Dear Pastor: Sing with understanding? Do people really want to?

So a few weeks ago now, before a variety of vacations and professional development things and whatnot, this blog put forth an entry that was both tribute to a long-ago professor and a challenge to you, dear pastor, to put forth the effort to give serious theological consideration to the hymns your congregation sings - at least as serious, say, as you give to your sermon or the service prayers or other parts of the service you choose.

Here is where I admit that all of this thought and advising I am presuming myself qualified to give isn't necessarily a slam dunk. What are the chances that, if you go through this effort and invest the time and energy into some basic grasp of hymns for use in worship, choosing with care and seeking to have those hymns working in concert (ha) with prayers and scripture and such, ... what are the chances that anybody will care, or even notice?

Let's be honest, friend pastor: there are going to be people in your congregation whose sole interest in the music in a service - not just the hymns, but anything the choir or soloist does or organist or pianist or band plays - is whether or not it is "pretty." Now I'm not using that word for its literal meaning, although in many cases that will apply - "that was so pretty (or beautiful)..." becomes the end-all and be-all of that member's reaction to or reflection of the music. The choir's anthem might be "beautiful" or "inspiring" or (depending on the style) "fun" or "catchy" or whatever; the soloist's effort becomes "inspiring" or "thrilling" or "powerful"; the organ prelude is "majestic" or "awe-inspiring" or what have you; the band "totally rocked, dude" - you get the idea. Whatever medium or style is being used, there is some aesthetic pinnacle that might be acknowledged for the musical effort that ends up blotting out any kind of more theologically informed reflection or result of that musical contribution.

Blame it on music, or more precisely blame it on the way humans are taught to respond to music. Note I'm not making a distinction between musician and non-musician here. Popular music fans are encouraged to respond emotionally to the music they hear, for sure; classical music patrons are fed all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about The Great Masters and the Power of Music; jazz followers have their heroes and titans. Those who are trained in performance or theory or education add their professional expertise to the mix - technical proficiency or harmonic complexity or what have you - but whatever the case may be, deliberate theological consideration can't be assumed, and the professionals may in fact be more difficult to encourage than the untrained folks in the pews. If you're hiring a band, they may have decided the songs to play Sunday and, well, it's your job to work around them; the hired choir soloists from the local university are likely trying to slip their lesson repertoire in without actually having to think about whether it "fits." (I may be exaggerating a little, but I have seen - from a distance, thankfully - examples of both.)

I cannot offer you a "magic bullet" to make your congregation or choir or singers or band care about the songs they sing in more than aesthetic way. It is admittedly not a concern everybody shares. Writing from the Presbyterian Church (USA) perspective in which I am situated, having embraced the challenge of trying to develop a distinctly "mainline" approach to the question that takes the mind and its engagement in worship seriously, I have to acknowledge that not everybody will care. And some will never care.

But some will.

Someone will notice. It might take a while, but somebody will express surprise at the realization that "everything really went together this morning," or maybe something like "I don't think I ever really got what that hymn was saying, but hearing it after that sermon/prayer/communion it suddenly made sense," or some other reaction.

You've probably seen the meme below, about how we don't really know which sermons are going to "work" and which ones are not; the same really does apply to pretty much everything we put into the service, including the hymns we choose to support the sermon and scripture. We don't know, but we do it anyway, and sometimes it lands with one person, or maybe two or four or ten, and once they've had that experience once maybe (just maybe) they become more open or sensitive to the other things going on in the service in the future.

You teach people how to sing with understanding by presenting the service in such a way that understanding happens. You sweat it out and pray over it and listen for that ever-elusive guidance of the Spirit and, when Sunday comes, you put it out there and it's in the Spirit's hands, so to speak. But it does matter, and it does change how people experience worship. It helps the congregation and it helps you. And maybe you both grow a little.

Sing with understanding, and give your people the chance to do so. If nothing else, it's basic good stewardship of the hour of worship.

Credit as noted. It applies to choosing hymns too.