the better the worship. This seems to me to be a fallacy.
Like many people, I have strong likes and dislikes among hymns. The more hymns there are in a service, the more likely one is to have to endure a dreadful hymn. The words are more of a stumbling block than the music, though there are those interminable compositions that a friend describes as ‘Lutheran dirges’. For me there are too many hymns in an Anglican service: what does all that singing add if the liturgy itself is sung? At the moment we are attending livestreamed Dominican masses which have at most two hymns on a Sunday and none during the week. I find their chant much more conducive to serious worship.
Finally, and this will enrage many people, I happen to loathe the sound of the organ as an instrument, in any context, liturgical or not. I accept that for traditional worship there isn’t a good alternative, and as a support for singing it’s endurable. But as we all know, the organist’s reward for the dreary task of accompaniment is to be allowed to play a voluntary at the end of a service, and for me this crushing blast of noise ruins both devotion and socializing. And to crown all, a new practice has arisen of applauding the organist at the end. My patience with Anglicanism is wearing thin.
Oh, Edmund! Lol moment! I don’t really like organ music myself! Sit in the wrong place and it clatters like a corp de ballet en point! It’s there, in my view, because it’s loud enough to give a good lead to a large congregation! And I hate the way some organists show off. And the last verse, when they play all the notes at once, even the ones that aren’t in the right key, and you can’t hear the tune or the singing! Having said that, it’s a skill I don’t have, and a really good organist is a treasure. My pet hate is people who call guitarists “worship leaders”!
And I should have added, congregational singing is a vital part of the service for me. I don’t want other people, especially if they’re not believers, to do my worshipping for me, I want to join in! Plus, I trained as a singer…..!
Permit me to reintroduce the facetious concept of “worship wars”, and to repeat I joke I was told at church by an organist:
Q: what’s the difference between an organist and terrorist?
A: you can negotiate with a terrorist
The two main war polarities are between the musical and the unmusical, and secondly between traditional and contemporary.
A subset of the first one is the jostling between clergy who believe their leading of the service (spoken) is “leading worship”, and those musicians who believe only musicians lead worship. I’ve seen vicar types, not officially part of the musical set up for a big church service, spontaneously break into song at times. It almost seemed like a competition.
Most of sit somewhere between the poles. But it can get ugly. I’ve witnessed verbal fisticuffs between adamant non-microphon-ers and people shouting that they couldn’t hear him. At times the debates I’ve been party to have been interrupted to remind participants that we are supposed to be Christian and should act accordingly.
At our wedding many years ago, we had the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” accompanied by drums. My late uncle remarked how its author would ‘turn in his grave’ at this travesty. Just now checking the hymn author’s identity on Google, I see one entry as “Van Morrison”. Probably better my uncle never saw that!
I’ve never been involved in fisticuffs! But, yes, I recognise the conflicts. Cathedrals are like this, of course. The minister “taking” Evensong is entirely incidental to the choir’s performance. So much for glorifying God. Where I am, do we really need a sung Mattins? Oh, said someone, but the choir would lose that part of its repertoire! And?
Oh, and, microphones are about inclusivity I’m afraid. They’re compulsory. I can fill the church without, but deaf people need the help, and the loop.
I’m struck by the number of times a more charismatic leader will refer to the next song as ‘another time of worship’; as though the rest of it isn’t …
For a fresh and inclusive take on church music, I can thoroughly recommend:
Andy Thomas (2020) Resounding Body: Building Church Communities Through Music. Durham: Sacristy Press.
What a great topic for discussion. So little is understood of the power of music in the hands or voice of a talented person, and in a worship context what anointing, or not, of that gift can bring to those present.
As a worship leader for many decades, I would no more engage musicians of no faith or spiritual training and sensitivity, than I would support a speaker / preacher who has not been endorsed by authorised and recognised discerners in the church at large.
It matters not what the instrument or the genre; what is paramount is the clarity and heart of the worshipper, the musician.
The platform, in my opinion, is no place for musicians and singers. Tuck them away but let the sound ring out, be it quiet or forte. Better reticence in performance than glorying in exhibition.
Thank you Stephen Parsons for posting your thoughts.
I look forward to hearing from others active in this area.
In case some of the more trad types here don’t know what a “platform” is, for many churches it’s where the chancel is flattened with removal of choir stalls, perhaps extended out a little, adult baptism pool dug out with lid, and the whole thing carpeted. I’ve seen this done with and without a faculty. The space then released is easier for a band to lay out its paraphernalia, such as drum kits with screens, and easy to wire up with electronics etc. In case you were wondering, churches where this has been done usually make large contributions via the parish share scheme.
As a vocalist, I would usually be placed towards the front of the platform. I would happily have been hidden behind a screen. Indeed some of the most profound times of worship often seemed to be when the church was empty, in rehearsal. I drew the line when the platform was temporarily extended by what some termed “the ego ramp”, so the leader could be closer to the people. I was very uncomfortable indeed sharing this extension with them. It felt crass; like some attempt to be like Bono. We really weren’t. Perhaps in reality the congregation were actually retracting, and the stage extension a desperate attempt to reach them. Music is central to worship in these churches.
I was told, and came to believe, that people were looking to us as an example of how to worship. So we needed to be seen. With increasing years, flabbiness and cragginess, the desire to be witnessed in such a way diminished for me, particularly when surrounded by people half my age.
Is it a show? Yes it is. But that’s not necessarily wrong. All church rituals are a show in this sense. For me it seemed that style could easily replace substance however, and the struggle for authenticity be lost. Plenty do still get this right. Many don’t.
Yes, and in a sense anyone who leads worship, whether Vicar, musician or whoever, is participating in a ‘show’. Rightly and humbly done, it facilitates worship and brings glory to God. Wrongly done, it focusses attention on the person/people concerned, fosters a false atmosphere and can be dangerously manipulative.
One of my pet hates are musicians who forget what they’re there for. In the ‘worship song’ tradition this can lead them to stand at the front, singing or playing away with their eyes closed in rapture – and completely ignoring the congregation. I’m sure something similar can happen in the ‘cathedral’ tradition – not the enrapturedness but perhaps a concentration on the musical performance and a forgetting of the congregation on the other side of the choir screen.
I struggle with the whole language around ‘a show’. The disciplines are comprarable for those leading worship; the things that make someone a successful performer on a stage would also help in leading worship. But the trend to present worship in a way that speaks of staging and production can insidiously encourage ‘spectator-recipient’ acts of worship. In a way not true of a performance, the leaders participate on an equal footing with those taking part; and there should only be God as an ‘audience’.
Hi, minstrel. I preach as well, and I got over stage fright by reminding myself that it’s so not about me! Whereas opera is!
Speaking of “spectator-recipient” worship – that of course was the whole point of the Willow Creek church approach back in the 80s/90s: give people a great performance and present the Christian message clearly … but don’t ask them to participate. Perhaps that’s OK in an evangelisic set-up (the “Seeker Service”); but not as weekly worship for God’s people.
Yes, you do need good performance values, or it does nothing for the congregation. As a trained singer I struggled with this for years. How could you justify offering less than your best to God? How do you justify blowing everyone else’s socks off? I gave up singing solos. And yes, in many Cathedrals, the music groupies don’t come in the choir holidays, and as soon as a child leaves, they and their families stop coming.
A couple of years ago I visited an Anglican Cathedral. There were leaflets on hand inviting young singers to join the choir. These spoke (as far as I can remember) about the musical education which would be on offer, the benefits and friendship of singing in a group, etc. Nowhere on the leaflet was there any mention of worship, spirituality or God. I was shocked.
But at least they came. They doubtless put money in the plate and they contributed by lending their child/ren to the cathedral – and to the Lord – at great personal and possibly financial cost. I know about the cost – believe me – I ached with sadness at the temporary loss of my boys. And how do you know that the families did not attend other churches when their children left?
I know that church music polarises as few other things do, but I detect in some of the comments on this thread language and sentiments that make me wonder about the health of the commenters. An archdeacon, now a bishop, said to me that the reason people don’t go to church is those who do. Quite so.
Not if your child is given the fees to a public school. No loss there.
There are many forms of prejudice, Stanley. I got very fed up of the attitude to girls’ and women’s voices. And the sense of entitlement that blocked me in by parking in the middle of the road at school picking up time. And I see St.Paul’s is going to take girls!
“what is paramount is the clarity and heart of the worshipper, the musician.”
Amen to that. I have sung in Anglican church choirs and in gospel choirs, and I have always felt uncomfortable when the best and most enthusiastic singers in the gospel choir (and usually the soloists) were not Christians – in a few cases avowed atheists. They could do the most heart-melting renditions which greatly moved the congregation/audience – but to them it was all a performance, nothing deeper. And they’d laugh about that afterwards about how well they could pull it off.
A couple of the Anglican choirs also had professional music directors who to the best of my knowledge were agnostic at the least, supplementing their income. They made us better than any amateur director would have done and I was less uncomfortable with it, but it still didn’t sit right. This is for worshipping God. And yet it’s music so why do I have a problem?
“The platform, in my opinion, is no place for musicians and singers. Tuck them away but let the sound ring out, be it quiet or forte. ”
My most favoured setup and one I haven’t seen for years is the choir behind the congregation. The congregation can’t see them, can’t be distracted by them and, as anyone who has sat in the row in front of a strong singer knows, having strong singers behind the congregation seems to make it easier for the congregation to hear the choir and join in (enthusiastically or otherwise!). Was this ever widely adopted?
Arundel Cathedral has the choir in a gallery at the back, either side of the organ console. The main problem with this is that the choir can’t hear themselves sing if the organist ‘pulls out all the stops’.
Putting the shoe on the other foot, we ought to consider things from a musician’s point of view. Say your main gifting is music, so, growing up, you decide to make a career of it. You want to make your living from music. What’s the next step? Music college or university perhaps. There aren’t a huge number of opportunities to perform, but one regular source is to join a church and participate in church music of one sort or another. In the U.K. there are a few reasonably paid directors of music, worship pastors etc but not very many. Say you want to be a recording artist, who is going to play your music and how are you going to reach them?
A significant fraction of musicians I’ve worked with are also professional musicians, either being remunerated for this activity, like choir director, or teaching music peripatetically for example. As a classical musician it would be almost impossible to have any sort of career at it, without a significant and lengthy exposure to church music.
So church musicians are often pretty keen on keeping their involvement, pretty keen on saying on how things should go, and may incidentally not be particularly keen on the Christian side of things. Who is to say?
To perform with the best in the choicest venues, for example a cathedral choir, or a charismatic big church band, you have to be very talented. On the other hand if the opportunities drop off because the church wants to emphasise the word more, the same musicians will migrate outwards. Talent is mobile.
By all means take music off the pedestal. I get it. But see how your numbers go.
Trouble is, until very recently, these opportunities were exclusively for boys!
It’s a terrible thing to have your talent not spotted, and it can eat away at you your whole life. My limited experiences of the church music world are that prejudice is as rife there as in any other walk of life.
The converse is to be favoured above your ability, which isn’t as fun as it sounds. There are inequalities in the band-lead church too. Good looks sometimes feature in that equation.
Two of the best leaders I served behind were women. One had an X factor voice, but both were lovely people to serve with and I remember those times with particular warmth.
For me, good character trumps good talent in the music world, but you need a measure of both.
I would recommend “And now let’s move into a time of NONSENSE” by Nick Page—a critical look at why worship songs can be so bad. My prime exhibit: “I wanna, wanna dance” from Songs of Fellowship by Wayne Drane (yes . . . .). The Lloyd-Jones point—mistaking emotional excitement for the spiritual—is something I encountered long ago. Internet searching the point over 20 years ago I spotted that someone had submitted an MA thesis at York on the subject of the (mis)use of music to control audiences/ congregations. My request for access to an important but neglected subject was refused.
While the Hillsong genre has its place, it has nothing to equal the controlled descent of “et sepultus est” followed by the blaze of rejoicing, “et resurrexit” in Bach’s B minor Mass.
‘Hymns and spiritual songs’ whether based on psalms or other scripture or not, have a life cycle. Whether this be short, medium or long term depends on a number of factors of course, including taste and custom.
I recall the song “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam” despite preferring to forget it, from early Sunday school. Apart from lodging in memory, I suspect this one may have bitten the dust.
I’m a bit out of it now but Matt Redman’s “Blessed be Your Name” seemed to be a more enduring classic. However a worship leader pointed out to me that the bridge contains a theological error, in that quoting Job’s ‘You give and take away’ Job was actually wrong, in that it was the evil one that did the taking. But I reconciled myself to this in the end, because I’d heard that Redman had written the song after losing a child and we can often blame God for our tragedy and He’s ok with this. The psalms are full of it after all.
Looking at the lyrics and hearing the music is augmented by looking at the author’s life. Redman is a noted abuse survivor.
Interesting. I worship in a Cathedral. I’ve come to the conclusion that the absence of ‘participation’ gives the time and space for people to be moved and inspired – and learned, I think, that participation isn’t everything. We wheel in a praise band from the local HTB resourcing church for Diocesan occasions which is good for us and them but the songs are often obscure and unknown – no more, obviously, than Palestrina and Byrd to a lot of folk.
Excellence in music is hard to achieve and our various choirs practice for long hours. It can be achieved – I remember a New Years disco at a hotel in Dusseldorf when we were on a New Years break which was the real business – a standard way above the level of the average wedding disco here. I suspect that’s where a lot of local churches are stuck. Having be ‘persuaded’ to ditch their not-too-good-but-faithful choir they’re left with a void which really isn’t met by a well meaning but not too competent guitarist or keyboard person. Sadly, in the meantime, a lot of folk have been disheartened leave the Church as a result and no-one is satisfied.
The orchestral Eucharist was wonderful! Haydn in B flat. If any of you music fans want to go on Hereford Cathedral’s website live streaming, it will link you to YouTube. The sermon is worth listening to, too.
@Edmund Werner
I was fortunate to worship at a cathedral for 5 months and completely recognise this. I too was heading that way, because of the “religious experience” that listening to the choir would bring on (though too many times I let my envy of the counter-tenor’s voice destroy the moment! Thanks God for using those as teachable moments…). Talking to other congregants before we all rushed out after the service I was saddened by how few took part in study groups or any kind of fellowship and belonging beyond coming to the service with the choir.
@Steve Lewis
I completely agree. Not just diminishing returns in terms of not enjoying anything but professional-quality music, but also of worship. A couple of years back I came to realise that as a congregant I was spending all the time I was singing assessing the sound I was making, the sound of others and the quality of the music. Everything became a test; were my sounds pure enough? Who was out of tune? God wasn’t the focus, and as I sang the words bypassed my brain and were sounds only. I’ve got no answer, but now I try to keep “singing for musical prowess” separate from “singing for worship”.
I have toyed with whether no singing at all is the better approach (Quaker style even?) and steering clear of emotional manipulation/vulnerability that way appeals to me. I’ve never found anyone else who likes the idea. Not even conevs where you’d think a 45 min+ sermon and no singing would put the focus squarely back on the word and take away the distractions of music.
Personally, I got a huge amount out of the service this morning, but I really recognise what people are saying. Which is why I stopped singing in church. My discomfort stems from the little voice whispering “what about spending the money on a soup kitchen?” A large part of the money was from a family of an adult with special needs who is very much part of the congregation and adores music. I think that helps .
In Romans 12 1, an oft repeated but seldom explored text, we were exhorted to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, presumably doing the housework or whatever our jobs were etc, and that this was ‘spiritual worship’. No mention of music at all.
Perhaps this needs a bit of work?
Anything at all that starts to make a service of worship resemble a rock concert is a complete turn-off for me – a foretaste of hell rather than of heaven. Especially any drum-bashing.