by Stephen Parsons

Looking back over my time as an incumbent within the Church of England, I realise that one of the most difficult tasks I faced was promoting a style of music and worship that people coming from a variety of church backgrounds would find acceptable.  There appeared to be, in my second parish where I served 16 years, no overarching local parish tradition stretching back decades.  Everyone seemed to have arrived at our church from somewhere else. Their worship and music preferences were based on the way things had been done in their old church.  These preferences might reflect a memory of a much-loved Father X.  He was the main influence who did things properly when they were young adults.  Others had memories of lively London churches where the sermons had lasted thirty minutes or more and everyone was expected to follow the preacher as he flipped from one biblical passage to another with great speed.  We, like most churches at the time, followed a middle of the road approach, with the hope that every member of the congregation would somehow fit in with what was on offer without too much struggle.

In this difficult process of finding a middle way in worship, I was helped in 1995 by the publication by Kevin Mayhew of Hymns Old and New, Anglican Edition.  This hymn book made a genuine and, for a short time, successful attempt to weld together in one book all the different strands of hymnody used then by Anglicans.  Thus, we had all the old favourites which older members had been singing for a lifetime, combined with newer gospel songs and Taize chants.  For Anglo-Catholics there were some loved hymns like Sweet Sacrament Divine.  It was indeed a comprehensive attempt to allow everyone literally to ‘sing from the same hymn-sheet’.  The illusion of a successful uniting of everyone in singing from one book did not, sad to say, last very long.  New gospel songs were being written and were in demand by evangelical members of the congregation. Because they were too new to be in the hymn book, any use of this kind of music involved printing the words on sheets of paper or having them projected on to screens.  We were having, of course, to fill in forms from the copyright organisation, CCLI.   This method of keeping bang up to date with some of the music that was appearing all the time was made possible by a small but enthusiastic music group.

My final parish in Scotland did not have any relationship with this contemporary strand of gospel music and so I personally have little understanding of this style of Christian worship.  In the 23 years since leaving the earlier parish which had explored this music, at least some of the time, I have been aware of a variety of current styles that have appeared and sometimes disappeared during this period.  John Wimber made quite an impression on me in 1992 when I attended a conference using his so-called Vineyard style of music.  There have been in later years other genres, among them Hillsong and Bethel, injecting their distinct contributions of musical style into many congregations.  My reader might wonder why I have introduced this topic of gospel music, while admitting almost total ignorance of what it is.  I do, in fact, from the little I do know, recognise that these types of music may, for some, inject something valuable into a contemporary search for God.  Nevertheless, my wider experience of worship and study of the Christian tradition over several decades suggests certain important caveats.

 In years gone by there was always an understanding that the ultra-Anglo-Catholic styles of worship involved an audience in some kind of ‘show’, one which is not all that far from the experience provided by a theatrical entertainment   A catholic mass, whether or not held in an Anglican setting, has typically sought to engage a range of senses, including sight and smell.  Such an engagement with the senses is, of course, quite different from the experience of listening to the melodies of a worship-band, but both involve an aesthetic (enjoyable) engagement of some kind.  Art in the broadest sense, whether visual or auditory, has this capacity of pointing an individual to God while transcending the intellect.  This non-rational dimension (as opposed to irrational) needs to be valued in our understanding of how we approach the divine.  The problem arises when we value one and downgrade another. Many Christians become so accustomed to one form of aesthetic experience that they are dismissive of any other attempt to articulate any other cultural expression of the divine.  In short, they want their hymnbook to leave out all the hymns and songs that do not pass their test of being sufficiently on trend or in accordance with contemporary taste, however this is judged.

A second issue I have with gospel music is the way that it is inherently fickle.  Today’s trending band which produces an acclaimed Christian song, which is sung in evangelical churches all over the world may be forgotten tomorrow.  Fashion seems to be a phenomenon of the Christian music industry, and this might explain why the vast majority of Gospel music songs have only a short shelf life.  I understand that much of the substantial output from Hillsong music has already disappeared after the discovery of financial and sexual scandal in the sprawling empire created by its Australian founder, Brian Houston.  Having never listened to this genre of music, I cannot comment whether these extinctions are justified from an artistic/theological perspective.  But purely from this inability to survive and become part of the classical repertoire of mainstream Christian worship needs, allows one to suspect that much of the so-called modern Christian music scene will never become part of the classical Christian repertoire in the way that much hymnody has, in some cases, survived for centuries.

Contemporary gospel music and bands seem to be an essential part of the activity known as Church planting.  Typically, a large successful congregation which models itself on the style and theology of Holy Trinity Brompton, will hive off fifty or so of its members to go off to another geographical area and start a new worshipping congregation.  Such church plants are not always successful, but the reasons for their success or failure are not the focus of our concern at this point.  What is of interest is that in every example of a church plant I am aware of, a band able to play gospel music is an essential ingredient for the plant.  The calculation is that new members, particularly the young, will only be attracted to the new congregation if they can identify with the style of worship music on offer.   It is no coincidence that if a church plant is successful, and some are, the culture and atmosphere of the congregation will be markedly different from traditional Anglican worship.  The output of gospel songs that is inevitably a feature of these new congregations may indeed attract a new clientele but there is little to hold older members of the Church who have known from childhood a totally different style and culture of Christian worship.

If, as we suggest, the Church of the future is going to be marked by strong cultural and theological divergence, this future is also a place where we may find ourselves in mourning for the days of the single ‘hymn book’.  The culture chasm of the present, that is clearly visible in the radically diverse variety of music and song, will eventually become an unbridgeable gulf between two non- comprehending and mutually alien styles of worship.  I recently heard of a parish priest not far from here who had never engaged with the 1662 BCP or attended or led a traditional Evensong.  This was not just a regrettable absence from the worship pattern of a single modestly sized parish in a rural location, but a lacuna to be found within certain parts of an entire theological training tradition.  Liturgy as a distinct discipline within the study of theology for those preparing for ordination seems, in this case, to have been entirely dropped for this group of recently ordained clergy.  Another casualty seems to be the study of Church history, particularly the period from AD 100 -1500.  When the planting of new congregations is left to individuals who have little or no understanding of the past where the rich springs of Christian worship are to be found, we quickly find we have a denomination that is unable to communicate with itself. 

To sum up my reflection on Christian music and the current style of worship songs that are strongly promoted in the congregations representing the ‘church plant generation’, we have a problem.  The problem is not whether the music and lyrics of these songs are good or bad; that is an aesthetic and theological question.  The problem arises from having two mutually uncomprehending styles of worship in the same Church.  I personally value the hymn book tradition and the choral foundations that are maintained in our Anglican cathedrals.  I do not expect everyone to share my appreciation of these traditions, but I ask that both sides of our current cultural chasm, especially the leaders, make some real attempt to understand what else is going on in the Church through the medium of music and well-ordered liturgy.  That might enrich our understanding of God as we engage with the rich traditions that have sustained Christian worship for two thousand years.