As a pastoral musician who has served the church for nearly 20 years, I was a little nervous when I saw the cover of the February Record, with its caption, Why the Music in Church No Longer Inspires. Was this going to be an attack on church musicians, who have never known the concept of job security at the best of times? Was this going to be a manifesto for doing away with organs and choirs in favour of praise bands and screens, i.e. another salvo in the “worship wars”?
What a blessing Gordon McCrostie’s article turned out to be! My ordained colleague here at Knox, Guelph, has been preaching for several months that our worship ought to allow our people to “experience something of heaven:” in other words, to be the very “transforming experience” that McCrostie describes. His emphasis on the enhanced use of music and the other creative arts in worship — and on moving from the old emphasis on lyric content toward a new ideal of communication beyond words — is very much our own emphasis, where we are working to develop the same “culture of tolerance” for musical expression, and to encourage participation as a doorway to God. McCrostie’s words on this subject are a great comfort to me in these times of dizzying change!
But we in music ministry need access to training to be effective animators of this transforming experience; our congregations, on average, are quite small, and most rely on volunteer music leadership. How do we equip these leaders for the future without driving them away in the present? And, should we need to engage more musical and other artistic professionals in the ministry of worship, are we prepared to honour their expertise with appropriate compensation and recognition of their skills?
I hope that we, as the Presbyterian Church in Canada, can make this kind of enhancement of our worship and music ministry a genuine priority, and that in so doing we get out of the way of the Holy Spirit in leading this new Reformation of the worship of God.
