For the lulz?

Image from Bosta, via flickr

It's incredible what you can get people to sing if you just bung it in a hymn.

At St. Dorcas' the other day no-one blinked an eyelid as we sung about the Ancient of Days, who is apparently 'pavilioned in splendour and girded in praise'. And here I didn't even know it was possible to 'pavilion' something. Come to think of it, I could even have been pavilioned unawares for some time, to the mirth of those around me. How embarrassing! Not to mention that in the same song 'angels delight to hymn thee above'. It seems that just about anything goes if you're 'hymn-ing' God.

Maybe all this is a big joke at our expense - somewhere out there is a secret society of Christian songwriters giving each other little challenges.

'I bet you can't get them to sing the word "ineffably".'

'I bet I can...'

Re:Sound

Here is a link to the new Mars Hill, Seattle music site.

These guys are really creative and cool. This is the best church music I've ever heard.

There's not heaps up yet, but why not head over there and check it out?

Also, search for 'Mars Hill Church: Music' in the iTunes podcast directory - heaps more great stuff available there.

Rule #8: Songs are unlike Venetian biscuits

You can never have too many Venetians. The ultimate Nanna biscuit, created by the LORD to perfectly complement a nice cup of tea. Some say they are the only element of the Creation which remains unaffected by the Fall. As long as there is tea, the prospect of 'one more' will be undeniable.

But songs aren't really like that. You can have too many. A bloated song list will make it harder for both musicians and congregation to get familiar with songs. For the musos playing something for the first time in 6 months will be like playing it for the first time, for the congregation a new member might still be having the uncomfortable 'I've never heard this song in my life' experience 6 months after they join. Not ideal.

Cutting your list can:

1. Give you a great opportunity to cut the rubbish

2. Remove the unwanted side effects mentioned above (increasing the standard of music and the accessibility of your music to newcomers)

3. Make the prospect of getting a music ministry off the ground (if you're church planting or just singing along to CDs at the moment) realistic

If you have a list of 40 songs, and sing 4 songs on a Sunday, you can still go for a whole term without repeating a song once.

So you're planting a church on a desert island (or something). You can only take 40 songs with you. What will it be?

Why not post a comment with what you reckon should make the cut for the top 40. Feel free to attack other people's choices, and I'll post up a list once all the blood has dried.

Rule #7: 'Worthy' needs a predicate!

Worthy of what?

You can't just be 'worthy' in general!

It doesn't mean anything!

It's like saying, 'I'm about to.'

'About to do what?'

'Nothing, just about to.'

I get it, it's some kind of shorthand for Rev. 4. But God is worthy of things in particular - he is worthy to receive glory and honour and power.

Perhaps also worthy of better grammar...?

Irritable nerd out.

Song Review: Consider Christ

Consider Christ, the source of our salvation

That he should take the penalty for me

Though he was pure, a lamb without a blemish

He drank the cup that was reserved for me

My Lord and God, you are so rich in mercy

Mere words alone are not sufficient thanks

So take my life: transform, renew and change me,

That I might be a living sacrifice

Consider Christ, that he could trust his Father

In the garden of Gethsemane

Though full of dread, and fearful of the anguish

He drank the cup that was reserved for me

Consider Christ, for death he has defeated

And he arose, appeared for all to see

And now he sits at God's right hand in heaven

Where he prepares a resting place for me

I originally didn't think much of this song. Tenuous rhyming, wandery melody, the true-but-'how did these words ever get into a song?'-inducing line 'Mere words alone are not sufficient thanks'. But the more I think about it, the more I like it.

The way I see it, songs can be to God or about him. The former is vertical: a corporate prayer to God, the latter is horizontal: the group encouraging one another with truths about God.

Consider Christ has got them both. In the verses address the congregation addresses itself. 'Consider' is an imperative directed to those around me. What we urge each other to consider is the objective work of Christ - his atoning sacrifice, his perfect trust, his resurrection and present heavenly rule. We aren't driven by subjective 'Jesus, you're exactly what I'm looking for' kind of concerns. This is Jesus, doing his own thing, and we just look in wonder.

But brilliantly, this is saved from being an abstract exercise in theology by considering Christ's objective work at exactly the point it affects me. The final word in each verse is 'me'. The believer is encouraged to reflect on the fact that Christ's atoning sacrifice deals with my sin, his faithfulness is for my benefit, his heavenly rule is exercised for my good as he prepares my place with him and God. There is a perfect balance between letting the concerns of the gospel set the agenda (what Christ has done for me, not how he meets my felt needs) and picking up the point at which, by faith, that work of Christ benefits me (not just what Christ has done over there somewhere, but how that relates to the believer right now).

Then the chorus is a prayer to God in response to the objective work of Christ (which by faith becomes my subjective reality). There is praise and thankfulness, but a recognition that not only our words but our lives must be affected by what Jesus has done for us. However, the song doesn't imagine that we have the power to change - rather, we ask God that he would change us by his power so that we become living death - our every act of living is an act of dying to self for the sake of living to God.

Our encouragement to one another to remember what Christ has done for us seamlessly becomes a prayer together to God, asking him that the reality of Christ's work would do what it is supposed to - change our lives. Beautiful.

Having said that, I reckon that this song is going to need a tune re-write pretty soon if it's going to kick on (and I think that it should kick on - it deserves to become a classic). So, who's up for it?

Rule #6: Let church music do its thang

I've fallen off the pace a little bit with posting, and looking back over the last few posts it seems like it's been quite a while since we've had a good old-fashioned rule.

So here it is - let music do its thang.

What exactly is church music's thang though? Music in church can do a bunch of good stuff. It can direct prayers to God, it can express truths from God's word, it can aid us in the memory of Scripture (think 'Highest Place' as a good example). But other elements of our meetings can do these things too.

However, there a couple of things that I think only singing does in our church meetings.

Firstly, singing in church is uniquely holistic - it engages the whole person: their mind, will and especially their emotions (at least in principle). It is this emotional element that music is uniquely capable of targeting. Although good preaching, praying and public Bible reading ought to target the emotions, music is specially designed to elicit an emotional response and to give that response expression.

NB: Because music so powerfully engages the emotions, there is a great responsibility attached to its use. Good music will always be 'manipulative', since the whole point of it is to change your emotional state. But this manipulation can be either good and godly (encouraging an appropriate whole-person response to biblical truth) or it can be unhelpful (encouraging a heightened emotional state which is destructively and unbiblically passed off as 'an intimate encounter with God's presence').

Secondly, singing in church is uniquely corporate. That is, the whole body of Christ does it. Unlike corporately listening to God's word as it is read from the Bible or authoritatively explained by the preacher, unlike prayer led from the front (or even one-at-a-time 'open prayer'), singing is the only part of the meeting where every member participates (except perhaps in reciting set liturgical elements like a creed or confession, and even then these things probably account for less than 2 mins of the service, whereas singing will get a solid 10 mins). This means that singing is our only real chance (during the formal part of the meeting) to speak words of encouragement to one another, or to corporately respond to God's word.

So I think it makes sense to play up music's unique distinctives: its capacity to engage mind, will and heart at the same time, and its scope for truly corporate prayer to God and encouragement of one another.

Let it do its thang!

(But this is just off the top of my head - perhaps you have thought of other thangs that music is specially able to do. What have I missed? What do you think?)

'I've never liked the Psalms...': Part 1.

On the face of it, church music and the psalms should be a perfect match.

I mean, the Bible actually has songs in it already - pre-made! They even have musical directions! (albeit inscrutable ones. I take it that 'according to Gittith' was one lisping psalmist's way of saying 'let there be rock!' But I digress.) Best of all, if someone comes to nitpick over the theological emphases of your song you can hit them with a somersaulting double-roundhouse 'It's in the Bible, suckah!' Five hundred points!

But, by and large, songs based directly on the Psalms are pretty rubbish. Why is this? As fair dinkum Bible songs they should be so great, but I personally usually find them a little odd and off-putting. Now, whilst this may say more about me vs. the psalms than it does about our church music, I think there's something here worth thinking about.

My initial thought is that this is probably related to the issue of translation. Language is flexible, and texts can be translated into other languages. However, there is inevitably some loss of meaning. This problem is compounded when it comes to translating poetry, where how something is written is just as important (if not more!) as the actual content. I suspect we feel this meaning loss more acutely when we try to adapt the Psalms (which are Hebrew poetry, and follow the rules of Hebrew poetry) into whatever kind of musical style church music is (what musical genre would you say church music actually is? Is it kind of early nineties middle-of-the-road soft pop/rock? Doesn't seem like a bilious enough description...). I reckon not enough thinking is being done about how the fact that a Psalm is a Hebrew song shapes its meaning, and what sort of features of 'modern' music might be equivalents to those the features of Hebrew music which the song depends on for its meaning. I think that assuming that something that used to be a song (when it was in Hebrew, before Christ) will automatically transfer across and effortlessly slide into the Western, 20th Century conception of what a song is.

So I think this is actually an optimistic post. Psalms should make for great songs, if we think a little bit harder about what translation actually is. More to come.

Image from http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/Issue2/John_Thornhill.htm