Four locations, four occasions, four different denominations, one question.
One occasion was a Hymn Society panel discussion; another was an Anglican church looking for a new music director; still another was the annual dinner of the Royal Canadian College of Organists and another was a radio interview for the CBC.
The question: where is church music heading?
Part of me (the puckish part) wanted to enjoy the irony that, in all of these occasions, a guitar-plucking, lute-playing, nine-fingered, lapsed drummer from South Porcupine, Ontario was getting to pontificate on The Future of Church Music. The other part (the more reflective and responsible part, I hope) realized that we are all in ministry together, whatever our background; and wherever we may stand, or think we stand, in the geography of church music, we are here to help one another find firm footing even as the ground shifts constantly under our feet.
Looking back, I’m not sure how prophetically I spoke in these conversations. But here, with the benefit of hindsight and further reflection, I offer some musical plants whose future growth I cannot prophesy, but only hope will take root and spread.
Trumpets v. Jericho
I have heard wide-ranging judgments on the music from the Wild Goose Worship Resource Group (WGWRG); but they have reminded the Christian church, across all denominational boundaries that we cannot divorce our faith, our spirituality, from our public and political life. They have not let us forget the fact that Jesus talked as much about social and economic issues – in the context of God’s Realm – as he did about “religious” issues. They have built their work, and their music, on the conviction that this fact must be reflected in our hymns and songs. They have worked to expand what’s possible to say in a hymn, to move hymnic vocabulary beyond the decorousness and preciousness of our Victorian hymn heritage.
They have also gone further and held regular events which they call “Holy City” events which combine music, theatre, discussion and many other elements to address vital issues, to address the question, “Has faith lost a leading, dynamic role on the real world’s stage?” They point out that the early church’s vitality, its worship and its work was alarming to the mighty Roman Empire. Would our singing – in either what we sing or how we sing it – cause anything more than a polite ripple?
The Iona members have worked globally and locally since the mid-eighties to teach people how to sing together with passion and skill, singing that you can believe might help bring down the contemporary Jericho of the Berlin Wall or South African apartheid.
This model is spreading. Such events – particularly the Big Sings – are taking place throughout the U,K., and in the U.S., hymnwriter John Thornburg has started Holy City events in Dallas.
Get Off That Bench
I write about this trend with diffidence. I am the child (one of seven, actually) of a very accomplished pianist and organist, and deeply respect the congregational song leading that is part of the work of the church organist and pianist. In addition, when I lead songs with solo guitar, the accompaniment techniques I use come directly from the keyboard. But many of my organist friends and colleagues, with years of commitment and experience behind them, are learning to get off the bench, realizing that we can no longer take for granted that people are able to sing. And so they are learning to teach songs by rote, using their voices and their bodies to communicate in ways at once new and old the almost-forgotten techniques – and the joys – of singing together.
Part of this current pattern in congregational singing is represented by such books as Music by Heart: Paperless Songs for Evening Worship, edited by Marilyn Haskel.
Ancient song forms – call and response, refrains, oral/aural word patterns, rhyming, lyric redundancy – are all forms that tend to be avoided by hymn- (as opposed to song-) writers; but these are forms which encourage singing without books or papers. Since we learn these songs by heart, they become songs that we take with us much more easily than the more elaborate and considered structures of classic hymnody.
The Gifts are Many, the Body One
For a long time, public worship was the church’s front door. People entered a church, literally and metaphorically through that door. It was ceremonial, stately, public, dignified.
Now churches are discovering that “front door” worship, where one size and one form fits all, is no longer serving us. We need “side-door worship.” And so churches are offering prayer services, Taizé services, Big Sings, Wee Sings in the manner of the Iona community, alternative rock communion services, healing services, labyrinths – an enormous and (to some) bewildering variety of services reflecting people’s widely differing schedules, life situations and expectations.
In a real sense, this variety is nothing new: it is what has always been required, and always will be. That is why Paul the Apostle writes that there are many gifts: apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, interpreters and the rest. This variety will mean (and I guess I’m attempting prophecy here) that more, not less, variety and more, not fewer, skills will be demanded of worship musicians. This means that more, not less, support will be required from the local congregation and its leadership: more faith, livelier imagination, deeper theology to keep a congregation’s music ministry working as a ministry.
