Rule #11. Order of service matters.

'Hoc est corpus meum? Blimey, Harry.'

In ye olde days, evangelicals had to fight against ye Roman Catholics, who thought you came to God by human works, and especially by re-sacrificing Jesus every week in the Mass. This was a Ron Weasley (i.e. halfway done) transfiguration job: it gets turned into the real actual kind of gross body and blood of Jesus - it just looks like bread and wine. It's Jesus in disguise. But of course Jesus offered himself 'one sacrifice for sins forever' (Heb. 10:12) - you can't do it again, and it undercuts Jesus' grace if you try. So the guys who believed that you were saved by grace through faith alone had to fight hard in the form of the church service for the correct understanding of grace to be communicated and understood..

That's right: liturgy is actually important, because what you do in church says a lot about how you think you get right with God.

In ye moderne tymes, we still have to fight the battle against the idea that humans co-operate with God in salvation. But I think there is another battle to be fought - against the idea that 'worship' is primarily music. Now of course we do worship God through music, but it's only one of lots of ways. And when we over-stress the idea that worshipping God = singing, we get into all kinds of trouble. Your relationship with God becomes tied up with the quality of the singing, and what you feel as you sing. The 'worship leader' (stay tuned for more on this hateful term) and band become the priests who create the right conditions for access to God. Needless to say, this is no good. Only Jesus gives us access to God.

So, whilst I like the idea of a big block of songs, I don't think we should put it at the front of the service. Hillsong opens with a 15 minute block of 'worship' (i.e. music). I reckon that copying this runs the risk of creating the impression that we lead people into God's presence at the beginning, and, having come to him by experiencing him in 'worship' (singing), we can now speak to him in prayer and hear from him in his word. This is not an impression we want to create. Jesus gives us access to God any time, any where, by his sacrificial blood. We sing because Jesus has brought us close to God, not to get close to God.

So where should the singing go? I think maybe it should come in a big block right after the sermon. After hearing about God's mercies towards us, we can then express our thanks and praise to him in song. What do you reckon?

Anyways, I think that there is a really important nexus between the song leader/music director, service leader/MC, and preacher/speaker. More to come.

Rule #10: Be humane.

'I'm still down here... and I'm still in quite a lot of pain. Maybe someone in the lobby could call an ambulance. Oh, the pain is really quite severe. I... I've fashioned a makeshift splint. Here goes nothing. Aaaah...'

Put that thing out of its misery.

I'm talking about reprising the last line of a song. The victorious triple repeat of the last line, in my experience, is about cruelly dragging out a song that has already limped through 3 uninspired verses and an excruciating double chorus, until finally, in a diminuendo of volume and crescendo of pain, it tails off into a final, plaintive, 'Lord I lift your name on hiiiiiiighh....'

Ouch.

Just don't do it. Let it die peacefully at the end of the chorus with whatever dignity it has left.

Final Top 20

Here was the final top 20. Lessons learned:

1. It's really hard to keep a trim song list. I kept thinking 'but what about this? what about that one?'

2. Lots of those older pentecostal-ish songs are really slow. It's pretty hard for most people to hold the notes in really slow songs, and unless you're in a very particular moment in the service where you're feeling a certain way, I think those super-slow songs can be a little oppressive.

3. The Emu catalogue is much stronger than I thought. There's a bunch of great stuff there, and even the second-tier stuff which I've mostly omitted here is pretty good.

4. Some songs definitely age better than others. Going through CCLI and finding out exactly how old certain songs are is a surprising thing. Did you know that 'My hope is built' (the Chiswell re-write) is seven years older than 'That's why we praise him'? Some certainly age more gracefully...

5. The songs basically fell out in 3 categories: older pentecostal-ish songs, contemporary-ish (90s/early 2000s) songs (mostly Emu), and hymns (mostly re-arranged).

Anyways, here is the final list (in date order, except for the really old ones):

There is a Redeemer

Servant King

Amazing love

Lord I Lift Your Name On High

My Hope is built

May the mind

How deep the father’s love

This Kingdom

Consider Christ

Jesus, your blood and righteousness

Before the throne of God above

Highest Place

Rock of ages

That’s Why We Praise Him

Hallelujah to the King of Kings

Nothing but the blood of Jesus

In Christ Alone

Let your Kingdom come

Never Alone

When I survey

Amazing Grace

You may note that I cheated - there are 21.

Top 20 Challenge

Greetings, fearless blogophiles. I need your help. The task is simple: to come up with 20 easy-to-sing, guitar-friendly songs for a church plant which is just establishing a music ministry.

But, as with all good reality TV, THERE'S JUST ONE CATCH!

You have to have some stuff in there that people who may or may not have been around in Pentecostal churches up to 20 or so years ago might know. This makes it a little trickier...

Here is my list, but I'm really struggling on good old Pentecostal-friendly stuff. I need your help - please comment!

Servant King

The Heavens shall declare

Amazing love

There is a Redeemer

Consider Christ

Highest Place

Never Alone

Hallelujah to the King of Kings

Let your Kingdom come

In Christ Alone

Jesus, your blood and righteousness

May the mind

How deep the father’s love

My Hope is built

In His Image

Amazing Grace

Be thou my vision

Before the throne of God above

Rock of ages

When I survey

Rule #9: People are unlike robots

'These aren't like Daft Punk. We wanted ones like Daft Punk...' Image from here

Perhaps in the distant future, the distant future - but not now.

So we can't expect people to instantly shift into singing mode. If part of what music does is give articulation and expression to an emotional response to God, we probably need to pay closer attention to music as:

1. Emotional

and

2. Responsive

1. Music seeks to elicit and give expression to our whole-personed (including emotions) response to God as he is revealed in his word. But when I first walk into church, whatever emotions I am experiencing probably have more to do with the fight I just had in the car on the way to church, or my concern about whatever has been happening all week, than they have to do with what God has done for me in Christ. Either that, or I'm just in 'getting stuff done' mode - I have been rushing to get the kids in the car, get to church, find a park, etc. etc. I need a little time to unwind and refocus.

I think this is why singing a few songs in a row is a good idea - people are just like that. Music in church isn't the same as a gig, but people are people everywhere. And if you go to a gig, the band isn't expecting people to be going crazy and loving it during the first couple of songs. They take a few songs to warm people up. We should think about doing something similar. (You might like to check out this post on Sydney Anglicans to a similar effect)

2. Music is responsive. It's not just a way to get everyone to come and sit down because the service is starting now! It's how we corporately respond to what God tells us about what he has done for us. I reckon this means we need something to respond to before we can sing - we need a testimony of God's faithfulness: someone's personal testimony of God's grace to them during the week, a passage of Scripture, etc. Otherwise while we are singing I am just expected to kind of mentally recall all that stuff and respond to whatever I can dredge up - if I can even be bothered. In real life, I reckon what most often happens is I stand there singing the first song, thinking about something else. Give me something to respond to when I'm singing.

People aren't robots. We don't instantly shift mode. We need both motivation and time to switch into a mode where we will be able to sing in a whole-person kind of way to God and one another.

PS - sorry about the long silence, I'll try to keep the momentum up a little better...

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

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'.

Rule #3: Double claps are never OK.

(Image from www.nicholasjdanton.supanet.com)

‘Blessing and honour (clap clap!), glory and power (clap clap!), be unto the Ancient of Days!’

No.

1. Lame.

2. Completely alienating for visitors.

Imagine you turn up somewhere, everyone is singing (weird enough), and then they bust out into choreographed clapping. They all seem to know what to do and when to do it, but you have no idea. Feel comfortable?

This has to stop.

If you are a double clapper, just cut it out. Clap on the beat if you want, but if you think it’s a good idea to bust out a double clap at the end of the line, or the double-time clap in the bridge (who does that!?), then your hands should be gaffa-taped to your sides until you learn your lesson.

(In extremely serious cases, perhaps hardened repeat offenders might be encouraged to follow the advice of Matthew 5:30 and discover the sound of one hand clapping. Hey, I'm just throwing it out there...)

But maybe you’re innocent in all this – maybe you’re just an unassuming band member and the congregation is going for it without any provocation. How can you shut it down? Any thoughts? 

On the remote possibility that anyone reads this, I'd like to hear your ideas – how can we stamp this abomination out?

Rule #2: Wear pants when you go outside. Nice ones, if you can.

(image from www.kuklaskorner.com)

So the way I see it we are dealing with two issues here.

The first one is the what and why? of church music - the timeless biblical truths regarding singing as God's people - what does God have to say in his word about what church music is and what it's for? (I should hasten to say here that this blog has no interest whatsoever in Christian music in general - only the music we sing together when we meet together as God's people. I'm not CCM-inclined myself, but what people do in the privacy of their own car stereos is none of my concern.)

The second is the how? of church music. This involves pragmatic issues. Did God really set his divine imprimatur on the musical style of sixteenth century, to be continually imitated in perpetuity? Or should there be some kind of engagement with the style of contemporary music of the time? How far does this go - if crunk (or even worse, Michael Buble) is topping the charts, should the style of our church music reflect that?

If you don't get the theology right, your church music will still suck, no matter how slick your sound is. The question of how? comes second to the questions of what and why? This means that if you're going to get just one of these two right, then listen to what God says in his word about music in church.

But if you want to do it well, then you need to get both right. We need to know exactly what we are doing when we sing in church and why we are doing it, and we also need to have thought hard about how we do it.

(As an aside, when church music sucks I think that the how? is often the presenting problem. It's easy to spot musical atrocities like singers out of tune, a soprano sax used anywhere at any time, etc. But the what and why? can be all out of place and be covered over by a skillful guitarist. This isn't a good thing - it means that the music will still suck (i.e. it will be off the mark in terms of what it ought to be doing for God's people), it will just sound ok while it does it and therefore be harder to diagnose)

When you leave the house, the most important thing is to have enough clothes on that you don't get arrested. But this is setting the bar pretty low, right?

The guy at the top of the page isn't going to get arrested, but he's still not likely to make many friends until he rethinks that jacket.

So make sure you fulfil the minimum requirement, but aim higher too!

Rule #1: Figure out what the deal is.

As far as I can tell, nobody quite knows what the deal is with music in church. At least, nobody I know knows what the deal is. Perhaps once upon a time somebody knew, or at least someone knew someone who knew, but now nobody knows.

We do know that church music isn't really something you can not do. We've always done it! Which, of course, is all the reason we need to keep doing it ad infinitum (ahem.).

Not to mention the fact that it seems to be in the Bible. Where I come from, we believe in reading the Bible and doing what it says. All jokes aside - this is the right way to be. Humans have no idea who God is or how to get right with him - sin has ruined us way too much for there to be any chance of that. But God, in his mercy, reveals himself to us - he tells us about himself, about us, and about how to get right with him (through the cross of his Son, Jesus). When God speaks he knows what he's talking about, and we have to listen.

But I digress.

Anyways, singing is in the Bible. Moses and Miriam do it (Exodus 15). David does it (Psalms). Paul commands it (Ephesians 5:19-20). Lots of it seems to happen in heaven (Revelation 5).

So we figure we should probably do it.

So we do it.

But we don't know why.

Which means we don't know how.

When we do music it feels weird and out of place. It's good for breaking up the service - making sure we get a chance to stand up and sit down between the sermon and the prayers. But I wonder if that's not exactly what the deal is supposed to be with church music, and that's why it doesn't really seem to be working.

So here is your rule: before you do it (or perhaps I should say, before you do too much more of it), figure out what the deal is with it.

Do you know what you're doing when you're doing music in church?

Do you know what it is and what it's for?

Here are The Rules.

Of course, opinions should be offered gently, respectfully and with humility. But to save us all from drowning in caveats, quibbles and qualifications (and of course, to save myself the effort of false humility), I thought it might be better just to set my opinions out the way they sound in my head: as undeniable, inalienable truths - the rules.

So this blog is about music in church - why it sucks and how to fix it.

If you do exactly as I say, we should all get along just fine.