In the previous post we left off with a question about how much it matters if one sings Advent hymns all the way through Advent when your sanctuary starts looking like Christmas at the mall the day after Thanksgiving. This prompts some thoughts that may well open up questions that apply to the song of the church more broadly, not just during this particular time of year.
There is a tendency, all the more powerful for being unspoken, to act in a practical way as if the musical life of the church is somehow a separate and independent thing from the church itself, somehow. (To be clear: music is hardly the only part of the church’s life that can be treated this way – a church’s youth program might never have real interaction with the larger body, to name just one aspect.) This is a more prominent tendency if some part of the church music life “stands out” in some way – a historic or powerful organ, for example, or a choir capable of an active concert life outside of the church’s worship. Note that none of these things are inherently bad. There are few things in the world like a musically prolific and varied organ (which has prompted me to give much larger sums of money to my seminary for the installation of a real live organ than I normally give in one chunk), and a musically talented choir can still be a powerful leader in worship, if the focus on leading in worship is maintained.
Here two past experiences leap to mind, both of which come from my time in South Florida. One was a brief experience of observation, needed as I was teaching at a university where the students were highly familiar with the latest in contemporary worship music (or “praise and worship,” that weird separation of two very integral things) but had never heard “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” This required fieldwork of a sort at a local megachurch, even though I was trained as a historical musicologist and not an ethnomusicologist.
The musical outfit at this megachurch was not strictly a typical praise and worship band. It was a much larger ensemble, even including a brass section, but with the guitars and drums at its core. It also featured not a lead singer or two, but a small ensemble of singers (one might even have called it a “choir”!), again, with a clear “featured singer” as its lead. Stylistically and functionally, though, it was a praise band, and its role was to give in effect a small concert before the preacher took over. (This of course was what was supposed to fill the role of “congregational” singing in this church.)
At that point an amazing thing happened in at least a couple of my observations. After the band finished and the preacher commenced to preaching, some of the “worshipers” left. They actually got up and left the sanctuary, never to return. I couldn’t pursue them to find out why they were leaving and still observe the rest of the service, to my great regret. But one can only guess that they had come for the concert, so to speak, and having gotten what they came for, they were quite content to move on to lunch or whatever came next. This was not widespread by any means, but it was rather jarring nonetheless. Mind you, also, the preaching turned out to have at least as many qualities of a “show” as the music did, and plenty of folks presumably got what they came for in staying for the sermon.
Still, even on that small scale, it does point to an example of how musical life can be its own thing, separate even from the worship service going on around it.
The other South Florida experience, at a church my wife and I attended long-term, was in a very different setting but had a startlingly similar result. Choir and organ ruled in this church, and the choir in particular was the church’s pride and joy. Many of its more prominent singers were in fact recruited from a professional opera company in Miami, whose rehearsal accompanist was one of the church’s organist/choirmasters. Here the “show” was clearly all about the choir, for which Mozart and Brahms and other classical masters were standard repertory, arias and solos from their works were featured with those professional opera singers, and the pastor in this case had no illusions that his preaching was anywhere near as favored (or at least the congregation didn’t). Here the shock value, which took much longer to observe and to sink in, came in the degree to which the singing of the congregation was clearly second-tier. If one of their large choral numbers was coming up after a hymn, a large proportion of the choir would not be singing the hymn. Gotta save that voice, after all. (You’d think it might be useful as a light warm-up to sing along on the hymn, at least?) Correspondingly, even with such a proficient choir, the congregational singing at this church was minimal at best. It was valued by neither choir nor musical leaders nor congregation, and it showed. It got to be embarrassing singing in the congregation. People kept looking at me (and my wife).
(Note: I do not in fact attribute this to the attitudes of the “hired gun” singers, some of the veterans in particular, who frankly seemed as far as I could tell to want to be supportive of all the stuff in worship. Their interest was not particularly encouraged.)
Both of these examples speak to lack of integration in a church’s worship life. And this brings us back to the question of how useful it is to stick to your guns about singing Advent hymns throughout Advent when the church looks like the Christmas tree lot in A Charlie Brown Christmas. (That’s an exaggeration. I hope.) If the choir is already singing Christmas anthems, if the tree is already up and blinking, if the Nativity scene is fully loaded, then your Advent hymns might not be having the effect you’d hope. (A “progressive” Nativity scene, which only fills up over the course of Advent, can actually be an effective means of emphasizing the season, which would in turn work in harmony with your musical and presumably preaching efforts.)
But elements of worship working at cross-purposes with one another are not particularly helpful in proclamation. The inconsistent and maybe even contradictory message is not usually an effective message. And this truth holds no matter what liturgical season is at hand, not just in Advent.
It’s a lesson to learn and apply at all times and in all seasons.
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