Old Worship New

In Praise of Improvisation

2013-05-21T17:51:00.001-05:00

In her book The Anatomy of Melody, Alice Parker writes:

Think of the difference between a singer who works by ear and one whose allegiance is to the page. The first is born musical; the other must learn to hear pitches, to tune and count and pronounce and even to breathe. The two make very different mistakes—but the intuitive singer inhabits the world of sound, and very few page-students do. In fact, the latter have so many intellectual barriers erected that it can take years of study to break them.

In college, I was taught the basics of Western music history, Western music theory, and Western music performance. What was not taught, that I can recall, was music as art and communication, or music as something in which the performer is seen as co-creator of the music. The unstated message is two-fold: first, that Western music is somehow more important than other music; second, that music is something to be intellectualized and analyzed. What results is the curious musical landscape in Western society today. We now live in what Parker calls a “post-melodic world,” characterized by rap, the unrelenting torrent of three- and four-chord songs, a preoccupation with harmony, and a bias toward pre-composed music. Parker continues:

What is Ella Fitzgerald’s responsibility to a page of Gershwin? Let’s assume that she first heard the song in someone else’s interpretation. She might at first imitate that or adapt it, or even go back and see what he actually wrote. But there is NO responsibility to sing exactly what is on the page. Why? Because this is a living language—the idiom is spoken now—so that-which-cannot-be-notated is intuitively supplied. The beat will swing, the words are to be played with, the specific rhythms may be widely varied. In fact, she will never sing it as written […].

In other words, our culture’s deification of the page produces some strange results. When slavish accuracy is taught and valued over musicality, something is wrong. The eye has triumphed over the ear, and the promise of the sound cannot be fulfilled.

Improvisation is something I’ve spent my life learning, though I was never taught it. Before I had any piano lessons, I’d put a record on the record player and try to play along with the melody of the songs as they came up. After several years of lessons and a basic music theory knowledge, when I came across music with only a melody and chords, I would play the melody in my right hand and the root of the chords in my left, usually in octaves. As I got more adept at reading the chord changes, I would alternate between octaves and fifths in the left hand to make my life easier. As I learned more about chord symbols and had a working repertoire of simple left hand accompaniment patterns, I filled in the other harmonies and added more rhythmic interest. And as I learned the characteristic harmonies and rhythms of different musical styles, I would incorporate those stylistic elements into my playing. As I got more proficient, I would sometimes make a game out of pure improvisation: I’d sit down at the piano and force myself to make things up, to simply play whatever melodies and chord progressions my hands would gravitate to. Then I’d try to add modulations and meter changes. I’d play for as long as I could until my creative juices dried up.

What does this mean for my musicianship? It helps me listen much more closely to harmonies and their progression, and I’ve developed an unfortunate (fortunate?) bit of snobbery toward music that I find to be melodically and harmonically uninteresting (which winds up being a LOT of pop/rock music these days…). It helps me accompany better; I can leave notes out to make the accompaniment more playable, and I can embellish chord progressions or rhythms that are bland or a-stylistic. It helps me discern between congregational hymns that will work on the organ or that are best played on the piano, and gives me the tools to lead them from the piano more effectively. It has also opened up unique performance opportunities: I occasionally play in a local jazz combo and a local rock band; I play for musicals; and I’m in demand for accompanying and providing dinner and background music for local events.

All of this is not to brag but to illustrate that improvisation—beyond simply ornamentation and cadenzas—deepens the richness of one’s musicianship. It helps to make the difference between music that’s “correct” and music that “sounds good.” But let’s also be clear about another thing: it is no excuse for poor technique, by any means. Improvisation does not baptize bad playing or singing. But it does help to make the musician a co-creator of the music, not merely a performer. It lets the musician “own” the music, move beyond dullness, develop one’s own style and to, in Parkers words, “inhabit the world of sound.”

When Is Worship Too Loud?

2013-04-06T12:09:00.001-05:00

Often the complaint of “too loud” worship gets leveled at contemporary worship bands. While organs can certainly be “too loud” as well, the nature of electronic amplification tends to make worship bands a more fitting target. It’s tough to tell, however, if “too loud” means simply “annoying” or “I can’t hear myself sing” or “I can’t hear myself think” or “my ears hurt!”

A brief review of online discussions of this turns up things like John Stackhouse, Jr.’s “Memo to Worship Bands” in Christianity Today, as well as spin-off discussions from it and more in-depth musings on larger issues of rock concert volume levels in general. What seems clear to me from the variety of material out there is that there is definitely something worth discussing here, and that, despite the dismissive attitudes of some posters in the forums, when people say “too loud,” they’re probably not being passive-aggressive—they really do mean too loud.

So what is “too loud?” Some of the comments on the forums above talk about “too loud” as purely subjective and related to one’s personal musical taste—I don’t like that music, so I’m inclined to say it’s “too loud.” Others, like those on the Edward Tufte forum, come from educated musicians and sound engineers who generally agree that “too loud” is an “occupational hazard” for both today’s concert goer and musician, citing a menagerie of factors like bad audio mixing, an industry attitude of “louder is better,” and the vicious cycle of musicians’ hearing loss and subsequent demands for more sound leading to more hearing loss.

Calling “too loud” a purely subjective comment is probably a bit too dismissive, which raises issues of pastoral care on the part of the church musician. We as worship leaders need to probe for more information and thoughts from our worshipers when this issue comes up. When people don’t eat spicy food on account of it being “too spicy,” it seems to me that they don’t just mean, “I don’t like it.” They really do mean, “it’s too spicy,” even if that ultimately means “it’s too spicy for me.” Regardless, they’re indicating that a threshold has been reached—they can tolerate no more, and we need to understand their perspective.

Aside from personal comments from worshipers, where do we turn as worship leaders and musicians in this curious discussion? We turn to people who measure this stuff, like OSHA and NIOSH. Both groups are government sanctioned agencies that assign noise dosage levels for hearing safety; OSHA, which operates under the Department of Labor, has more lenient standards. NIOSH, which operates under the Centers for Disease Control, is more conservative. For my purposes here, I’ll cite NIOSH’s standards out of a “better to be safe than sorry” mentality and since they actually study the science, which is not OSHA’s job.

NIOSH’s exposure time recommendations start with a limit of 85 decibels (dB) for 8 hours a day with a 3 dB tradeoff of time-intensity: for every 3 dB increase in sound intensity, the exposure limit drops by half, which translates into:

dBA	85	88	91	94	97	100	103	106
Time	8 hrs	4 hrs	2 hrs	1 hr	30 min	15 min	7.5 min	3.5 min

To put it another way, each decibel level and time of exposure carries the same risk of hearing loss: 8 hours at 85 dB is the same risk as 4 hours at 88 dB and 3.5 minutes at 106 dB. It’s also important to note that these values are based on occupational exposure—they assume that time outside of the normal 8-hour, 5-day workweek is quiet.

Now to my point—what this means for worship. Most worship services last 1 hour. If half of the service is filled with music played by a worship band at 97 dB, the exposure carries the same risk of hearing loss as operating a belt sander for an hour (approx. 94 db). Granted, this is one worship service a week and not a daily work hazard, but the hazard exists nonetheless.

Depending on the instruments in the band and the band’s own propensity for higher volumes, 97 dB may be unrealistically low—rock concerts can approach 115 dB, which leads into my next point. If the volume of worship music approaches the two highest levels in the table above—well within the possibility for a rock band—the exposure limit easily encompasses that of a single worship song: 4-8 minutes. With that in mind, we’re not talking about some arbitrary and subjective measure of “too-loud”-ness, or even personal taste. Hearing loss should not be an occupational hazard of our worshipers; it should not be a worship-related illness.

“Loudness” is a genuine concern. Part of our responsibility as worship leaders is to be good stewards of the health and well-being of those we serve. This is especially true since young adults and young families (who are often the demographic that “contemporary” services attempt to cater to) are already victims of this illness: as of 2010, 1 in 5 adolescents already has hearing loss.

But even beyond the related health concerns, there are musical and liturgical concerns as well. Worship music that is “too loud” is not servant-leadership. This is one thing that most organists know instinctively, simply by virtue of the instrument’s long history with worship. Organists need to hear the congregation in order to accompany them well—if the organist can’t hear the congregation, the organ is probably too loud. If the congregation can’t hear itself, the organ is probably too loud. But guitarists and drummers and vocalists are generally trained from a performance perspective; they tend to think in terms of leading by force, not by invitation. The congregation is sometimes simply dragged along for the ride and left worse for wear at the end. There are, of course, organists who are guilty of this same sin, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule in my experience. On the other hand, worship bands that lead well tend to be the exception rather than the rule; being sensitive to the congregation’s primary role in worship and the implications of that for things like tempo, key, melodic range, volume, etc. are just not things that have yet made it into the worship band’s vocabulary—in the grand scheme of church history, the “worship band” is still in its infancy.

I hope this post helps to clarify and redirect some of the conversation out there regarding volume. I’d love to get your feedback as well: Have you encountered worship bands who are sensitive to appropriate volume levels? Have you encountered organists who were not? How have you dealt this issue in your own experience?

Psalm 88

2013-03-27T12:52:00.001-05:00

For our Maundy Thursday service last year, I wrote a paraphrase of Psalm 88 to be read during the stripping of the altar. Our assisting minister, who I had asked to read it, fell in love with it and insisted that I have her help again this year. For those of you who are preparing for Maundy Thursday services and will be employing the ritual stripping of the altar at the end of the service, I offer this reading to you, slightly revised from my original last year. May you, too, find it meaningful.

Psalm 88
by Travis Beck, © 2012

¹O Lord, my God, the One who saves me:
My days and nights are spent crying to you.
²Hear my prayer. Look at me! Listen to my cries.

³I have more than my share of troubles. Death is near.
⁴I am lost, hopeless, helpless; I have no strength left in me.
⁵I am already dead, one corpse among many in an unmarked grave,
whom you have forgotten and cut off from your care.
⁶You’ve sent me into a black hole, into oblivion.
⁷I cannot bear the ceaseless beating,
the never-ending waves of your anger!
⁸You’ve made me repulsive to even my closest friends; they run away from me!
I am trapped with no way out;
⁹I am blinded by my tears.
Lord, I beg for your mercy daily;
I lift my hands to you for something—anything—that will help.

¹⁰Do you perform miracles for a dead audience?
Do choirs of ghosts sing your praises?
¹¹Do cemeteries talk about your unwavering love?
Do those in hell tell stories of your faithfulness?
¹²Are your wonders seen in the dark?
Is your justice remembered in the Land of Forgetfulness?

¹³But I’m still here; I keep crying to you.
I wake up even before the sun does, just to pray to you.
¹⁴Why are your ears deaf to my pleas?
Why do you give me a cold shoulder?
¹⁵Since I was a child, I have been in pain and near death.
I’ve borne your wrath, and I’m done; I’m giving up.
¹⁶I have drowned in the flood of your wrath and anger; I am no more.
¹⁷It washes over me all day long, from every direction.
¹⁸You’ve taken my loved ones away.
Lover, family, friends, neighbors—all have rejected me.
I have but one friend left: Darkness.

No Room for Snobbery

2013-03-16T21:27:00.001-05:00

As church musicians go, my sense is that I fall into a narrow segment of the population in that I have both experience in and appreciation for the so-called “traditional” and “contemporary” church music styles. I can easily be at home behind the organ console, in front of a choir, at the keyboard in a worship band, or dual-wielding handbells—and in a 5-hour span on a Sunday morning, you may occasionally find me doing all four.

The point of this is not to brag; it’s simply to set up the context for the argument I’m about to make. I lay this groundwork because, it seems to me that most church musicians live in one of these realms (“traditional” or “contemporary”) at the exclusion of the other, either because they find the other one distasteful or they simply have no experience with it (which of these gives way to the other is a matter for another post).

And so having background in both, I notice when some musicians level disparaging remarks at one camp’s expense. Both sides (though I hate to reinforce the false dichotomy) are equally guilty of these sins. “Organ music is outdated and obsolete.” “Guitars and drums are not worship instruments.” “Why should we spend money to buy hymnals? Rock music is the way to go!” “Why do the song leaders get so dramatic and emotional? It’s nauseating…”

These remarks are not only divisive and hurtful comments that we level against our own Christian brothers and sisters (who, by the way, are also following their own call to discipleship and doing the Lord’s work). These remarks also betray musical and theological snobbery, which should have no place in the Church. They are an assault on our fellow Christians and speak volumes about our own fears and insecurities. Setting our own personal tastes and liturgical biases up on pedestal (or using them as a bludgeon) says that we don’t care about oneness with our neighbors, that we can’t treat with respect and dignity things that are different than our own practices. It also speaks of an arrogance that prevents us from learning from other traditions; it says, “We know what’s best and you don’t.”

Snobbery creeps in in other ways as well, especially ones that don’t fall along musical style lines. It can sometimes be manifested in a perfectionistic zeal for only musically superior musical performances by soloists or the choir or the organist; it can show up in the insecurities of leaders when things don’t go smoothly, as if worship should be such a clockwork endeavor or slick performance that there is zero-tolerance for mistakes. My own sins of snobbery tend to fall into this category, and I remind myself and others that worship should be like the widow’s mite—not offering perfection, but offering our best, which is not the same thing.

The last place for us to find snobbery should be in a time devoted to the unadulterated praise of the living God in Christ. Let’s work to make worship a snob-free zone.

Waiting…

2013-02-27T11:15:00.001-06:00

Easter—the queen of all Christian festivals, the crux (literally!) of the Church year, the singular celebration that every other worship service throughout the year flows into and out of. We visit family. We eat chocolate bunnies. We decorate hard-boiled chicken eggs. We give baskets of goodies. It is a pull-out-all-the-stops time of celebration.

But getting there takes time. We are still slogging through the 40 days of Lent; we are Israel, wandering in the wilderness. We are Christ, driven by the Spirit, tempted by the Devil. We fast, we pray, we give. We reflect, we repent, we reconcile. And all of this is in preparation for that glorious Easter Day.

But for what purpose? Why do we do this every year? The answer is simple: discipleship. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9: “Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” The words disciple and discipline are related, both from the Latin discere, “to learn.” Lent is all about discipline, limiting one’s personal freedom for the purposes of deeper spiritual growth. In Lutheran terms, we call this the death of the Old Adam and the Old Eve. It is taking up one’s cross to follow Christ, for grace, though free, does not come cheap—Christ paid for that grace with his life, and so do we. Again, Paul writes in Galatians 2:19, “I have been crucified with Christ.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer unpacks this even further in his book The Cost of Discipleship: “When Christ bids us come, he bids us come and die.” Lent is about death, about dying to self, about returning to baptism and that daily drowning, or as Paul yet again says, “I die every day!” (1 Cor. 15:31). What is the Christian life about if it is not about striving to be more Christ-like today than I was yesterday? The life of the Christian is to say, with John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

We have all been through the journey time and again in our daily lives that we encounter metaphorically in Lent: we have betrayed our Lord; we have denied him pride of place in our lives; we have run from him when the going got tough; we have been crucified with him, baptized with him, and buried with him. And then we emerge from those waters of Lenten baptism on that glorious resurrection morning. On Easter Day—and every day—we are raised with him. God, as always, makes us alive by killing us. It is the only way. One cannot get to the empty tomb without going through the cross.

So here we stand. Broken, yet whole; dead, yet alive; poor, yet rich; slave, yet free; sinners, yet saints. We need to embrace our dual nature, and we need to embrace both the cross and the empty tomb. So let us journey through Lent, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday together, with diligence and persistence. Let us not simply skip over the dark and twisty days of Holy Week to satisfy our gluttonous yearning for the wedding feast of Easter. We will get our cake soon enough, and our patience will be rewarded.

Toward Better Contemporary Music

2013-02-11T13:35:00.001-06:00

The intent of this post is not to wear even further the already well-worn road of the “worship wars,” nor is it to be an offensive attack on music that has often received, justifiably or not, the wrath of snobbish “traditionalists” who may laud hymnody as the be-all-and-end-all of worship music. It is precisely the opposite, critical though it may be. There is much to be praised for the work of contemporary Christian rock/pop songwriting, especially as the genre has evolved over the last decade. Nevertheless, for church musicians and worship planners who, like me, seek to expand our congregations’ musical repertoire into other territory, the pool of contemporary Christian rock/pop songs that are both theologically appropriate for my denomination and also have musical and textual integrity is still woefully inadequate. What follows is a brief list of common characteristics I find among many contemporary songs that prevent me from incorporating them more fully into worship.

1. “Chunky” melodies. A highly technical term this is not. What I mean by this is a tendency of contemporary Christian songwriters to craft whole verses and refrains out of a series of short, measure-long phrases, separated by up to whole measures of rest. The result? A melody that lacks musical direction and gets old very fast. Imagine if you were playing musical chairs to a song like this and you only moved when the melodic line came up. The scene would be four beats of walking, a beat or more of standing. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. It’s not good music. What makes hymnody durable and effective over the long haul is that the melodies are longer and more lyrical. This, of course, has implications for the text as well, because with a “chunky” melody, the songwriter is forced to confine textual ideas to small bits of melody, or as a singer you’re forced to breath constantly in mid-thought, meaning songs tend to lack idea development and cohesion in the text. Examples: “Revelation Song,” “Jesus Messiah,” “All Who Are Thirsty,” “Breathe,” “Everyday,” “Lord I Lift Your Name on High,” and many more.

2. Stagnant melodies. By this I mean melodies that hover around the same few notes. You can get a quick sense of this by this exercise: 1) Pick a song. 2) Look at the verse or refrain. 3) On a piece of staff paper, jot down the lowest note of the melody, then the highest note. 4) Note the interval between them. Some contemporary songs, like “Blessed Be Your Name,” and “Everlasting God” have verses whose melodies are confined to a range of no more than a fifth. “Your Grace is Enough,” has verses whose melody that, for three out of its four phrases, has a range of no more than a minor third—literally three notes. These melodies are, by necessity, highly repetitive and, with so few notes at their disposal, not very interesting. Again, I’ll contrast this with hymnody; the hymn tunes that stick around are ones people can stand to sing over and over, year after year, generation after generation. The unfortunate consequence of contemporary Christian music is that it winds up being highly disposable; 90% of the songs just aren’t durable, so congregations are in a constant search for new music, ditching the old worn-out songs for new ones that are fresh. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that there’s little music that’s memorable and can be passed on over time. Songwriters would do well to work on crafting melodies that are more memorable and interesting.

3. Virtuosic melodies. This is the ditch on the other side of the road from #2 above. Some melodies for some songs have ranges approaching an octave and a half, pushing the limits of what’s practical for congregational singing. Certainly some of these can be sung in keys that keep the congregation from singing too high or too low. For example, “In Christ Alone” by Stuard Townend has a range from a fourth below the tonic to an octave above, limiting its use in congregational worship to a handful of workable keys. Other songs have tricky ornaments or vocal stylings characteristic to their performance by recording artists that aren’t singable by congregations; they’re just too unwieldy. To use them, one is forced to simply print words and leave the congregation to fend for itself, or to print a simplified melody in the bulletin. Some songs can work fine with a simplified melody, but others, like “You Are My King (Amazing Love)” rely on the syncopation and rhythmic complexity and would be awkward if they were simplified.

4. Theological bias. It’s not that a bias isn’t okay—bias is what makes a song fit with one church’s theological stream and not another. The problem is that the bias isn’t a diverse one; far more contemporary songs fit with a conservative and (arguably) anti-liturgical stream on Christianity than a liberal and pro-liturgical one. As a result, texts as a whole are limited in their focus (these are based on my own perception and are purely anecdotal):

texts focus more on one’s personal relationship with God than with one’s relationship to the Body of Christ as a whole or to humanity/creation in general
texts focus more on one’s personal spiritual “destination” (i.e., salvation, conversion, etc.) than on elements of one’s spiritual “journey” and the Christian life (i.e., confession/repentance, prayer, giving, service, etc.)
texts focus more on unrealized eschatology (the not-yet-ness of the coming of God’s kingdom) than realized eschatology (the already-ness of God’s kingdom in our midst, here and now)
texts focus more on Christ as savior and victor than on Christ as example and model
texts focus on faith as something one has rather than something one lives
texts focus more on the joys and blessings of the Christian life than the trials and tribulations
few texts exist that function well as parts of the Mass: confession, kyrie, sanctus, agnus dei, etc.

5. Gender-exclusive language. I find it ironic that songs that are intended to be “contemporary” expressions often use antiquated, gender-exclusive language, but I suspect that this is probably a product of a socio-political bias that runs parallel to the theological one listed above in the more conservative segments of Christianity. Nevertheless, the language—and not just the music--needs to speak to the issues and culture of our day. 21st century songs should be employing 21st century shared meaning in their texts, not vestiges of 19th century vocabulary that reinforce gender barriers, especially in a religion that believes “there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” There is no excuse to continue using “men,” “man,” or “mankind” except when poetic license may allow it. For example, “In Christ Alone,” (mentioned earlier) includes the line: “No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man | can ever pluck me from his hand.” I’ve tried to tweak this line to “No pow’r of hell, no earthly plan,” but I’m not yet convinced that it’s a good alternative to the original.

These are a handful of my current frustrations with contemporary music options. Three of them are related to the music alone—it simply needs better crafting. If it’s not interesting if sung unaccompanied, it’s not interesting enough.

I hope that future years will bring better options. The church deserves good music worthy of use for the worship of God.

Softly and Tenderly

2013-01-16T14:35:00.001-06:00

Last week was unusual. Between Tuesday and Friday, I played for three funerals. The first, a funeral for a paramedic killed in the line of duty—over 500 people were in attendance, mostly other EMS workers. The second, a very small funeral for one of our elderly members. The third, another small funeral for our oldest member who passed away at 103 years young.

The point of this post is to highlight the stark contrasts between each of these funerals and the importance of sensitivity to the congregation’s needs on the part of the musician. All three funerals selected standard funeral fare for their music. For the first, “Lift High the Cross,” “Amazing Grace,” and “I Know that My Redeemer Lives.” All three are very easy to learn if one is not familiar with them, but despite the 500+ people in attendance, there was very limited singing going on. It was clear that this group was either not a predominantly church-going crowd, or that they were self-conscious or otherwise inhibited in their ability to sing out. Regardless, it forced me to be more deliberate in my leading of the hymns, limiting the variety of my registrations (the combinations of various sounds on the organ to produce characteristic textures and timbres), and making sure I didn’t play any verses too softly. However, because of the nature of this funeral, I thought it appropriate to introduce Amazing Grace by playing a complete verse on the organ with a sound that emulated bagpipes, evoking the long-standing tradition in the United States of playing bagpipes at police and fire department funerals. Lastly, where I normally play 15-20 minutes of prelude before a funeral, the number of people that needed to be seated in an orderly fashion for this funeral required that I play an hour’s worth.

The second funeral was similar in that the congregation that assembled was not one with uninhibited singing running through its veins, and adding to the challenge was a very small congregation at that—probably in the 40-50 range, and in a sanctuary that seats 450. Acoustics were not on their side; rather than lead from the organ, which is tucked around the corner in a transept, I led from the piano and used a microphone so I could serve as a song leader. Acoustically, I don’t prefer the piano when confident singing is required as the organ can sustain notes indefinitely and plays louder, but it was a trade-off that enabled me to sing with a microphone in my face and also hear as best I could to adjust my playing on-the-fly as needed. Again, standard funeral repertoire was chosen here: “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace,” “Beautiful Savior,” making the hymns as familiar as possible for those in attendance. Here, bagpipe-esque introductions were not feasible as I was leading from the piano, and would have been inappropriate for this crowd.

The third funeral was attended by a family with strong singers in its ranks, though the total attendance was the same as the previous: 40-50. In fact, at the conclusion of the service, the family got up and performed Peter Lutkin’s “The Lord Bless You And Keep You.” With this in mind, I was able to vary my registrations and also dropped out on a verse of “Children of the Heavenly Father” to let the family and others in attendance experience the rare joy of congregational a cappella singing, knowing they were more than capable of holding their own while the organ disappeared. Contrast this with 500+ people in the first example who needed all of the instrumental support I could provide.

All of this is to say that no one way of leading congregational singing is appropriate in all times and places. Especially in the case of funerals, one is dealing with a gathered assembly of diverse backgrounds, musical skills, and spiritual walks. It is a group of people who may never meet again yet who are thrust together in a single place and time and who must be led in their liturgical and musical journey in such a way as to form them into one voice, one Body of Christ. With funerals, one does not have the luxuries that come with leading worship week in and week out for an established community of faith. Such work, therefore, requires sensitivity and awareness on the part of the musician and a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances and needs. It is this side of the church musician’s work that demands from them a level of pastoral care that they are not always equipped or prepared to provide. Nevertheless, it is the reality of congregational ministry, and church musicians will do well to understand these subtle and nuanced dynamics.

Reflections on Epiphany

2013-01-09T12:19:00.000-06:00

January 6 this year was one of the infrequent times when Epiphany falls on a Sunday, providing us with the luxury of being able to observe it in morning worship. It’s a luxury because the Gospel reading for Epiphany, the story of the Wise Men, is encountered nowhere else in the church year (unless it happens to be included in a children’s Christmas program). So unless a church takes up the tradition of observing Epiphany on the following Sunday, we don’t hear that story in worship very often.

The curious conundrum that it creates, however, is that by this time most of us will have moved on: we don’t really care about Christmas anymore, its 2013, we’re back to work and school, etc. And so along comes January 6, transporting us back to the manger one last time. And to what end? Hearing the story of the Magi nearly two weeks after Christmas seems too little, too late--and too out of place. What’s the point of worship dragging us back to Christmas? Well first, it’s a reminder that Christmas is still important, that it shouldn’t be a mere distant memory. Second, it’s a fitting conclusion to the “12 days of Christmas,” bookended nicely with these two birth stories, one from Luke on December 24 and one from Matthew on January 6. Third, it’s a teachable moment: Luke and Matthew tell very different stories about the birth of Jesus and for very different reasons—we tend to smash them together in one mega-story that misses all the depth and richness that Luke and Matthew have to tell us about who this Christ-child is and why he’s important.

But finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s really not about Christmas at all. Epiphany means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Therefore this story isn’t about going back to Christmas but about what the revelation of God through Christ means for life after Christmas. It’s not about going back, but going forward. How is life different now that God has come into the world? How does my life change so that God is revealed to the world through Christ in me? How is the world different because I know Christ? This story isn’t about one night, one time, for one family with one child in one lowly stable. This is about God revealed in each of us, every day, in every way, at all times and in all places. This story is about how we can live out the reality of Christmas—“God with us”—every day. It's about how we reveal (or fail to reveal) Christ to the world.

In these Sundays after Epiphany, we’ll see this theme of revelation continue to appear: God revealed to the world in Christ’s baptism, Christ’s first miracle at the wedding in Cana, and on and on in Christ’s teachings and life. And every week we will hear the call to live that revelation in our daily lives: “Go in peace. Serve the Lord.” Thanks be to God.

Beyond Willow Creek

2012-11-07T11:44:00.000-06:00

Group Publishing's Lifetree Cafe curriculum seeks to help churches facilitate faith-based dialogues about contemporary topics. This week's topic? The disappearance of "seekers." Thom Schultz helps frame the discussion in the promotional email that arrived in my inbox today:

A new Pew Research Center study depicts the growing reality of the vanishing seeker. Most Americans do not regularly attend church. And the fastest growing sector is the “nones”–those who say they have no religious affiliation at all. This segment grew from 15 percent to 20 percent in just the last five years. Among those aged 18-29, the unaffiliated encompasses 32 percent of the population.

Those aren't "seekers"--they're "nones." They are not actively seeking a religious experience. In other words, the increasing majority of people who visit our churches are from other churches--our continued use of the "seeker-friendly" service model winds up preaching to the choir.

Willow Creek in Illinois has long been a leader in the seeker-friendly worship movement, the premise of which is to cultivate a worship experience that mirrors much of the secular cultural experience of the "seeker" in their daily life--pop/rock style music, the professional artistry of a typical concert, worship as spectator sport. In so doing, the thinking goes, we minimize the barriers and hurdles that the "seeker" might otherwise encounter in worship: organ music, smells-and-bells liturgy, congregational singing, theological jargon, etc. The Pew study is a testament that this way of attempting to stem the tide of the declining mainline Church hasn't worked.

Thom Schultz offers three possible lessons to be learned from all of this:

Look for ways to go to the people on their turf and their schedule, rather than expect the people to seek out a typical religious service that runs on a churchy schedule.

Learn what people are actually seeking, and find ways to meet those human needs. Then form authentic relationships and earn the right to share your faith.

Move from passive spectator services to settings that allow the “spiritually open” to participate, ask questions, and share their thoughts.

In other words, we need to relearn how to actually be the Church, live the faith, and proclaim the Gospel, instead of trying to sell the Church, the faith, and the Gospel as commodities with worship and music as our marketing tools. Worship, no matter what it's form or content, needs to be approached with a willingness to break it open and reinvent it so that it fosters relationships, meets human needs, and allows for openness and participation. But more than that, we as worshipers need to get our butts out of the pews and into relationship with those whom we complain don't "show up" for worship. Contrary to the Willow Creek model's implications, it is not worship's responsibility to target, attract, and sustain the "seeker" or the "unchurched"--it is ours. Why aren't the "nones" showing up? Probably because they've been treated as a key demographic. No one has bothered to get to know them as people.

When Music Fails Us

2012-10-29T12:45:00.000-05:00

It is Monday, October 29. As I write this, I'm finalizing music choices and orders of service for this coming Sunday, November 4--All Saints Day. And as I write this, I am increasingly frustrated with a lack of music to choose from.

The problem arises because for the last few years I have made a tradition in my congregation on Reformation Day and All Saints Day of departing from our usual, compartmentalized, 8:30 traditional & 10:45 contemporary, Sunday morning worship model. I plan both services as "traditional" on Reformation in celebration of 500 years of Lutheran heritage, and I plan both services as "contemporary" on All Saints to highlight that our work as saints is always in the here and now and robed in the clothing of our own culture and context. Why is this a problem? It's a problem because, while there seems to be a preponderance of both old and new "traditional" worship music centered on the themes and texts of All Saints Day, the repertoire of both old and new "contemporary" worship music seems severely impoverished to me, particularly this year, Year B, in the lectionary cycle.

There are some redeeming points, however. There are some specific songs that refer to Isaiah 25 and Revelation 21 and the eschatological theme of God "wiping away all tears," but they've not been very congregational, so no gold mine there. And John 11's story of the raising of Lazarus certainly has fitting songs out there about resurrection and new life. But the conglomeration of this Sunday's texts, the juxtaposition of these texts, means that, at least for me, the ultimate thematic point is not necessarily about pie-in-the-sky, new life, resurrection, heaven-is-a-pain-free-zone. What all of these texts have in common, especially given the context of the Isaiah text (see Isaiah 24; 25:1-5, 10b-12), is tears and pain, and the most striking thing for me is that not only does God wipe away tears, but our Gospel lesson finds God in Christ as the one shedding tears--God weeps with us, feels pain with us, and also promises to put an end to it all. What I want in my music for this Sunday's texts, then, is music that doesn't simply point to the pain-free life to come. What I want is music that recognizes, embraces, even lifts up our tear-shedding, pain-feeling humanity and God's participation in it, not merely God's redemption of it.

It's understandable, of course, that contemporary music is at a seeming loss for words. In my albeit limited experience with contemporary music, the generally held theology among those songs is not an incarnational one in which God, too, as Word made flesh, feels pain with us. It is rather a primarily eschatological one: God in Christ, waiting in the wings until the time is ripe to draw us all to himself and transform the broken sinful world into the wonderful utopia of the New Jerusalem. Songs about God wiping away tears? We've got tons of 'em. Songs about God shedding tears over Lazarus' death, despite presumably knowing he's going to resurrect him in 5 minutes? Not so much.

So I'm frustrated that at least in this instance our contemporary musical repertoire seems to have failed us (or just me, this week). Music has the power to take us into uncomfortable places while still making us feel secure, and it is precisely that kind of music that I wish to plan for this weekend's worship. I want us to go where we don't want to go. I want to plumb the musical depths of our pain and grief before offering the glimpse of hope. I want us to remember that it is not a bed of roses, but that God walks this road too--not just that he already has, that he's walked it before us, but that he walks it with us, here and now, our companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24). Is that a burden too much to bear for contemporary music? Is that too much to ask? At least for me, today, it seems so.

On Sacramental Theology

2012-10-27T11:41:00.001-05:00

I’ve been reading a book lately by Allen Hunt called Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor. In it, Hunt discusses his journey from being a Methodist pastor in mega-church of thousands to being Catholic. Each chapter is devoted to an particular milestone in his journey, usually focused on an element of worship or other aspect of the faith. In a chapter on communion, Hunt talks about being invited by a friend of his, a Catholic priest, to speak about Methodism to a group of nuns in a local monastery. Following his talk, the nuns probe him about his opposition to a literal presence of Christ in the elements, citing the numerous occurrences in John 6 of Jesus referring to himself as the “bread of life” or the “living bread of heaven,” and the places in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians where Christ says, “This is my body.” The nuns point out that Christ doesn’t say, “This is like my body,” and challenge him to provide an answer as to why the passage should not be interpreted more literally. Over time, Hunt comes to accept the Roman Catholic perspective on the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine.

My initial reaction to this was one of agreement—scripture says is, so why should we take it on anything other than face value? But in thinking about it more, I came to the conclusion that Christians and denominations spend a great deal of time and effort trying to correct one another’s theology. Christ says is; that could just as easily be literal as metaphorical. If Christ had said, “This is like my body,” we’d call it a simile, not a metaphor! In the end, none of us can deny that the sacrament came long before the theology.

Why do we focus on trying to figure out what Christ means instead of focusing on what Christ is telling us to do? Christ doesn’t say, “Interpret this in remembrance of me,” or “Argue about this in remembrance of me.” Christ says Take, Eat, Drink, Do. It matters nothing what happens in the consecration of the bread and wine; this is little more than doing exactly what Christ himself actually did: He took the bread, broke it, and gave thanks. He took the cup and gave thanks. Why should we bother complicating the ritual with speculative metaphysical interpretations?

Much of what Christ did and said is filled with layers of possible meaning; arriving at one specific interpretive framework at the expense of all others is to miss the point. Evangelicals could learn something from the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist perspectives on “real presence,” that when Christ says is, he does so intentionally, and there is more going on here than mere remembrance. But Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists could learn something from Evangelicals about not getting caught up in trying to make sense of what’s going on in communion—take the words as they are, do what they say, and don’t worry about getting the theology right. And all of us—myself included—could stand to learn that there are more riches to be found when holding the diversity of interpretations in tension than in picking one at the expense of all others.

Why can't worship be more like camp?

2012-10-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

For starters, I don't know that I have an answer to the question. I don't know if there's even an answer that's right, wrong, or in-between. But I do know that this question comes up in my congregation, and is also the topic of a forum being held at Luther Seminary in late November. The promotional email I received reads thus:

Why can't my church be more like camp? That's what kids ask all the time when they come back from camp. Great question, isn't it? We wonder the same thing, don't we? Why have we given up on asking? [...]

We've asked YouthFront's Mike King, a lifelong camp director who has moved his camper's experiences in profoundly new directions; and Paul Hill, head of Lutheran Outdoor Ministries and a great student of all things CAMP, to start the dialogue. But we're not staying at camp. The goal is to help you help your church be "more like camp."

The question I would raise in response to that last sentence would be, "Why?" Why is it important for church to be "more like camp?"

I once had a related discussion with a former youth director at my congregation. Our youth had recently come back from the ELCA youth gathering and we were discussing to what extent worship should be like it is at the youth gathering--bands, dramatic lighting, skits and dramas, and lots of contemporary music. I don't remember what I answered then, but I remember wrestling with the question afterward and arriving at this conclusion: our congregation's worship shouldn't be modeled on the youth gathering because our congregation is not composed solely of youth.

The problem, as I see it, is trying to take things that work for a specific context and then pasting them into our own. I've been to a few Willow Creek arts conferences in my day and, like any conference, I've left inspired and motivated to return to my church and jump-start its worship. But there are limits to modeling a rural, small town congregation on a mega-church in a Chicago suburb. Asking the question, "Why can't our church be more like <whatever>?" is like asking, "Why can't Wal-Mart be more like Macy's?" Even if it were possible, why would you want it to be? People shop at Macy's for a variety of reasons, but some of those reasons are precisely because Macy's is not Wal-Mart; of course, the same can be said for people shopping at Wal-Mart precisely because it is not Macy's.

The point of all this is that context is important. Churches are not youth gatherings, and youth gatherings are not churches. What works at a youth gathering is not necessarily appropriate for Sunday morning worship in a congregation, nor does what works in a congregation make it appropriate for a national youth gathering. Likewise, camp is not church, church is not camp. This is not to say that there aren't similarities, or that worship doesn't happen in both settings, or even that there can't be or shouldn't be or isn't any crossover between elements of camp worship and elements of congregational worship. But it must be recognized that the social, political, cultural, emotional, theological, and liturgical dynamics (along with many others) are fundamentally different between a camp context and a congregational context.

"Why can't our worship be more like camp?" Well, it can be, but we're not a camp. How about these questions: Why can't camp be more like Sunday morning worship? Why don't camps have pipe organs? Why don't they (at least in my experience) have choirs? Why are the songs generally "fluffier" than what's in our hymnals? Because of context. Camps probably don't have (or maybe even want) access to the resources to fund an organ, maintain it, and get someone who knows how to play it. Choirs require rehearsal time, which can't be easily squeezed in among the other activities at a camp. And the songs are "fluffier" because camps spend limited time with camp participants, unlike congregations which spend time together week after week for months and years and can learn more complicated songs over the long haul.

So whether it's camp songs or small group ministry or the next "big thing" you picked up at a conference, it's important to know the context, what's appropriate, what will work and what won't, and whether your purpose is really to turn your congregation into a carbon copy of some other place. Whose need are we meeting--our need as leaders for the congregation to be more like "that" (whatever "that" may be), or the congregation's need to be more like that? How can we help the congregation to develop its own identity rather than being a sort of congregational Frankenstein's monster, made up of the parts of a hundred other places? These and related questions will help us address far deeper issues than simply whether or not our churches should feel more like camp.

Links for 2012-09-17 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

BBC News - India central bank in lending boost as rates on hold
India's central bank has lowered the amount of money that banks need to keep in reserve, in a bid to boost lending and spur domestic demand. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by 25 basis points to 4.5%. However, the bank left its key interest rate unchanged at 8%.

Links for 2012-09-14 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-15T00:00:00-07:00

BBC News - India inflation rate rises faster than expected
India's inflation rate rose to a higher-than-expected 7.55% in August on a year earlier, official figures show. Higher food prices were mainly behind the rise, which comes ahead of a Reserve Bank of India meeting on Monday to decide interest rate policy. Analysts had expected the August inflation rate to be about 6.95%.
China's weird and wildly popular world of workplace novels - CNN.com
STORY HIGHLIGHTS Hundreds of titles crowd the "workplace" genre in China's bookstores Appeal lies in the books' mix of soap opera plots and career advice Books provide information for aspiring careerists, says novelist Genre fails to pay attention to more positive cultural values, says literature professor
Infosys' software platform Flypp exposes risks in company's platform strategy - The Economic Times
BANGALORE: When Infosys launched its reusable software platform Flypp for mobile operator Aircel nearly three years ago, the innovative solution was perceived as harbinger of the Bangalore-based company's now retooled business strategy. But since December 2009, when Flypp was unwrapped, it has failed to make much progress, highlighting the potential pitfalls of software platforms on which Infosys has pinned such high hopes.

Links for 2012-09-12 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-13T00:00:00-07:00

BBC News - Huawei to invest £1.3bn in growing its UK business
Chinese telecoms and computer network giant Huawei Technologies is to invest £1.3bn in expanding its UK operations. Huawei is to invest the funds in areas such as mobile broadband over five years, creating up to 700 new jobs. Prime Minister David Cameron said the investment demonstrated that the UK is "open for business".
Oracle launches new product Exalytics In-Memory Machine - The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: Technology giant Oracle today launched its Exalytics In-Memory Machine, aimed at helping enterprises use business intelligence software and hardware for analytical and performance management applications. Companies are looking at using information stored in database, which ranges from a few dozen terabytes to multiple petabytes. Industry experts believe analytics is receiving a major boost as there is an exponential growth in data.

Links for 2012-09-11 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

BBC News - World Economic Forum: China growth on track, says Wen Jiabao
China's Premier, Wen Jiabao, has told the World Economic Forum in Tianjin that his country is on track to hit growth targets for this year. He also called on international leaders to strengthen co-ordination and oppose trade protectionism during the global economic slowdown. His address comes amid signs that China's economy may be slowing faster than previously thought.

Links for 2012-09-07 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-08T00:00:00-07:00

China unleashes $158B infrastructure spend - CNN.com
(Financial Times) -- China has approved plans for Rmb1tn ($158bn) in infrastructure spending, an investment push that analysts say will help support growth in the stuttering economy. The money will be rolled out over several years and the government has not described the investments as a stimulus package, but the announcements nevertheless fuelled renewed optimism about China's prospects.

Links for 2012-09-06 [del.icio.us]

2012-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

The avatar economy | KurzweilAI
A robot remotely controlled by a low-wage foreign worker could soon compete with some U.S. workers, suggests MIT doctoral student in information technology Matt Beane in Technology Review. Companies now produce and sell robots that allow users to navigate through a remote working environment, interacting by means of a computer screen.
BRICs share of global GDP will go up from 18% to 26% over the next decade: Arvind Subramanian - The Economic Times
In ET Now's Global Insights show, Punita Kumar Sinha, Founder & Managing Partner, Pacific Paradigm Advisors, speaks to Arvind Subramanian, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Richard Titherington, MD & CIO-EM, JP Morgan AMC, for their take on the rising dominance of BRICs in global economy.

Hooked on a Feeling

2012-09-04T21:24:00.001-05:00

I was listening to NPR today and caught this segment about research into the shifting emotional content of popular music. In 1965, every top 40 Billboard hit was in a major key, suggesting that the most listened to music of the time was communicating a sense of happiness and good times. By contrast, in 2009, 22 of the top 40 Billboard hits were in minor keys, suggesting an evolution in the emotional complexity of the music we most often listen to. NPR quotes the researcher, Glenn Schellenberg, on why this shift might have happened:

"I think that people like to think that they're smart," [Schellenberg] says. "And unambiguously happy-sounding music has become, over time, to sound more like a cliche. If you think of children's music like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' or 'The Wheels on the Bus,' those are all fast and major, and so there's a sense in which unambiguously happy-sounding songs sound childish to contemporary ears. I think there's a sense in which something that sounds purely happy, in particular, has a connotation of naivete."

The article concludes:

If you use a minor key, though, you can make even something with a positive message and fast tempo sound emotionally complicated.

"It's more emotionally complex in the sense that it's expressing both sadness in terms of one dimension and happiness in terms of another dimension at the same time," Schellenberg says.

That complexity makes both listeners and composers feel sophisticated instead of naive. In that way, Schellenberg says, the emotion of unambiguous happiness is less socially acceptable than it used to be. It's too Brady Bunch, not enough Modern Family.

"People have come to appreciate sadness and ambiguity more," Schellenberg says. "Life is more complicated, and they want the things that they consume as pleasure to be complex similarly."

Sadness and ambiguity: the latest emotional fashion.

I was immediately intrigued by the implications of this for modern worship, particularly since my own experience with contemporary worship trends and attitudes among parishioners is one of people wanting worship music to be mostly, if not entirely, happy and upbeat. The study suggests however, that current culture has grown tired of the “happy and upbeat” flavor which has predominated popular music for the last several decades. Will our worship music follow suit? Is it already?

I’m particularly struck by Schellenberg’s assessment that “unambiguously happy-sounding music has become, over time, to sound more like a cliché. […] There’s a sense in which unambiguously happy-sounding songs sound childish to contemporary ears.” Is our desire for constant happy worship music a reflection of our spiritual and/or musical immaturity? Have we sacrificed solid food for a diet of milk and honey and in so doing sabotaged our own spiritual growth and development? Has our worship been saturated with the happy and upbeat to the point that such worship borders on the banal, the trite, the cliché? Do we have a responsibility as worship leaders and worship planners to nudge our congregations toward more complex emotional, spiritual, and musical expressions for their own good?

Beyond this, I’m left wondering if the study’s findings and the trends in emotional content of contemporary worship aren’t even more closely connected. Here’s why: first, my music therapist friends tell me that the music we remember most later in life is that music we listened to in our twenties and thirties. Second, in my experience, the stereotypical “contemporary service” tends to be quite popular with Baby Boomers, those born between 1945 and 1964. For many Baby Boomers, the musical time period cited in this study as having the most “unambiguously happy'-sounding music” would fall in their twenties and thirties. It makes perfect sense, then, that contemporary worship characterized by such “unambiguously happy sounding music” would resonate the most with them—its emotional content mirrors the sort of happiness and good times feelings of the music most memorable to them.

Now fast forward 30 years. WIll the music of “contemporary worship” 30 years from now mirror the emotional content of today’s more emotionally complex music, reflecting the current “sadness and ambiguity” trend? And if even some of today’s worship music and contemporary services seem less “unambiguously happy-sounding,” is that because they’re mirroring the current popular emotional content, or are they too a generation behind, reflecting, as the study suggests, the shift in content that began in the 80s and 90s and therefore attracting not current twenty- and thirty-somethings but rather Generation X, born from 1960-1980? And whatever the case, what does all of this even mean for worship?

For me, it means a few things. One, that perhaps the current emotional content of popular music can help us forecast the future emotional content of our worship music. Two, it makes me pause and take stock of the emotional content of the worship music I plan on a regular basis. How complex is it? Is it overly simplistic? If so, perhaps I should be intentional about planning music with more ambiguous and complex themes. Finally, it gives me greater insight into why people like or dislike certain worship music—it may be that on an unconscious level, the music communicates a particular emotional content to them that resonates with their own wants, needs, and desires. Helping congregation members to unpack that emotional content could dramatically shift the conversation of worship and help all of us as worship leaders to better connect with and understand the spiritual journeys of our fellow worshipers.

Worship as Discipleship Practice

2012-08-02T00:20:00.001-05:00

In the last week, out of sheer coincidence (or not), the two pastors and I have had separate, unrelated conversations about how we might turn the church into a “training center” for the disciples of Christ. In subsequent discussions as a staff and on our Board of Parish Life (on which I serve), we’ve explored how we might make this come to life. I worked with our Board of Parish Life at our meeting this week in naming our top 5 priorities or objectives as a board—the things we most want to accomplish with this congregation at this time—and how those intersected with the ELCA’s seven discipleship practices, a key focus of our 2012 youth gathering a couple of weeks ago.

Throughout all of this discussion, I began wrestling with how our worship services might serve as practice time for these same discipleship practices:

Pray. How might we provide ways and opportunities in worship for the congregation to learn and practice its prayer life? Perhaps we involve our intercessors group, which typically gathers to pray through a short list of private prayer requests each week, and use them as prayer stations throughout the sanctuary in a worship service, encouraging people to invite them to pray for whatever concerns they might have. Perhaps instead of having our assisting ministers or pastors offer the prayers of the church, we instead expand this responsibility and rotate it through a much larger group of our members, teaching them how to offer public prayer and then having them do it in worship. Perhaps we encourage members to take the bulletin home each week and pray through our list of prayer concerns when they offer their table prayer at dinner or supper.

Study. How might we transform our proclamation of the Word in worship, or use worship to teach skills and tools of Bible study and devotion? Perhaps we shift the reading and preaching of the Word in worship from its usual monologue form to a dialogue form, turning it into more of a conversational Bible study as the texts might allow. Perhaps we could also include a list of devotional resources from local libraries in our bulletin and encourage members to check them out. Perhaps we encourage people to give away the pew Bibles to people who don’t have a Bible.

Worship. In what ways might we expand the worship life of the congregation to include worship for other opportunities? Perhaps we start a monthly evening prayer service informed by the local newspaper. Perhaps we encourage our musicians to experience worship in other denominational or faith traditions and bring back new ideas to inform our own. Perhaps we explore new expressions of worship to expand the congregation’s repertoire of liturgies and styles. Perhaps we include an order of service for private family devotions, encouraging families to read through one of the Sunday morning texts before bedtime and reflect on what it might mean for their own lives.

Invite. How can worship be made more inviting to members and non-members alike? How can the space be made more accessible for all? How can the worship services be made more inclusive of all ages and abilities? Perhaps the bulletin could include a pre-paid postcard that worshipers are encouraged to address and mail to someone they know who does not have a church home.

Encourage. How can worship serve as an opportunity for the public encouragement of our members? Perhaps we lift up a different group or ministry each week or month, using a brief rite of blessing and sending for mission. Or perhaps we ensure that our prayers each week acknowledge the work of a different group or ministry each week.

Serve. How can worship provide opportunities beyond music for members to serve one another, since not all of our members are musicians? How does our worship connect worshipers to mission in the local community? Perhaps our bulletins can contain lists of local charitable organizations, encouraging our members to seek opportunities to serve the larger community.

Give. How can worship expand the definition of giving and stewardship and teach our congregations how to be better givers? Perhaps the offering time could include a bringing up of food items for the local food pantry donated by members. Instead of taking the offering baskets to the people, perhaps people could be encouraged to bring their gifts to the altar as a public witness. Perhaps each week, a different member of the congregation could take on the responsibility of baking the communion bread and bringing it up during this time when the table is set.

The possibilities are endless, and the power of such worship could be incredible. In what ways might this work (or not work) in your own context? What other ideas might you add?

Singing the Psalms

2012-07-29T14:47:00.001-05:00

The congregation that I have served for the past four years had not been in the habit of singing the psalms at its worship services. About a year ago, I made it my goal to resurrect them at our early “traditional” service.

Most of the psalms we use come from a resource published by Augsburg Fortress, the ELCA’s own publishing house—the psalms include a sung refrain to be used at designated points after chanting several verses to a psalm tone, a simple melody written so that verses of varying lengths can be sung to it. This is what we have used most often, though we’ve also employed hymn versions of certain psalms (“Joy to the World” in place of Psalm 98, for example, or “On Eagle’s Wings” in place of Psalm 90, or Marty Haugen’s “Shepherd Me, O God” in place of Psalm 23) and other sung versions of the psalms such as Anglican chant.

The challenge with this approach, however, is that especially during the summer, I’m limited in terms of capable singers who are willing to alternate singing verses with the congregation, and harmonized chant is difficult to do out of choir season. As a solution, I’ve been writing my own psalm refrains inspired by Isaac Everett’s book The Emergent Psalter, and I’ve since started using these at our late contemporary/blended service.. Everett’s approach is to use a short, sung refrain (4-8 measures), sung twice each time (which facilitates quick learning by the congregation) and spoken verses in-between while the musicians improvise underneath.

The beauty of this approach is that it enables me to use the psalms in worship without worrying about the musical capabilities of other worship leaders, and it avoids having to print the entire text of the psalm for the congregation as well as a melody for a psalm tone—in that way, it’s very light on bulletin space. Another advantage is the freedom to use any translation for the verses, or write one’s own paraphrase to capture anew the poetic imagery of the psalm in question, unrestrained by the limitations of something that has to be singable..

The downside, at least with Everett’s treatment of the psalms, is that each psalm has a single refrain for the entire psalm. For many churches, this might not pose a problem. But for lectionary-based churches, the entire psalm is not always used, and the verse Everett has selected for the refrain is not always fitting for the theme of the texts. And, worse yet, sometimes the lectionary calls for a single psalm over the course of multiple Sundays, as will be the case in August this year with Psalm 34. Each week presents us with successive chunks of Psalm 34, each with a different designated verse to be used for the refrain so as to fit the themes of the other readings.

What I’ve learned so far in this psalm experiment is that many of our worshipers have enjoyed the beauty of the psalms and find great meaning in them. And often, it seems to me, contemporary worship tends to ignore the psalms; Everett’s approach, which I’ve adapted for my congregation’s purposes and context, has bridged a gap between using typical “high church” methods of psalm singing which might not work for those with little or no musical or church background, and the other end of the psalm-singing-spectrum: not singing them at all. For a book of the Bible that has served as the Church’s hymnal for thousands of years, I’m grateful for a way to present the psalms that is sensitive to my congregation’s musical limitations but that can also breathe new life into a part of the service that has often been relegated to “high liturgy.” I’m anxious to see the blessings that can come from our “rediscovery” of the psalms.

Planning Outside the Box, Part II

2012-06-12T23:48:00.001-05:00

This post is the second in a series on methods of planning music to unpack the scripture readings in worship.

Liturgical moments
Sometimes, when nothing fits the theme except maybe one or two songs, I’ll plan the other songs to focus on the particular mood, theme, or affect of the location of the service in which they are placed.

At our late service, I have our song leaders sing one or two songs as prelude prior to the start of the service. In choosing these, I try to pick them with the intent of setting the tone for the whole service, either in theme or affect/mood. If the service’s theme is one that suggests a more contemplative feel, I will pick these songs to capture that. The texts may explicitly fit the readings for the day, or they may be completely unrelated; regardless, the music and texts are planned to set the tone for the day, implicitly or overtly.

Early in the service, usually after announcements or a formal liturgical greeting, we’ll have one or two gathering songs. When focusing on the readings isn’t an option, these songs will focus on welcome, inclusivity, morning, general praise of God, unity of God’s people, etc.—all themes that give meaning to the act of a diverse group of individuals coming together to form a unified whole and participate in the act of worship.

Often, but not always, I will plan a song in the psalm spot at our late service, usually something based on the psalm for the day. When this isn’t possible, I try to pick something that serves as a response to the first reading and focuses specifically on that readings text/themes. When even that isn’t possible, I’ll shoot for something that’s generic praise or generally related to God’s Word.

Offering, especially at late service where I have a rotation of song leaders every week, is a great opportunity to use songs that wouldn’t otherwise work for congregational singing. Sometimes something fits the theme but isn’t appropriate for the whole congregation to sing; when that happens, I often place it here. Otherwise this song will more generally relate to stewardship or discipleship.

Communion songs, when not focusing on the day’s texts, will focus on the act of communion: bread, wine, reconciliation, Christ’s death/resurrection, God’s grace and forgiveness, etc. Otherwise, they will focus more generally on praise, the identity of God/Christ or Christ revealed to us (since my Lutheran theology understands Christ as present and made known in the act of communion), unity/Body of Christ, inclusivity, or other related themes.

The sending song is chosen, as much as possible, to tie together both the theme for the day and being sent into the world in service to others. I shoot for this dual purpose every week, which is tricky. I also try to shoot for a song, fast or slow, that you can tap your foot to, trying to capture a sense of drive and being sent out into the world. That’s even trickier. When all that fails, which it inevitably does, or when it would lead us to singing the same song several weeks in a row, I just shoot for a generic sending song to drive us out the door and remind us of our calling.

Does this method resonate with you? How do you plan the music in your services?

Planning Outside the Box, Part I

2012-06-06T21:11:00.001-05:00

More often than not, my worship planning consists of finding music that fits thematically with the texts for the day. For example, last Sunday was Trinity Sunday, and virtually all of the music I planned either used the word “Trinity” in the lyrics or named all three members of the Godhead. But life isn’t always that easy, and over the years I’ve found alternative planning methods that help to unpack the themes for the day.

Abstractions of the theme
An example of this might be to focus on the number three for Trinity Sunday instead of explicit names or phrases in the text. Perhaps there are songs that specifically use the word “three” in them, or perhaps contain a list of three items. Maybe you open the service with three songs back to back, and each one could focus on qualities of one of the members of the Godhead. Maybe each song or hymn is sung with only three verses, or each song’s title has only one or three words. Or perhaps you divide the service into three sections and each section focuses generally on each member of the Trinity. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Another way to get at this kind of planning is through the music’s style and affect. For example, on Pentecost I played this piano piece, a very haunting and ethereal sort of piece that I hoped would evoke the other-worldliness of the Spirit. A service about social justice or the humanity of Jesus might make use of rhythmically driven pieces to instill a sense of drive and being sent out into the world, or to capture the flesh-and-blood physicality of Jesus.

Mirroring the shape of the text
Next to thematic planning, this is a technique I probably use most often (which isn’t really that often). I look at the the text that will the the primary text for the sermon (usually the gospel) and if it conveys a particular literary structure, I’ll model the flow of music throughout the service on that.

One example of this is the worship I planned for May 20th. The gospel lesson was John 17:6-19, which is one of Jesus’ lengthy prayers for his disciples. This prayer has so much rich content in it, it was almost impossible to pick one specific theme to unpack. So instead of the thematic route, I mirrored the flow of the text in the flow of music during the service. For both services, the gathering song focused on the name of God (17:6; “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name;” ”Jesus, Name Above All Names”). The song between the readings, in place of the Psalm, focused on God’s Word (17:7; “God’s Word is Our Great Heritage”; “Thy Word”). The song after the sermon focused on being God’s possession (17:9-10; “You Are Mine”). Communion songs focused on unity (17:11; “One Bread, One Body”). And the sending songs at early and late service focused on being sent and sanctified, respectively (17:17-19; “Sent Forth By God’s Blessing”; “The Church Song”).

Another example is this coming Sunday’s gospel lesson, Mark 3:20-35. The text has a chiastic (symmetrical) structure, a sort of literary sandwich: it begins with the crowd pressing in on Jesus, then moves to Jesus' family trying to restrain him, then to the scribes who think he's possessed, then to Satan's end (the focal point), then back out to the scribes, Jesus' family, and the crowd. For our late and more contemporary service, I’ve planned the music to mirror that pattern:

Prelude: All Are Welcome
Gathering song: Father Welcomes
Song between the readings: You Are My All in All
After the sermon: I'm So Glad Jesus Lifted Me
Offering: You are My King (Amazing Love)
Communion: One Bread, One Body
Sending: Go Light Your World

The first song focuses on all (the world), the next moves to we (God's family), then you (songs that make statements in contrast to how the scribes describe this Jesus who casts out demons), then Jesus' deliverance of me (the focal point), and then the rest of the music moves back out through those categories. By the last two songs, the line between we and all is quite blurry.

Highlighting local concerns or non-liturgical themes
Sometimes my congregation will designate a “mission Sunday,” or our regional leaders will designate “companion synod Sunday” to lift up our partnerships with churches in Tanzania and Chile. On these days, I pick music that stylistically or thematically captures those concerns. Focusing on malaria and AIDS relief led to songs about healing and service. Lifting up Tanzania and Chile led to planning indigenous African, Spanish, and/or South American music. On Good Shepherd Sunday, we lifted up all of these concerns and replaced our prayers of intercession with “For the Healing of the Nations,” the music for which is included in the book Holden Prayer Around the Cross.

For the next post, I’ll explore planning songs based on their location in the service.

Worship as Performance

2012-05-18T20:14:00.001-05:00

Performance is something of a four-letter word when we talk about it in the context of worship. As worship leaders, we try to minimize the sort of attention-seeking behaviors or motivations that might turn worship into entertainment. And yet it is important to recognize that worship is also drama and pageantry—there is public speaking, ritual, gesture, singing, etc. Worship, in many ways, is performance.

So what does that mean? It means that we need to seriously consider the performance aspects of worship and whether we’re doing them justice. One of my former pastors used to say, “I don’t tolerate perfection well.” This was her way of avoiding the obsessive journey toward a perfectionist ideal that can certainly destroy the very organic and accessible qualities that make worship “the work of the people.” But it can also be a crutch, an excuse to not put our best foot forward for God and one another.

I think of it in terms of the story of the Widow’s Mite (Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4) where Jesus describes the widow, who gives her last bit of money as an offering, as giving a gift that means far more to God than the gifts of the wealthy, gifts which are higher in monetary value but less sacrificial relative to their abundance in the pockets of the wealthy. For me, this means that faithful worship, while it avoids perfectionist attitudes, needs to still be offering the best of what we have at our disposal. Anything less is hardly sacrificial, and sends the message that our God is not worthy of our best gifts—and that’s the best of each person’s gifts, not the best gifted people offering their gifts at the exclusion of those who may be less gifted.

That means practice. Some musicians (myself included) find it easy to rest on our laurels, faking our way through an offertory, or not bothering to stretch our abilities beyond their current limits. Readers of the lessons may think, “I’m just reading, and I do that every day. I don’t need to practice,” and therefore fail to put in the extra effort toward rehearsing key words and phrases with inflections that can bring those texts to life for the worshipers. Pastors may leave sermon prep until Friday or Saturday, long past the time when a conversation with the musician could have resulted in more fitting and appropriate music and liturgy for that service.

But worship as performance also means thinking about performance etiquette. It is my opinion that far too many sins are committed in worship in the name of “casual” or “visitor-friendly” worship, or because worship leaders failed to follow the order that was printed in the bulletin out of sheer ignorance and/or lack of planning. What kinds of sins? Pastors who skip hymns because they happened to be in a different place in the service that week; worship leaders treating the worshipers as if they are illiterate by announcing every hymn; apologies for skipping things in the bulletin, or cell phone interruptions, or other confessions that draw more attention to the faux pas than the faux pas itself. Good musicians never react (i.e., cringe, grimace, etc.) to a mistake in a performance—they simply keep going as if nothing happened. Reacting draws attention to the mistake and looks unprofessional. Many ensembles also train their members to avoid scratching itches, coughing, tapping their feet, and a host of other things that risk distracting the audience or other ensemble members from the performance.

Another way to think of this is akin to actors breaking character. Certainly worship is a human event, so human emotion and reactions such as laughter and grief should be welcome responses in worship. But care must be taken to ensure that worship leaders, as needed and where appropriate, can “stay in character” to help facilitate the act of worship for the congregation. If our humanity becomes a stumbling block for the worshiper, we have failed to do our jobs. Our job should be to be as transparent as possible, that the worshipers might see the light of the kingdom shining through the thin veil of worship.

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let me know your own perspective on worship “performance etiquette.”

How to Frustrate the Assembly

2012-05-13T23:29:00.001-05:00

I was walking through a church a while back and I noticed this sign. I couldn't help but laugh at this. It may be tough to see in the photo, so I'll elaborate.

On a locked door that leads to the exterior of this church is a giant, red sign that reads in giant, white letters "EXIT." Underneath this obvious sign is an itty-bitty sign that reads, "Use Other Door <--"

Now aside from the safety aspect of this signage, there is a potential frustration to anyone new to this building and there certainly was one for me! Is this how we are giving directions in our churches?

It is very easy to get lost in a church building, but it's just as easy to get lost during a worship service. I've been to many churches where leadership says something like*: "Let's stand and sing hymn number 452 right after our announcements." Or, "I would like you all to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 6, but not yet." The confusing and devastating direction that seems benign, is the rambling direction, "please stand and great your neighbor showing them God's love within you and seeing God's love within them, because we are all created in God's love and need to see that in each other." By the time the direction is over, no one remembers what we were asked to do. Sometimes, the parishioners have already started the direction and didn't hear the proclamation at the end, because they were talking about the fishing opener.

Here are a couple of ideas of how to not frustrate those in attendance:

1. Give the actual direction immediately before you want the result.
I like "We are all created in God's image of love. Please show that image of God's love with each other by greeting your neighbor," much better than the aforementioned direction. I'm certain there are other ways that get to the heart, but at least the call to action was immediately before the action.
2. Don't talk to much, because talking too much is really a terrible idea and no one wants to hear that much of an explanation. (i.e. Be concise.)
3. Use different words to describe different actions. "Please join me in reading Isaiah 50," should not mean both, please follow along in your Bibles and please read aloud with me.

Finally, #4, think about what you are saying, doing, or posting. Not everyone "gets it." Some of us get confused easily.

I know you have some better ideas than these. Please share them below!

*I'm not exaggerating, these (or something similar) have been spoken to the Assembly during worship.

Breaking B(re)ad

2012-05-01T19:11:00.001-05:00

This post began with me amusing myself with the play on words that is now the title of this post. But as I mulled it over in my head, some provocative theological connections emerged.

From Breaking Bad’s website:

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years to live. With a new sense of fearlessness, and a desire to secure his family's financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime, where he ascends to power. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis, such as White's, releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to kingpin of the drug trade.

At least from a Lutheran perspective, we all suffer a “fatal diagnosis.” Paul writes in Romans 3: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Like Walter, this diagnosis has the potential to release us all “from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society.” From Romans 6:

[Count] yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!

In Christ, this diagnosis is not fatal. We Walters have been brought from death to life, and while we could easily find ourselves with a “sense of fearlessness” in our redemption as we might in our condemnation, Paul reminds us that grace should not be viewed as a license to sin but a challenge to discipline ourselves as “instruments of righteousness.”

What does this have to do with worship? In Lutheran theology, communion is seen as a “means of grace,” a tangible expression of Christ’s own self, established by God to sow and water seeds of faith in the Church. In this breaking of bread, we can find reconciliation with God and with each other. As a shared meal, it is a cornerstone of hospitality for the Church and we can use it to both welcome and exclude. For Christians, communion has been a focal point of worship ever since the Church was born in a locked room on Easter morning. It is a witness to the mystery of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And yet we often reduce its frequency to once or twice a month, or even four or two times a year, hardly a testament to its pride of place in our theology.

We would do well to recover this meal as an essential part of our worship, to let it be unrestrained and not overly subdued by our pieties, and to examine the ways in which we implicitly or explicitly “guard the table,” not only for our sake but for the sake of the world into which we are sent.

Sure, we are condemned. Sure, we may drink judgment upon ourselves if we eat and drink unworthily, but we are all always unworthy to receive the sacrament, and it is precisely our unworthiness—our “breaking bad”—that makes us worthy for breaking bread.

Adding Variety to Our Music: Part IV

2012-04-20T21:10:00.001-05:00

This is the fourth in a series of posts on creative use of congregational song in worship.

For this final post, I’m going to focus on three perhaps more advanced methods of adding variety: medleys, mash-ups, and alternate tunes/texts..

This year and last year I used a medley of Easter hymns for a processional. Because the day is one of those when people come out of the woodwork and appear in the pews and because people seem to love singing their favorite Easter hymns, doing a medley is a way of giving the congregation a taste of many hymns that could not be done otherwise for the sake of time.

For example, this year I did the following hymns, strung together as an opening Easter medley:

Jesus Christ is Risen Today, vs. 1-2;
Christ is Alive! Let Christians Sing, vs. 1-2;
I Know that My Redeemer Lives, vs. 1-2;
Christ is Risen! Alleluia, vs. 1
Jesus Christ is Risen Today, vs. 4

These verses were done back to back with a short interlude between hymns to provide the congregation time to flip pages and to modulate to the appropriate key.

Mash-ups are trickier, especially if you define them strictly as superimposing one song over another. For an excellent example of this, check out Paul Halley’s “Freedom Trilogy,” which near the end lays the classic hymn “Amazing Grace” over the African song “Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises.” Another example is Sean Caldwell and Paul Ivory’s “Hope for Resolution” which, also near the end, places the chant “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” with the African song “Thula Sizwe” I’ve not done this sort of thing in practice with congregational singing, but the idea is worth testing out. With a properly rehearsed choir and a capable song leader, the congregation could be led in one hymn or song while the choir sings the other.

Finally, alternate texts and tunes. For our Gospel Acclamation this Easter, I used the tune for “Now All the Vault of Heaven Resounds” but with the text for the doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Add the alleluias from “Now All the Vault” and you create a new hymn that still tastes familiar. Another example of this that’s actually in our hymnal is the hymn text “What Feast of Love” set to the tune for “What Child is This.” As you might imagine, it makes a fantastic communion hymn during the Christmas season. Experiment with recombining texts and tunes. Most hymnals have an index of meters in the back to enable this sort of work. If you’re not familiar with hymns and meters, check out this Wikipedia article to get started.

These are just a handful of techniques to expand the musical possibilities for worship. You may have other ideas and other examples. If so, please share them in the comments or on our Facebook page. We’d love to hear your success (and even un-success) stories too, if you try these or other ideas in your own congregations.

Adding Variety to our Music: Part III

2012-04-18T09:35:00.001-05:00

The third article in a series on creative changes to music in worship.

Yesterday’s post focused on canons (rounds) and using hymns in canon. Other techniques that I’ve used include assigning the choir a verse, or men a verse and women a verse, doing a verse instrumentally, or doing a verse in unison with an alternate harmonization.

Using the choir on a verse can have a few different benefits. First, the choir can sing the opening verse of a new or less familiar hymn, giving the congregation a chance to hear it before it is invited to join in singing the subsequent verses. The choir could also be assigned any of the other verses in various ways: singing the verse in unison; singing the verse with the printed harmonies; singing the verse with an alternate harmonization; singing the verse with an alternate rhythmic structure (some hymns, like “A Mighty Fortress” are printed in both rhythmic and isorhytmic versions). Those church musicians with a knack for composing and arranging might even consider writing their own choral arrangements for a single verse and depart entirely from the rhythmic and harmonic structures of the hymn as printed.

Another option is to give a verse to the women to sing, or a verse to the men to sing, or perhaps the right side of the sanctuary and the left side, or however one may wish to divide the assembly. However, care should be taken in determining which verses to assign, avoiding verses that may connote gender stereotypes when sung by men and/or women.

On top of that, a combination of the above approaches could be used, and might look like this:

All
Women
Choir
Men
All

As an example of doing a verse without vocals, I enjoy doing the “hordes of devils” verse of “A Mighty Fortress” with only instruments, using organ and trumpet to communicate the images in the text. I encourage the congregation to follow along in their hymnals so they get the text painting.

Alternate harmonizations can be found in various hymnals; simply look for a harmonization that differs from the one in your own hymnal. If the hymn is a chorale, you might look for a Bach harmonization and have the choir sing that verse unaccompanied. If you’ll be accompanying a verse with a different accompaniment, and if your congregation or choir is used to singing harmony, you’ll want to let them know that the designated verse should be sung in unison.

All of these options provide a different experience of the song, and can help to break up long hymns by giving the congregation a break in one form or another. It creates interest because the sound isn’t the entire congregation singing for the entire time with the same accompaniment, and it forces the congregation to pay attention to who should be singing which verse. None of these are deep theological reasons, but they’re all musical and pastoral reasons which also need consideration.

Have you experimented with any of these techniques in your congregation? Have you encountered them as a worshipper? What other examples might you suggest?

Adding Variety to Our Music: Part II

2012-04-17T10:19:00.001-05:00

The second in a series about exploring creative ideas for songs in worship.

Yesterday’s post focused on Taize-style music as a way to expand a congregation’s musical repertoire and create unique musical experiences in worship.Today, I’ll look at another way to add variety to our music by thinking differently about the individual songs and hymns themselves.

Luke mentioned singing a hymn in canon, though he was left wondering why one might do it. I think that there's room for doing it just for the sake of doing it--it adds variety, challenges the congregation's musicianship in new ways, and I find it to be just plain fun. It's a great way to break up the monotony that can ensue when singing a multi-verse hymn, and it adds an additional and unique aural component, that of hearing the same part sung a measure or so before or after your own. But I also think it can serve to highlight the text.

Some hymns/songs are written to be sung in canon: Some examples:

The “Tallis Canon,” written by Thomas Tallis and often wedded with the text “All praise to thee, my God, this night.”
The traditional “Dona Nobis Pacem”
Marty Haugen’s “Let my prayer rise up” from Holden Evening Prayer
The classic children’s song, “Rejoice in the Lord Always”

Other hymns have melodies that, while not specifically written to be sung in cannon (round), can be done so, especially in ways that highlight the text. Examples:

“Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service,” especially verse 2 which begins: “Still your children wander homeless…”
“Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” especially a seldom-sung verse which includes the line, “Let their guile-less songs re-echo…” You can see how this might work in this recording of the choral piece, “Hope for Resolution”
“Come Thou Font of Every Blessing” could work in round with entrances every two measures, and would be especially appropriate on the verses about wandering.

More detailed treatment of hymns in canon can be found here in an article by John Witvliet.

Where musically possible, verses about tension, strife, or discord might benefit from a canon treatment. Other possibilities include hymns with verses about the dual nature of Christ (which could be illustrated by two-part round/canon), or discipleship (since one part follows the other).

Have you experienced singing rounds/canons in worship before? If so, what was your reaction?Can you think of other examples of hymns that work in canon?

Adding Variety to Our Music: Part I

2012-04-16T21:23:00.001-05:00

This post actually began as a comment I was going to write for Luke’s post about paperless music, but as I was writing the comment it quickly spawned so many thoughts to write that I chose to make it into a series of posts.

Many of the songs Luke describes in his post are similar to those from the Taize or Iona communities. Both communities use music that can be done paperless, and I've used them in my own congregation, though there's always a push by other leadership to either print something or teach it ahead of time. Both approaches, I think, defeat the purpose of the music and destroy its very organic, "learn-as-you-go" quality. The music is designed to be learned by rote and I would argue that it functions best when led in that manner. These songs are a great way to add variety and freshness to a congregation’s musical repertoire as they contrast with our typical strophic hymnody—we sing verse 1, then verse 2, then verse 3, then maybe verses 4 and 5, and we’re done. Very linear, very defined beginnings and ends. Cyclical songs are intended to bear repetition and serve as a sort of mantra, a tool for contemplation and reflection and tend to be misunderstood by congregations when first experiencing them.

I recently used several Taize songs in an ecumenical Good Friday service that my congregation hosted this year. They helped to give the service a very different feeling and mood, one of very intentional self-reflection on Christ’s passion. One song, “Oh Lord, Hear My Prayer” was sung several times at the beginning of the service, after which the congregation participated in a call and response style dialogue with the leader, using selected verses from the Psalms. Musicians vamped the Taize refrain under the spoken dialogue, and then led the congregation back into singing the refrain several additional times before concluding.

Other songs have similar characteristics and can be taught quickly and easily “on-the-fly,” simply announcing changes in words from one verse to the next. One excellent example of this is the song “Live Christ,” by Celia Whitler, used at the ELCA youth gathering in New Orleans in 2009:

These are just a few examples of the many songs available that can be led in this way. What has been your experience with this style of worship music? Have you used them already in your worship setting? If not, would they be effective and well-received? What other examples of these kinds of songs are you familiar with?

The Side-Effects of Playing Church

2012-04-14T13:49:00.001-05:00

Today, I stumbled across this blog post by Rachel Held Evans. She writes of a time when she and her family felt called to leave their church home and forge a new path. As one example of the various signs that such a move was appropriate, she writes:

The performance-reward system in the children’s program started getting under my skin, and I realized that my struggles accepting God’s love, of believing in my worth despite my failures, might have started there.

I’d always considered the children’s activity bags for the church service a gift to parents, but began hearing their subtle message to children that they are best seen and not heard, when really, God loves them loud and wild, like they really are.

I’m not blaming our church, which was gracious and full of wonderful people. They’re doing good work within the framework of church traditions, like services, fellowship, programs and sermons. I simply began to notice the lifelong damage an evangelical upbringing can do along with the safe, the good.

Intrigued, I began thinking about other side-effects of worship-related endeavors that the Church, at least in my experience, has foisted upon its members. That resurrected for me several questions that I’ve raised here before, but also raised new ones:

Does our constant recruiting for volunteers teach people to be helpless? Why do we feel that we, as leaders, must take responsibility for our members’ participation? What would happen if we simply let programs and ministries decay and die under their own weight if people choose not to volunteer and support them, rather than taking it upon ourselves to be the sole driving force behind them?
What do children’s sermons teach children? Do they teach our children that the rest of the service isn’t really for them? Are they an excuse for us to avoid looking for better ways to include children in the whole of the worship experience? Or do we simply like seeing children answer rhetorical questions with child-like innocence (and the occasional distraction or inappropriate response that makes me squirm and cringe and ask why I’m being forced to suffer through a derailed children’s sermon).
What about Youth Sunday? Is that a sort of liturgical affirmative action, excusing our failure to involve youth more comprehensively in worship throughout the year?
Do nurseries provide parents with an excuse to avoid worshiping with their sometimes rowdy children? Do they communicate the same message that Rachel picks up on above, that children are to be seen and not heard?
How much time do we spend focusing on making our worship spaces “welcoming” with signage and bright colors and fail to recognize that our hospitality has more to do with how we act than how our building looks? Is the physical space an easy technical change, a quick fix that enables us to ignore looking at our own hearts and souls?
How do our communion practices parallel our preached values about inclusivity and hospitality? Is guarding the table more important than making room for the stranger at our Lord’s Supper? How is such a limit on hospitality a detriment to the gospel we say we preach?
What does our traditional-contemporary-blended worship model say about how inclusive we are? Don’t those services, by their very nature, communicate to visitors and members alike that any one service isn’t meant for anyone and everyone, but only a select demographic? Does that not put pressure on the visitor to find their own place in our midst rather than pressure on us to make room for them, walk alongside them, and incorporate them into our community?
Does confirmation turn out to be one more set of requirements that we impose upon our youth, that parents feel shamed or obligated to enforce, ultimately teaching youth that the Church is not a place to feel welcome and safe but a place to feel burdened, restricted, marginalized, and/or tormented by adults? We all talk about the old cliché of how many youth disappear after being confirmed, but have we learned anything from the cliché, do we challenge our long-held and potentially false assumptions, are we willing to let go of our nostalgia and traditionalism, or do we simply cling tighter to what we think we know and try to solve the problem with a bigger hammer?

Rachel concludes:

Away from the safety of The Church and her built-in programs and values, we’re parenting and defining faith with more purpose.

And because we left, because we now have to give our kids their faith foundation instead of relying on The Church to provide it, we are finding our faith again, too.

Not blind faith. Not immature; but open. Accepting. Creative and free and listening and ready.

Like a child.

Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree. Maybe our focus should be less on connecting people with the Church and more on connecting people with people, especially parents and children. Martin Luther wrote his small and large catechisms so that parents would be empowered to teach their children the fundamentals of Lutheran theology. Where are we today? We let parents off the hook and do their job for them. What might happen if we designed the structure of our churches in such a way that they created cultures where parents were challenged to “give [their] kids their faith foundation instead of relying on The Church to provide it”? Perhaps more of them—more of US—would “find our faith again, too.”

Links for 2010-06-08 [del.icio.us]

2010-06-09T00:00:00-07:00

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Awesome blog about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.