My worship. MINE.

As has been mentioned on occasion here on this blog, I really try to stay in my mainline lane. This is in part because the mainline, as more or less always, needs to get its act together; in part because I'm not an evangelical, and my memories of when I was one aren't pleasant; and in part because as the two branches of the church currently stand I have a tough time even finding any kind of basis for even a starter conversation, particularly on the subject of music and worship where I have chosen to place myself.

(I also tend to avoid Patheos, most of the time, since they somehow decided an unrepentant Mark Driscoll was a good person to add to their roll of bloggers. Oh well.)

This particular post, however, somehow got brought to my attention (I blame Facebook). And while there are points here or there with which I can find some sympathy, and I'm an acknowledged non-fan of the so-called "contemporary" worship business, I'm a little bit uncerain whether the author here is overlooking something pretty basic about how large numbers of Christians of whatever make or model tend to approach worship.

As you can see, the author finds problematic the somewhat common practice of offering multiple worship services in varying "worship styles" (which he calls "cafeteria worship"; more on that later). To be precise, he contends that it is killing the church (which he almost immediately calls an oversimplification, to his credit).

I think on some level, while I can understand such frustration, the contention ignores something pretty basic. I don't know if it's "killing" the church to do multiple services in multiple styles, I am also dubious that it is particularly growing the church either, on the macro or micro level. For one thing, on the local level, it's pretty hard for any one church to actually be good at multiple styles of worship. The skill sets are not necessarily the same across the three. In such experience as I have, one of the worship services feels "native," for lack of a better word, while the other(s) feels like it's being done by people who don't really know how.

So, to address this, new folks are brought in. In this case, let's say it's an experienced "worship team" brought in to lead the contemporary service. Presumably under this leadership, it gets better. The pastor may still be involved, but it's pretty unlikely that she or he is actually overseeing this service, as that's not to be how it works when you've brought in a worship team. In a larger church, maybe one of the associate pastors ends up with primary responsibility for that service. Good for him/her, perhaps, a chance to lead more often. But as the two (or more) services grow more distinct in leadership and direction, guess what? For all practical purposes, you've got two (or more) churches. Give it enough time and the folks in one service don't even know the folks in the other.

And more, it isn't merely about worship being reduced to "my story," as the author puts it. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the claim so much as I think it doesn't go far enough. Worship isn't merely reduced to "my story": worship is reduced to "mine."

A little experience here: a church in my past got into a heated disagreement over proposed changes to the two worship services needed due to personnel changes and slight decline in attendance. Make the changes to the other service. Don't change MY service. This was a very frequently repeated defense as the disagreement grew. MY service. MINE. All I can hear in my head is those birds from Finding Nemo. MINE. MINE. MINE. MINE MINE...

Here's the kicker: the two worship services were exactly the same. All the way through. Even the poor choir sang both services, although the membership represented in each was different (and this was apparently part of the problem, one "branch" of the choir was losing too many members to keep up the pace). But no one could countenance a change to MY worship.

As you might guess, MY worship isn't really worship, or virtually cannot be. It doesn't go outward at all. It is constrictive to the soul, but then there's a pretty good chance that the effect works in the opposite direction; constriction of soul rigidifies worship, or capacity to respond in worship, until the only worship acceptable is MY worship.

(Oh, and attempts to blame such rigidity on, say, reliance upon liturgy as a structure for worship - which I have heard lobbed around - make about as much sense as insisting that all humans must alike because we all have skeletons. Don't be fatuous. "Free" worship can get just as samey as anything liturgy-based.)

In short, while disuptes over musical styles often take the blame for disputes over worship, the root is much deeper in most cases. At that root, we will find that, no matter our tradition, we are at odds with one another over the very question of what worship is and what it is for. Until we are coming together on why we are even there on Sunday morning or whatever time we gather, all the musical questions in the world won't get us anywhere.

Don't blame the music, whatever style it may be. We're going to have to look deeper and ask more challenging questions. And there's no guarantee, even if we do find a way forward, that such understanding will stop a church's or the church's "decline" however one is defining that.

Ultimately, we might as well put our energy and passion into, oh, I don't know...worshiping God.

An excellent new/old hymn

While I'm still in the grip of some obnoxiously persistent bug or crud or whatever this is, today had one particularly fine hymnic pleasure. I had forgotten that for today's service, I chose the penultimate hymn in PC(USA)'s Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal. It is quite possibly my favorite hymnic thing to have happened in my lifetime, definitely one of my favorites if not.

Hymn #852 (yes, there are 853 hymns in the collection) is a text from 1991 by the Canadian hymn writer Sylvia Dunstan (1955-1993). "When the Lord redeems the very least" takes much of its substance from Psalm 126, while also alluding to a substantial number of other scripture texts as well, sometimes almost by accident simply because it touches on themes that come up an awful lot in scripture. That first phrase gives you a clue about its theological intent, and some selected other bits of the text will give you a clue as well: "when the hungry gather for the feast..." or "when the earth is given to the meek..." gives another peek. Tying such phrases together as well as leading the refrain is an equally key phrase: "we will rejoice." Notice the plural pronoun. It is conspicuous enough, and markedly more so when one is experiencing the hymn in its chosen musical context.

You see, Sylvia Dunstan composed this particular hymn to be paired with the tune of the old gospel song chestnut "I'll fly away." And the verse is just so, that the word "we" in the hymn falls exactly where the old gospel song would have you singing "I'll." That's one slick bit of theological commentary.

The inward, individualized, escapist longing of the original gives way to the corporate, immediate, rooted longing for God's kingdom now. All of those now-and-not-yet bits of the gospels find a home here, really.

And for those wondering, all of the nifty harmony bits are carried over in full.

The pairing was apparently deliberate. According to Carl Daw's Glory to God: A Companion, Dunstan deliberately set out to create theologically substantial and sound texts to go with favorite gospel song tunes (this is the only one I've come across so far). It's almost like a dare. You say it's the music you like? Fine. Here's the music. Even the harmonies. And I'll absolutely stand behind this text theologically. Go on. I dare you.

If the mainline is ever going to find its voice in worship and song, it's going to have to be a corporate voice, worshiping together. The occasional more individual text can work, but a steady diet of I/me/my hymns kills the corporateness of worship in song. Anything that pulls us together and pulls us towards those to whom Jesus keeps expressing favor is a good thing. If it sends the congregation out on a rollicking high note, that's fine too.

So there was my hymnic high point for the day. Try it sometime. I dare you.

The text is copyright, so any more and I'd be in trouble. I might be anyway.

Say what?

Note: blog entries will be more sporadic for the time being as I'm at a state of consolidating and editing before worrying about new content. In the meantime, posts will typically appear when something provokes a strong response, like below...


So despite feeling basically sick and gross since a colonoscopy Thursday (those of you under fifty, your time's a-comin'...), my wife talked me into going to a concert this afternoon at the local downtown Episcopal church, one that puts on concert events every month-plus or so. The particular event this afternoon, apparently an annual affair, was a Three-Organ Spectacular! Indeed, two extra organs were brought into the church and installed for the event to go along with that church's own very fine organ. My wife wanted to go in order to hear the main choral work on the program, a Mass for choir and two organs by Louis Vierne. (She sings in the local community chorus and one of her chorus friends also sings in this choir.)

The Vierne, which I didn't know, was good, and reminded me I should seek out more Vierne. That was in fact the only choral work on the program, which was otherwise studded with a variety of original pieces and arrangements mostly making use of multiple organs, naturally.

The final of two deliberate crowd-pleasers at the end of the concert was an arrangement of an arrangement. Choral singers are probably familiar with Peter Wilhousky's blowout arrangement of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," here rendered for those three organs plus a few pieces of percussion.

Oh, and a male quartet. Those four singers rendered the final stanza of the hymn, which (you might remember) is thus:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,
While God is marching on.

In this case I'm not going to pick on the notion that women, apparently, are meant to be left in bondage (though that's very pick-on-able). Nor am I going to go on about the weird fetish over the word "bosom." (I mean, ... huh?) Others can whale away on the whole militaristic image of God, even acknowledging that the hymn itself dates from the year of the beginning of the American Civil War.

No, I want to pick on that first line.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea

Read it again.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea

The thing is, that line kind of slips by when one is singing the whole hymn. By that time you've already been confronted with so much ... for now, we'll go with dated language and imagery that you have either (a) swallowed it all, (b) just resigned yourself to getting through it for now, or (c) checked out completely. As a result, the utter weirdness of this line might not jump out at you.

I have no idea what Julia Ward Howe was thinking. I don't know if this was what just jumped into her head and it fit the poetic meter she was working and, hey, why not? I truly have no idea.

Was there some little-known tradition about Jesus being born in a lily patch? Is this something like the holly and the ivy that somehow becomes a British Christmas carol?

The "Christ was born across the sea" part is correct enough. One can argue about how these pretty poetic lines of odd religiosity actually connect to the militarized final lines. But this ... this is just a strange image with no apparent connection to reality. I truly have no recollection of either Luke's or Matthew's nativity narratives mentioning lilies. Even if one wants to rationalize lilies for whatever, don't those normally connect to Easter instead of the Nativity? Where do these lilies come from???

My point (and I do have one) is this: we swallow all sorts of strange stuff when it comes to "favorite" hymns. Christmas carols (such as the aforementioned holly and ivy business) are full of it, but Easter hymns can go there too (although at least some metaphorical connection can usually be made). "But it's harmless," you might say, and maybe you're right, but are you sure? How often does our brain come up against such a thing and try to lodge a protest only to be shut down because that's my favorite hymn, dammit and it happens enough times that we eventually start to lose any critical faculties about hymns at all?

As you might guess if you read this blog, that's not something I'm in favor of. When something sounds strange or off, don't dismiss it. Go back over it again. Think about it. Interrogate it with scripture. To borrow from the modern vernacular, if you see something, say something.

Our congregational song gets soft and mushy if we can't manage to listen to it with a sound mind.

N.B. For the record I did do a Google Image search for that line. Plenty of Civil War imagery, plenty of pictures of Julia Ward Howe, and plenty of lilies, but none with Christ being born in the beauty of them.

Now imagine Christ being born in the midst of this...