Of course, there are other ways to think about worship and help it make sense to all who participate, some of which are better than others. Perhaps the key might be to understand the particular ideas about worship being communicated.
When it comes to the music of worship, it can be a little tricky. The musical life of a congregation may operate on many different levels even in the course of one worship period. The congregation may sing (good Lord, one hopes the congregation sings!), there may be a choir or other leading vocal body that sings separately at times, and one or more instrumentalists are likely involved as well, possibly together (if more than one) or maybe each separately.
But it's more complicated than that, even. The congregation is likely to be accompanied by one or more of those instrumentalists, as is the choir. One instrumentalist, depending on the instrument, may even be accompanied by another. So there are a lot of different possible levels going on in what is meant to be a unified whole of worship.
And all of this is made a little trickier by the theological hope that, no matter what variety of musicians may be involved in a given service, the most fundamental musical act of worship is that of the singing congregation. This is not to say that there is never a service in which a choir or other ensemble takes the lead (church choirs gonna cantata, apparently, even in the mainline), but it is to say that such services are exceptions and not the rule.
And of course, there is more than music going on in any given service. A pastor or layperson may lead in prayers or spoken responses, and (surprise!) there's usually a sermon as well. Looking at a service in which musical acts are blended in with spoken (and maybe other?) acts, the texture gets fairly complicated to capture.
As a metaphor for all this, drama certainly has some positive attributes, but it has a few weaknesses as well. The cast of your average drama may be quite large, and yet the action might well be confined to a few characters. We could reach back to good ol' Greek drama and bring up the idea of the chorus that comments on the action, but that doesn't quite work; we want the congregation to be doing the work of worship, not merely observing or commenting upon it.
I wonder if the historical world of music (my world, in many ways 😎) might offer a closer, if not so well-known metaphor or two.
Perhaps the most obvious model that might come up is the symphony. It involves a large body of musicians playing together, obviously, and that makes a fairly decent comparison to a congregation (leaving aside the issue of how large or small your congregation is). At one point I thought that would be the metaphor, but now I'm not as convinced. As noted above, worship frequently includes what might be thought of as "solo" parts, to a degree that most symphonies do not. (For the musically learned and persnickety: yes, I do know that symphonies can in fact have solo parts, and very important ones at that, like this. Chill.) Symphonies can have solo parts, but those solo parts are not characteristic of the symphony, as a rule.
Also, there's the troublesome question of who exactly is the conductor in this scenario. The quick and easy answer might seem to be "God," but if God is the audience for this music, that doesn't work. I don't think the pastor works well as conductor either; one of the soloists, to be sure, and maybe even the orchestrator depending on how services get planned in your church, but I don't think that "conductor" really works as well as it might seem to describe the pastor's role. If nothing else, the pastor seems (not literally of course) to be one of the musicians, if one who has a particularly tricky and fairly long (but not too long!) solo to play.
In fact, I'm not entirely sure there's an equivalent to the conductor. The choir director may literally conduct the choir, but is unlikely to lead any other part of the service. A lay liturgist may seem to lead much of the service, but is also likely to fade from prominence at some point; that, too, seems more of a soloist role.
At this time my best-suggestion metaphor for the church at worship is the concerto.
The concerto is also an orchestral or larger-ensemble work, but one that specifically includes a soloist or soloists. What the soloist or soloists do can be pretty elaborate (although they aren't required to be), as can be the case in certain parts of worship (and no, I'm not going to accept any claim that just anybody can get up and preach, or at least can't get up and preach well). Not everyone is particularly well-suited to read scripture aloud or lead in liturgical responses, and while everybody can sing (no matter what some jerk told them when they were younger), not everybody should sing in the choir. This holds true in much the same way that not everybody should be involved in cooking when it's time for the congregational dinner, or not everybody is well-suited to tend to the nursery. Different gifts are expressed in different roles, and all are needed.
In fact, I'll go even more specific (if perhaps a bit more obscure) and suggest that worship can be decently compared to a specific type of concerto, one known as a concerto grosso. This particular genre is found mostly in the so-called Baroque Era of the western classical music tradition, and specifically makes space for two or more soloists. Furthermore, it doesn't necessarily require a conductor, as seen in this video; a soloist or keyboardist (if there is one) might give occasional cues for the ensemble, or the ensemble may simply be so much attuned to one another and to the musical score that a conductor is not necessary (really, when thinking about a congregation, that'll preach!). And while the soloists certainly play important roles, the concerto grosso doesn't work at all without all of the members of the orchestra executing their parts.
(An aside: you'll notice that the ensemble in that second video is not very large. Just making an observation...go ahead and draw a conclusion from that...)
No analogy is ever going to be perfect, and there are certainly flaws with this one. For one thing, lots of people have no idea what a concerto grosso is. (If you mention Bach's Brandenburg Concertos to them, that might help for some.) But there's something to it. There are many voices, many parts that are necessary for worship to be carried out with both theological integrity (no accidental heresy, please) and a certain level of performative skill (dirty word, "performative," I know, but still needed). Whatever individual or "solo" moments may take place, worship doesn't work unless every member of the congregation plays her or his part.
Let the concerto be played.
No comments:
Post a Comment