Song Review: How Great is Our God

The splendor of a King,

Clothed in majesty

Let all the earth rejoice,

All the earth rejoice

He wraps himself in light,

And darkness tries to hide

And trembles at his voice,

And trembles at his voice

How great is our God,

sing with me

How great is our God,

and all will see

How great, How great

Is our God

Age to age he stands

And time is in His Hands

Beginning and the End,

Beginning and the End

The Godhead, Three in one

Father, Spirit, Son

The Lion and the Lamb,

The Lion and the Lamb

How great is our God,

sing with me

How great is our God,

and all will see

How great, How great

Is our God

Name above all names

You are Worthy of all praise

and My heart will sing how great

Is our God

How great is our God,

Sing with me

How great is our God,

and all will see

How great, How great

Is our God

Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Ed Cash. 2004.

I'm going to say right up front that I don't love it.

It ticks a few boxes musically - it has that anthemic feel in the chorus that makes you really want to belt it out. The verse chords sound quite nice if you play it slow enough, and you can really hammer it in the bridge. It's not that interesting musically, but it's solid and doesn't make me physically cringe, which I suspect is the most you can hope for from a congregational song.

So what's the problem? I think that the song has theological issues. This might not be readily apparent - most of the song seems lifted straight from the Bible. And after all, it doesn't 'say anything wrong'. But this is where I think we run into issues. When we use material generated by ministries with a different style and a different theological approach, we often want to check over songs to see if they are dodgy. And this one seems to check out - no 'Jesus is a bit like Buddha but slightly less cool', no 'Jesus wants to hook me up with a Hummer and some grillz', no 'Jesus, I bet you feel pretty lucky to have a follower like me'. But questionable theology can lie behind seemingly innocuous phrases too.

Take 'sing with me'. (Now perhaps you're already thinking, 'here we go for a churlish evangelical quibbling over a reference to singing - wouldn't that be appropriate when singing is what we are actually doing?' I'm kind of thinking that too, but I think this holds up anyway). Singing to God is a perfectly appropriate response to his greatness - I take it that's why all those guys in the Bible sing and why we ought to sing too. But take another quick scan over the song - what are Christians encouraged to do other than singing? Nothing.

I think that 'How great is our God', therefore 'sing with me', is symptomatic of a theology that subsumes virtually all of our response to God (our 'worship') under the activity of singing (i.e. 'worship music'). That is, it teaches that worship is primarily an experience of God in singing (that's why church music gets called 'worship'). Now singing is worship. But worship isn't just singing.

Interestingly the singing activity does seem to have something of an evangelistic bent - when we sing then 'all will see/How great is our God'. Again, we should hope that our singing leads those around us to glorify God, but I wonder if our godly lives and verbal proclamation of the gospel might be more essential to mission than just having pagans witness us sing (especially if this leads us to working hard to push our 'worship' albums up the secular charts - it seems to me that this could potentially lead to the impulse to make a buck overpowering the impulse to make Christ known).

So to conclude an overly lengthy review, this song doesn't contain explicit error, but I think it has implicit theological emphases that are less than helpful - in its restriction of the activity of worship (and perhaps mission). So sing it at your church. But be aware that each time you do, it will slightly strengthen the message that our worship of God is singing to him (rather than every facet of our lives, of which singing is one). So don't put it on high rotation. And make sure that your song list also contains songs which counter the influence of this one by giving a more helpful and well-rounded picture of worship.

And when something better comes along, ditch it.

Rule #5: Encourage your band, even if they suck.

Perhaps especially if they suck.

Playing in the band can be one of the more visible ministries involved in a Christian meeting. For many people it involves dealing with the nervousness of standing up in front of everyone, playing music that they may or may not feel comfortable playing (perhaps because they are highly classically trained but are now a bit flummoxed by just being told 'here are the chords, you'll figure it out'), having nowhere to hide if you hit a wrong note (or the ultimate nightmare - a complete trainwreck - which often has more to do with limited practise time, last-minute changes in song list or band-line up than with error on the part of the musos).

And chances are, especially if they suck, some 'helpful' individual has already let them know how lousy the music was.

Everyone has an opinion on music in church. Sometimes these opinions are expressed less than helpfully. The band members are Christian brothers and sisters, trying to serve the assembly of Christ's people by using whatever gifts and abilities that God has given them in the place he has put them in. This often involves turning up 1 1/2 hours before everyone else, lugging heavy gear to and from cars, stress in practising, 'performance' anxiety, then rolling cables afterwards while everyone else has a chat and a cuppa.

So maybe just let your brothers and sisters in the band know you appreciate their service.

Even if they suck.

Cheap Guitar Trick #1: Capo (pt 2)

Not to mention that once you have capo'd up, you can shift it back down a couple of frets just in case you aren't like every single 'worship artist' out there with a high girlyboy voice that's happy cruising around above middle C for bars at a time.

By the way, someone once told me that when it comes to congregational music, 'D' is for 'danger'. That is, once you hit 'D' one and a bit octaves above middle C, most of your congregation are going to have issues with that note (think 'on Christ the solid rock I stand'). Let's keep it where we can all sing it, people.

Capo up to put it in a guitar-friendly key, then shift the capo back down to shift the key a tone or so lower. Your blokes will thank you.

Cheap Guitar Trick #1: Capo.

(Image from www.musiciansfriend.com)

Git'choself wunna these. The capo is the hack guitarist's best friend. It effectively shortens the guitar's neck - it means that when you play a chord it will sound higher. So what's it good for?

If you're like me, you'll love the cheap tricks on guitar - hammer on or pull off to add a 2 or a 'sus', and people think you're a whole lot more skilled than you really are.

But for hacks like you and me, we have a problem when it comes to playing in the church band. All old hymns and many contemporary-ish congregational songs (e.g. many Emu Music songs) are written by pianists. This means that when you look at the chart, you're seeing a whole lot of B-flat and E-flat: not the hack guitarist's best friend. Definitely not the acoustic guitarist's best friend.

This means the songs are harder to play, and generally sound rubbish because you are using a lot of barre chords rather than open chords. You won't be able to really let chords ring or to use many of your hard-earned tricky hammering skills you earned playing all that Ben Harper.

But do not fear! My very rudimentary knowledge of musicology is here! Most pop music uses a very limited range of chords. For example, if a song is in the key of C, the melody of that song will be based on the notes in the key of C (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C). Most music which isn't jazz or classical will mostly use chords built on the 1st, 4th and 5th notes of that scale (i.e. C major, F major and G major). You're also likely to see what's called the relative minor - a minor chord built on the note which is 3 semitones (i.e. 3 guitar frets) below the root note of the scale (the note which the scale is named after - in this case C). So the relative minor chord in the key of C is the A-minor chord. To recap - if a song is in the key of C we're likely to see a lot of C, F, G and Am chords.

But if a song is in the key of E-flat, we'll see a lot of E-flat, A-flat, B-flat, and C-minor. None of this is too friendly for guitar. But whack a capo on the 3rd fret, and hey presto! Now you can play the song in the key of C (with lots of nice, friendly open chords) and have it sound like it's in E-flat. This means that you don't have to transpose the whole song into a different key (which is hard if you don't know what you're doing and can potentially make the song unsingable), and makes things much easier for you. It should also open your possibilities for hammer-ons and pull-offs etc. right up.

So what this means is that, no matter how nasty the key of the song, you should be able to deploy a capo and, with a tiny bit of thought, instantly find yourself in a nice guitar-friendly key like C, A, G or D. Because of the aforementioned limited chordal patterns, if you play around with capo position and try the keys you're comfortable with, you should be able to find a sweet spot where it both sounds right and is easy to play.

Pick one up - best $40 you'll ever spend.

Church Music and Church Planting

(Image from tinyfarmblog.com)

At the moment in my church scene there's a big emphasis on church planting, and I'm excited to see a bit of it starting to happen.

But in a church plant (especially if you begin with a really small house-church-sized congregation) the statistical chances of having talented musos (see previous post) really start to work against you. If you have a core team of 20, the chances that one of them is a previously undiscovered Jonny Greenwood are pretty low. Even if you consciously pick your core team so that you have a few musos, chances are you're running a bit of a skeleton outfit at least at the beginning.

With this sort of thing in mind, I thought I'd try to offer a few tips about doing music well when you don't have many resources. Since I'm a guitar player, these tips will mostly revolve around using guitar for singing in church.

Now, trying for the stadium-sized Hills-style 'worship experience' when you're short on resources is:

1. Going to fall flat without the professional musicians, mega-lighting rig, etc.

2. Going to feel pretty inappropriate for the 9 of you singing in Mike's loungeroom.

But, provided you steer well clear of the dreaded 'Kum-ba-ya' aesthetic, I reckon a single acoustic guitar (and small bands based around one acoustic guitar) can do a lot for a small church plant starting out (or for established churches with very few musicians). It helps if the player has some ability, but hopefully these hints will be helpful even for people who haven't been playing for that long (since I'm a hack myself, don't expect rocket science).

So stay tuned for a few low-key church music suggestions.

Rule #4: Choose wisely.

There has been some discussion at St. Dorcas' about how to improve the general standard of the music during church.

Sometimes the size and make-up of the church is a bit of a barrier to this. There are only so many talented musicians out there, and the smaller the congregation, the lower the chance of hitting more than one or two (if that). One of the reasons that churches like Mars Hill in Seattle can do music so well is their sheer size - with thousands of church members, they will get quite a few talented musos just by force of statistics.

The culture that church members are primarily drawn from is another big factor. At St. Dorcas', like at most Anglican churches, people come from a pretty upper-middle-class sort of background. This means that most Anglican churches will be able to field several pianists (with training in classical piano), a smattering of flute/trumpet/etc., and a guitarist or two, but will struggle for bass players and especially drummers. The uni students generally study very sensible degrees which will lead to real jobs at the end rather than no-good arts degrees which leave plenty of time for growing long hair and messing around in bands.

This can't be easily changed - but I think there is an easy way to improve the standard of your church music regardless of what kind of musos are currently serving in your church. I think that song selection can really help. Things like choosing songs that suit your musicians' instruments and your church's culture, ditching songs that are past their use-by date, playing fewer songs overall and introducing some new material can get you streets ahead for a relatively small amount of effort. The sorts of factors involved in song selection will be addressed in more detail in future posts - but for now, why not have a little scan through your song list and see if all of those songs are pulling their weight. Could some be ditched and replaced with others which will better serve your purpose?

Choose wisely...

Starting a virtual church is easy.

(image from flickr)

I have a bit of a bugbear about people who are dead keen to call their children Bible names, but are only happy for ones that are pretty normal (e.g. Joshua), or fashionably edgy (e.g. Ezekiel), and are unprepared to go the whole hog and let their little Oholibamah or Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz stand as a testimony to their slightly Old-Testamenty faith.

But whilst blogland is the perfect place to rage about such things, I don't have the courage of my convictions to saddle one of my own little ones with such an epithet just to make a point.

So I instead I'm making the point where the stakes are slightly lower - naming my pretend church.

Now I think pretty much all church music is bad - I don't like to single particular offenders out. But because the scene I'm from is so small, I think any criticisms voiced here might potentially be traced back to their source and become a discouragement (this isn't what I'm going for!).

So I thought that rather than naming names, to protect the innocent and the guilty alike (and to give a leg-up to a somewhat neglected Bible name), henceforth all my church music experiences have occurred or will occur at St. Dorcas'.