Give me a couple of minutes to indoctrinate you just a bit. After all, it’s the only reason I have a Facebook account. It will be slow and painless. I promise. I will even tell a few stories. Stick around!
Back in the 1990s–give or take a year or two before the rapture–I remember engaging in some random radio program when I lived in Pennsylvania. The speaker had this remarkable voice filled with the sophistication of someone trained rhetorically under the best. He hailed from a town about an hour from where I was called Ligonier.
I kept tuning in every night retiring early to make sure I was ready with a note-book before Robert Charles Sproul would come on the scene heralded by “Sinfonia” from Handel’s Messiah. The whole thing was sublime and coupled with Sproul’s elegance of delivery, it was theologically seductive and I didn’t even what “reformed” was at the time.
Part of my intrigue with Sproul was not only the gravitas of his delivery, but it was the way in which he symphonically engaged the arts and theology and culture–all three pieces ending with a major key of excellence. My wife and I spent some time attending his congregation in Sanford, and the sobering reality of the worship took my understanding of music to a whole new level. I grew up thinking that music was preferential; a box of chocolate wherein you get what you get and hope for the best. If you want to feel young again and receive a double portion of the Spirit, then you visit your local mega-church with all the excellence of audio recording and a fine assembly of musicians to lead the way. And, in most cases, their voices can easily guide the whole song. It is like a monastery led by professional cantors. I do not minimize their work. It is well done unto the Lord.
In other cases, if you grew up with St. Fannie Crosby, then there is a pre-determined holy 25 classics that can be played again and again by your sweet pianist with all her flowery glory. When you sing those songs you come to the garden alone and leave walking with Jesus. There is a certain addiction to those classics that is hard to erase in our evangelical culture.
I had the distinct privilege of being a part of both cultures, first as a little singer in the congregation my father pastored in Brazil, which was a potpourri of highly emotional choruses with a blend of old hymns. Then, later in my Christian life, I had the joy of leading music at a Presbyterian Church using the RUF selection which was hymns put into contemporary tunes.
As I walked through the music wars in various church contexts, I quickly realized that the entire conversation became a highly subjectivized dialogue. If you had a propensity to enjoy K-Love in your car rides, then your expectation was to enjoy it on the Lord’s Day also. If you had some classical background, then your expectation was also the same on Sundays. But the entire conversation lacked biblical rationale. It was not salted with the imagery of music in the Bible, especially in Israel’s worship. What was unique about Israel’s worship was the incense of it; a fragrance that did not match the smells of society. In short, it was other-worldly. Israel’s music shaped more than just the emotions of the people, but their intellect and desires. God’s people sang to become something they were not before singing.
I remember leading music for a small group of parents on Reformation Day. I cavalierly mentioned that Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” is probably one of the most sung and known in all of history since the Reformation. One sweet mom humbly offered her lack of knowledge. She had never sung such a hymn. I asked her afterward what she thought, and she, again, gently told me that it would take her some time to figure it out. I was enamored by her response. I think it was the right one.
You see, good church music is the kind that takes a while for you to figure it out. It can’t be exhausted with a few guitar chords. It demands meditation and contemplation. For those of you who probably know me, you are aware of my musical dogma, but my point here is not to make a case for a 4th-century canticle, but to make the case for why the music you sing in church ought to compel you to think about it; to slowly process its value and lyrics. What church music ought to do is to train you for life as a thinker and ethicist. What do you value? What do you think? Is it music that can be consumed quickly like a cigarette, or the kind that you grow into? I am arguing for the latter.
One possible way to consume Christian music would be like a good, fine meal. If you don’t have enough food on hand, you just gotta eat what you have on hand. But if you are going to do a feast style, start off with some appetizers or “amuse bouche” then gradually move to the hearty and complex dishes, then taper off to various cheeses and then finally some sweets and later retire with some cordials. So before the official start of the services start with some fun, experimental and light singing, people are still milling around, not quite ready for prime time or just too light to ever make it to prime time, but good for warming up. Then as the service starts and officially progresses, get to the more complex stuff. After the service, you can continue in a lot more laid back style. In that way you can also work through the various centuries and traditions that the church has brought to the feast, while making room for experiments. I think you said you liked Babette’s Feast, so you might like this analogy 🙂
Excellent thoughts.