Made Alive, We Worship

What are we singing?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:45:45 PST

It has become fashionable to rewrite the words to songs so that they are gender inclusive or otherwise politically correct. Sometimes this has a fairly neutral effect. Sometimes it destroys a song's theological meaning; and sometimes it is quite powerful. As a songwriter and a minister, and also as a person who is a member of two groups affected by this practice (women and people who are blind), I offer a bit of commentary as food for thought.

Gender inclusiveness is generally an important practice. However, there are certain places where changing a word can destroy an underlying meaning. For instance, a line in one song said, "Open the door and let your brother in." In order to make this gender inclusive, the line was changed to read, "let my children in."

The song, a communion piece emphasizing reconciliation, depended on the concept of sibling rivalry and reconciliation, to make a point. When the lyric was changed, the concept was lost. The only way it could effectively be retained would be to use "your sister" or "your sibling." In this case, I as a woman would never have been offended by the retention of the original wording. At some point we will gender-include all of the wonder out of our language if we are not careful.

Other word alterations, on the other hand, can open the meaning of pieces in new ways. My church choir will be singing an arrangement of "Mary, Did You Know" this Sunday morning. One section of this song says:

The blind will see, the deaf will hear.
The dead will live again.
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak
The praises of the Lamb.

The word "dumb" has been changed in our version to "mute." As I have gone about my daily tasks during the past couple of weeks, I have not been able to get these phrases out of my mind:

The blind will see, the deaf will hear.
The dead will live again.
The lame will leap, the mute will speak
The praises of the Lamb.

Who is it who is mute? Historically, "dumb" is a word that has been used to refer to people whose inability to speak accompanies deafness. But "muteness" can have numerous causes: inability to speak due to traumatic events, even a willing refusal to speak. I think especially of verses that tell us that one day everyone will acknowledge Jesus... The mute will speak the praises of the Lamb. What an amazing revelation of the coming power and glory of God. Even the baby's birth, Jesus' time on earth, is only a shadow of that!

Communion: a communal worship experience

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:14:36 PDT

In Exploring the Worship Spectrum, Sally Morgenthaler makes the statement that "The celebration of the Eucharist is not simply a private participation in God's saving work through Jesus Christ; it is an intensely horizontal, bonding, communal rite." (p. 51) My church shares communion at least once a month; and I often ponder the question of how this can become a more shared experience... Some aspects of the various ways that we enact this practice may make it a more communal thing for some people, less so for others. In my church, we do not do it the same way each time. On one day, we pass the elements from one person to another. On another day, we share them at stations around the church. On another day, we might go forward and partake at the altars...

On the days when we move around to take communion, servers are available to bring elements to people who cannot move from their seats. I often do not choose to move around when we use stations or go to the front. There are several reasons for this. I travel with a dog guide; and while she would likely behave well at the communion station, she experiences some odd intimidation in my church building that causes some difficulty in working through certain areas of the sanctuary. I also have moderate arthritis; and getting up and down can be painful for me at times. I appreciate the servers as much as do some of the elderly people.

Having said this, I also experience a down side to this arrangement. It is not communal worship for those who remain in their seats. We are served the elements; but partaking is a private matter. This is especially the case for me, as I cannot connect visually with others in worship. (More on that in another post.) Communion has become a very precious part of my faith; but it would be more so if it was an experience that was three-dimensional. I believe that when Jesus shared the bread and the cup with his disciples in the Upper Room and spoke the words, "This is my body ... my blood ... for you," he spoke of the community for which he sacrificed his life as well as the sin. When we share the bread and the cup, we remember that sacrifice, made for the community and the sin--the community that would come to live differently because of the salvation Jesus brought. It is something to experience that in my personal life but something else entirely to experience it in community, and something else to celebrate it and commit to that kind of life as a community.

hospitality in worship

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:15:22 PDT

Why am I going on about access to worship, the need for clear sound in worship, etc? Because the worship community is, for many people in postmodern America, the first stop on the way to the encounter with the Holy Spirit on the road to meeting Christ. I have written a chapter about Christian education and evangelism for a book concerning Wesleyan/Holiness perspectives on Christian education to be published by Warner Press in 2011... In this chapter, I discussed the fact that many people come to saving faith because of personal relationships with Christians that result in ongoing conversations that are educational. I quote Norma Cooke Everest as saying that it is not often that a person comes into church and has a life-changing encounter with Christ.

What I did not say in the chapter, however, is that many people who are participating in ongoing conversation with personal friends and mentors are also exploring the church, getting their feet wet in Christian culture. The Church would like them to jump in, to immerse themselves in small groups and other Christian education activities. However, for various reasons, some people do not feel ready for this much involvement when they begin their exploration. Some do not reach that point of readiness for a long time--and perhaps some never reach it. I am not convinced that this means they have no Christian community... In today's society, where people can be disconnected from their next-door neighbors but at the same time closely connected to their best friend across the country, it is very difficult to assess the state of a person's "community." People are often continuing those conversations with family or friends who are not necessarily part of the church where they choose to explore. The church, on the other hand, may assume they have no community since they have come alone... This can be a damaging situation; and one reason why people hesitate to become involved is that they perceive they are at risk of being wounded by heavy-handed efforts to evangelize coming from people who don't understand the journey they have been taking. We must begin our relations with the understanding that we know nothing about a person until we have begun to relate to them and to allow them to educate us. It is a challenging way to relate, to offer hospitality to the other and recognize that we are not the ones who are the experts on what is going on.

In worship, we have a chance to connect with the explorer, to offer hospitality, to say that we know they are present and we care about their journey, to offer a hand of fellowship to those who want to take it. It matters very much how we do this, and it matters that we do it at all. For while so many people come in preferring and expecting to remain anonymous, they are also watching us to see what we do in response to their presence, to see how we live out the love of Christ that we claim has given us life. Is it just something that fuels the energy that flows between us and our church friends? Or does it give life that flows to the whole community? What does it mean to live in that kind of life? Worship doesn't just happen inside the sanctuary, though it is a good start. It is something we take with us, something that drives us to live differently than we might otherwise live.

sound worship

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:59:08 PDT

Sound ministry... I am not talking about ministry based on sound biblical principles, though I certainly think this is important. I am talking about the ministry that occurs through your church's sound technicians. If you send recordings to people who are homebound, offer them at a nominal cost to people who missed the service, or put them online for download, you have a sound ministry. Your sound tech team also makes sure that what your congregation hears during your services is clear and inviting. Sometimes this team can make a difference in the message being intelligible at all to a member who might not otherwise be able to hear well; and that person may just be the person most in need of an encouraging word at any given moment.

Why am I writing about this? I have experienced sound ministry from three perspectives. I wrote last night about the experience of being the person who needs access to the words of songs that the congregation is singing. It is not always possible for me to have music in braille. In a church where I am a guest, I must trust that I will be able to hear the voices of people around me and understand the lyrics. When I cannot sing along, at least I can worship by listening and agreeing in spirit with what is being sung. This allows me to maintain a worshipful heart and move into the next phase of the service along with the community, ready to participate where I can. When sound is distorted or unbalanced, it is difficult to do this. For some people, distorted or unbalanced sound can even be painful and can distract badly from the act of worship.

I am also a vocalist and speaker. I am personally familiar with the challenges that face people who lead in worship: the tendency to oversing due to inability to hear oneself through monitors, thus straining the voice; struggling to speak loudly enough to be heard when the voice has been strained and micing is difficult; the challenge of achieving an appropriate balance with a band and maintaining clarity of lyrics, especially when singing with an orchestra.

Recently, I decided that it would be beneficial for me to gain some experience running sound in the church setting. During my teen years, when I first showed interest in songwriting and wanted to recording a piece with multiple vocals, my church sound technician acquainted me with the sound board; and my fascination with sound equipment was born. I have been producing audio at home since the mid-1980s, first with four-track recorder and later with a computer running Cakewalk Sonar Producer. In my early years of undergraduate school, I took courses in music production at Anderson University; but following my transfer to a college in Texas, my work with sound equipment was limited to what I used in my home studio. In spite of this, my interest in production and the workings of sound remained; and I made numerous observations wherever I went about good qualities in systems and what I might do differently.

Because I blend these three perspectives, my experience in the sound booth will become rather interesting. I expect it will have some strengths; and I also expect that some of those strengths may be weaknesses in some settings. When I work sound, I think from all three perspectives; and I have to be aware of what perspective I am using at a given time. I may find that in time I need to adopt other perspectives as well...

Does it matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:54:37 PDT

Because I am blind, I have spent a great deal of my worship time unable to participate fully. Unless I know the words by heart or have a braille copy of the lyrics, I am unable to sing along with the congregation. This has several implications for me and for the people around me. I will discuss these implications in the posts to come. Today, I want to focus on the foundational issue.

Does it matter what we sing in worship? Someone once suggested that I solve the problem of being unable to sing by simply singing the word "Jesus" to the tune of the melody. I couldn't do it. At the time I could not explain why. I experienced a deep pain when she suggested this; and I thought, "I may as well sing, "watermelon" and call it worship.

Why would it matter? Because, for one thing, songs for worship are chosen deliberately to assist in bringing the people before God to praise, to give thanks, to pray, to testify, and to commit themselves to service. Without doing these things, I have not worshiped at all. Certainly I have not done it in community!

Second, the name of God, and in relation the name of Jesus, is holy. We should not invoke it in vain. Normally we think of this in terms of not using phrases like, "Oh my God." But not invoking the name of the Lord in vain has to do with any kind of empty usage. If I had chosen to sing "Jesus" through the entire song set, with no reference to why I was using that name, it would have been an empty usage of the name of the Lord. It is a very serious offense that I should not commit.

It matters very much what we sing in worship. Because of this, it matters that those in worship have access to what we sing. More on how this works in future posts...

speaking of worship

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah J. Blake) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:57:24 PDT

The encounter with Christ begins with an awareness of the application of the death and resurrection of Jesus to our personal circumstances, sin and shame. Our response to that encounter moves us into the community of the people of God. We become a people of God, one people with a shared heritage, when we celebrate the experience of the very personal encounter that is common to all of us; for while the individual circumstances differ, the outcome is the same for all of us. We are changed, molded into the character of Christ. We worship as one community.

That, at least, is the ideal. Often we fall short. There are moments in our times of worship when we achieve unity; and because of those moments people return home uplifted and empowered for life as believers in Christ. But often we merely seek this unity; and we seek the meaning of the phrase "worship in spirit and in truth." If worship is not only what we do on Sunday morning, what is the significance of what we do on Sunday morning? How shall we speak about Orship-as-lifestyle vs. what we do on Sunday morning?

These things we must explore...