More Thoughts on Church Music

I’ve been thinking during Advent about the music that “contemporary Christianity” is missing. One ancient hymn most often on my mind is Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. It seems that even the very title is antithetical to the typical approach in contemporary worship!

Because I fell in love with hymnody in my late teens and used their words (particularly Charles Wesley’s) in my spiritual formation, I used “old” music as an Evangelical pastor. In the closing decade of my pastoral ministry, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence would have been part of the standard repertoire going from Advent to Christmas. I must confess that for a number of years I sang some of those words with a veil over my mind:

King of kings yet born of Mary as of old on earth He stood;

Lord of lords in human vesture in the body and the blood,

He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food.

In those words is the confession of the Church from the early centuries. Singing those words expands and deepens faith. Even though I didn’t “get it” until later, I look back at my early singing of this hymn as the Holy Spirit sowing seeds which would eventually bear the fruit of understanding.

It is said that when Christians sing they pray twice. Learn to pray well by singing the hymns which have been proven by the test of time.

Some Thoughts on Church Music

Thinking about religion raises the subject of worship, and inherent in worship is the issue of music. The Music Director/Committee in the local church has been called euphemistically “the war department.” Probably in no other setting is it more true that “you can’t please all the people all the time.”

Certainly music has a legitimate affect on the worshipper. We are creatures of time, place, and sensory perception, and all of those combine in music to affect us in powerful ways. But this does not mean that individual taste, or even cultural tendencies, are the arbiters of what constitutes good church music; music in the church is offered to God, and it is not meant primarily for our entertainment. Selfish individualism and a hedonistic culture certainly tries to tell us that if something is not pleasurable we are not to be faulted to dismiss it, but such an attitude is antithetical to the essence of Christian Faith.

Inherent to Christian Faith is a confrontation to the world-spirit. To the degree that a given culture embraces things which are antithetical to the Spirit of Jesus (e.g., the kingdom values of the Sermon on the Mount), Christians need to learn to turn away from cultural expressions and give a counter-witness. All cultures fall short, yet some show more effect of gospel permeation than others. I am among those who believe that Western culture has embraced a post-Christian mentality with growing openness to paganism coupled with an acceptance of multi-culturalism that, in thinking all cultures are equally legitimate, denies the belief in the exclusiveness of Christian Faith that was foundational to the Western Civilization which formed the traditional American society we are quickly losing.

What does this have to do with music? Music is a key expression of culture and the pop-music of our culture reflects our post-Christian mind-set. Among other things, it feeds hedonism. So, when churches use the culture to offer people the alternative of kingdom values, how are those values to be perceived and how are people to know they need to change –– be converted –– if churches look and act mostly like the world? How does a Christian community teach the language of Zion if it does not “speak” it and model what conversion and transformation looks like? (How many Christians today understand the biblical allusion in the previous sentence?)

This is not to say that Christians (who, as I said above, are all creatures of time, place, and sensory perception) should not learn to use their own culture in the expression of Christian Faith (this has happened repeatedly through the history of the Church). I am saying, though, that Christians should not capitulate to the culture and so lose the wealth of what the Lord has worked into the Church through all the past years. Good music is not merely what pleases us; good music can both teach us in a way that contributes to our transformation and also offer to God something more than we could ever give Him when left to our own selves, time and place.

In all of this there needs to be a true Christian attitude. Two esteemed voices have spoken to this in a way that is worthy of repeated exposure. The first is C. S. Lewis and the second is Eugene Peterson

There are two musical situations on which I think we can be confident that a blessing rests. One is where a priest or an organist, himself a man of trained and delicate taste, humbly and charitably sacrifices his own (esthetically right) desires and gives the people humbler and coarser fare than he would wish, in a belief (even, as it may be, the erroneous belief) that he can thus bring them to God. The other is where the stupid and unmusical layman humbly and patiently, and above all silently, listens to music which he cannot or cannot fully, appreciate, in the belief that it somehow glorifies God, and that if it does not edify him this must be his own defect. Neither such a High Brow nor such a Low Brow can be far out of the way. To both, Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked, but the music they have disliked. They have both offered, sacrificed, their taste in the fullest sense.

But where the opposite situation arises, where the musician is filled with pride of skill or the virus of emulation and looks with contempt on the unappreciative congregation, or where the unmusical, complacently entrenched in their own ignorance and conservatism, look with the restless and resentful hostility of an inferiority complex on all who would try to improve their taste –– there, we may be sure, all both offer is unblessed and the spirit that moves them is not the Holy Ghost (C. S. Lewis, Christian Refections, 96–97).

You say that you have almost nothing in common with these people. But isn’t that just the point? You have nothing in common with them; but God does. This just happens to be the way that God goes about making a kingdom, pulling all sorts and conditions of people and then patiently, mercifully, and gracefully making something of them. What he obviously does not do is pre-select people who have an aptitude for getting along well and enjoying the same things. Of course you don’t have much in common with them. The church is God’s thing, not yours.

....The church is not a natural community composed of people with common interests; it is a super-natural community. And the super in that word does not mean that it exceeds your expectations; it is other than your expectations, and much of the other is invisible to you as yet.

I’m sorry if I am sounding a bit sharp-tongued on this, but I don’t want you getting off on the wrong foot in this church business. Trust me, there’s a lot more going on than you will ever have in common with anyone there....

No, you don’t have to like the hymns. And yes, you do need to sing them –– hopefully in approximate tune and rhythm with the rest. It’s an excellent exercise in humility (Eugene H. Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other, 26–28).

Let’s be open to the music truly birthed by the Church. Let’s encourage our pastors and music directors to nurture us with music which expresses and teaches the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).

That Loaded Word “Religion”

“Religion” seems to be a mostly pejorative word in our culture today. “Spirituality” is quite popular as it is far more conducive to an individualistic mind-set. I think this identifies the problem with religion. Religion by its nature is corporate. This implies common forms, which necessitates shared traditions. And who decides the shape of the forms and the source of the chosen tradition? The despised issue of authority begins to enter the discussion. Ah, yes, religion is a loaded topic.

Since spirituality is “personal” there is no need for an authority prescribing good ways to come to God and serve Him. This avoids the horror of any practice being “wrong” because getting rid of religion avoids any claim of –– heaven forbid (if you personally choose to believe in heaven) –– truth and right.

So I see ads for “churches” targeting people who are sick of religion –– people who want a church that is not church. In other words, come to Jesus (they are “Christian” ads) in a setting of your choice and offer to God whatever expression is most “meaningful” to you (since all that matters is the individualistic heart). Don’t get bogged down with a bunch of antiquated baggage. Find out how Jesus can give you “your best life now.”

These were some of the thoughts that came to me as I sat in a sanctuary a couple of weeks ago and looked at stately pillars upholding arches with painted images of our Lord, the Holy Family, the Apostles, and early Fathers of the Church. As I sat preparing for the service to begin, adding my prayers to the organ prelude, I was so aware of an “Other” –– so much greater than my little individual heart, yet drawing me into the greatness of what it means to belong to the People of God.

I want religion. I want to belong to something big that has a continuity with what God has been doing in redemptive history for thousands of years. I want a basis for believing that a particular expression is, indeed, true and right (Apostolic Tradition). I want a religion like that advocated by St James: pure and undefiled (1:27). I need a religion like that because I need to become pure and undefiled in order to see God (Mtt 5:8).

Give me that ol’ time religion....

Some Brief Thoughts

I have been "gone" too long, mostly from being distracted. Some of the distraction has been circumstantial, but true distraction is deeper than that. Distraction is, I think, mostly spiritual. It is allowing other things to crowd out "true center."

Some of not posting has been the vanity of waiting for something "profound" to say. Yet we are the most profound when we live simply unto Jesus. How hard it is consistently to practice that simple reality!

A verse from this morning's Office of Readings resonated in my heart: let not those who seek you be dismayed through me.... It is an incredible thing to own the name of Jesus. My prayer is, through grace, to honor that Name in all I am and do.... the essence of being a Christian.

To See God

Sorry for the long absence....

Good words from the Responsory from the Office of Readings in today's Liturgy of the Hours:

The unseen God lies hidden from you;

if you wish to see God, believe in him though you cannot yet see him.

–– Walk on in faith and you shall some day see his face.

If faith has not consoled you along the path of life,

you will never enjoy the blessed privilege of seeing him.

–– Walk on in faith and you shall some day see his face.

An Unburdened Life

This time last week Libby and I were in North Myrtle Beach at a vacation resort promo. This was the “price” for an expense-paid three nights at a beach-front resort –– something Libby needed badly after months of audit stress, and this was a way for us to afford it.

We had, of course, intended to hear graciously the spiel, give a quick no and get out of there. What actually happened is that our “agent” was not a regular salesman, but was a member advocate working a Sunday in order to take a week-day off with his family (which means he was not working for a commission sale). On top of that, he was a believer who was impressed with our journey and what we are attempting to do in ministry. A “two-hour presentation” turned into a real exchange of questions and projections. The result was an offer that was unbelievable and seemingly feasible. We thought of being able to take our kids and grandkids to the beach for a week each year, and having something with stable value. We agreed to try it!

One thing such presentations do is give a couple almost no time to think and confer with one another. Libby and I were apprised of all the positives (and with several additions to our package which had to be approved by administration) there were many. Yet when we got back to our rooms at the resort, the reality of what we had entered began to hit. I re-read the contract again and began to project with Libby what this truly meant for us, both financially and in terms of staying on top of schedules, “points,” and all the other details of being an “owner” of a resort property.

Suddenly we began to feel smothered, as if “the world” was going to suffocate us. I knew there is a small window to cancel a property contract, and we knew this needed to be done first thing the next day. Libby hardly slept, and I only did by taking something to “help.”

Still, it seemed that the agent had, indeed, offered us something incredible. It was clear he wanted to make something nice possible for two people whose life is Christian ministry. Even as the next day began and I prepared to return to the promotion center, I felt as if we were ungratefully rejecting a gracious gift. What to do?

Guidance was in the little book of spiritual readings Libby and I use each day. Introducing the Scriptures were these words:

We are a pilgrim people, journeying through the varied landscapes of life, on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem. Let us travel light, unburdened by useless baggage –– material or spiritual –– and sing [a] pilgrim psalm to the God who has given us such a glorious goal in life.

And so it was clear: for us, we must stay “unburdened.”

It is hard to live this way in our American society. First, there is the reality of excess that marks our culture. We live so far “beyond” most of the rest of the world, but because we live in the midst of it and because the nature of the “flesh” is indulgence, it can be hard for us to see it. Beyond that, some Christians are called to model a level of commitment that, to a “normal” person, appears austere and ridiculous (but how else can the life of Jesus be modeled, who said to his disciples “Take up your cross and follow me.”).

I do not want to say that no Christian should own a vacation property. It can be a good and wonderful thing for Christians to be able to have periods of retreat (as long as we all remember that we are never to take a vacation from seeking God and walking in the Spirit).

How this applies –– and looks –– to each follower of Jesus will have individual variety. Libby and I are seeing more and more clearly the way it is to look in our life. We welcome times away, but the Lord needs to give us each one; we cannot take a step to “guarantee” those times and we cannot become more encumbered.

When I talked to the agent again the next day he was more than gracious in hearing of our decision (just as gracious as he had been in his presentation). He made a call to initiate the cancellation (and said the office was fine with it since they weren’t making any money off what he had offered us anyway –– a confirmation of the agent’s goodness toward us).

At least two things have resulted from this incident. First, Libby and I see more clearly the life to which the Lord is calling us. Second, we are staying in touch with the agent; it seems the Lord has given us a new friend in the Body.

Bold and Balanced Truth

Charles Colson often speaks to issues in a way that resonates with my spirit. He is prophetic in an historic (orthodox) Christian context. His Breakpoint editorial today gives bold truth with a wonderful balance.