Contemporary Worship Music and Christian Traditions
I continue to try and make some sense of the role of music in worship (previous post here) and I’m reading Praying Twice: The Music and Words of Congregational Song, by Brian Wren. It’s a fascinating book about which I hope to blog a little more later. but I thought I would just quote some of Wren’s thinking on the place of contemporary worship music in the musical preferences of liberal and conservative Christians.
He argues that all branches of the Christian church should give a critical welcome to contemporary music styles if we are serious about attracting those who are not part of any religious tradition. This welcome is necessary he says because the driving rhythm, so characteristic of contemporary worship music, is the vernacular of people born since the 60s. A central problem with it though is not the musical style but the lyrics, which tend to emphasise personal devotion, subjective feelings and personal conversion, with little room for social justice, service or, I might add, lament. They are also, he says, saturated with male-dominant God language.
From a musical point of view, it seems to me that contemporary worship music is performance oriented and individualistic and therefore not encouraging of congregational participation. All of this probably reflects the origins of the music which generally speaking has a theologically conservative provenance, which sometimes means that less conservative churches shy away from it, believing that ‘contemporary’ = ‘conservative’ or ‘fundamentalist’. But it needn’t be so
Wren argues that it is essential that that more liberal or moderate churches need to embrace contemporary music styles. He writes,
“I believe that if ‘moderate’ and ‘liberal’ churches embrace contemporary worship, ‘contemporary’ songs will emerge to express a more open, and more open-minded theology.”
I long for that to happen. My church is trying desperately to find a balance or a blend of music to satisfy all tastes but we’re not doing it particularly well. I’m not sold out to any one style therefore I applaud the effort, but contemporary music aficionados let themselves down by the choice of music. I’m tired of singing songs whose lyrics are disposable pap, expressing thoughts, feelings or intentions that are simply not true for me even at my best, or ones that, with some minor tweaking, I could have sung to my wife while we were dating!
Wren quotes John Rushkin from 19th Century England who described the hymns of his day as ‘half paralytic and half profane’. He wrote,
“[they consist] partly of the expression of what the singers never in their lives felt, or attempted to feel, and partly in the address of prayers to God, which nothing could more disagreeably astonish them than [God’s] attending to.”
As an example Rushkin cites a hymn recently sung with fervour, in which the congregation expressed its wish to die and be immediately with God. Yet if the smallest piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, he opined, the whole congregation, fearful of its prayers being answered by a collapsing roof, would have dropped their hymnals and scuttled unceremoniously out of the sanctuary. [Wren, pg 174].
I too am in a Church that is struggling to find a balance of styles. Personally I tend to favor the more contemporary but while I find the it easier to engage with the extra passion these songs seem to generate (of course I’m not saying that hymns can’t be sung passionately it’s just more often than not they tend not to be) I have also struggled with the lyrics to many songs.
Not that there is often anything wrong with them, I personally believe that the Church owes much to the Matt Redman generation of songs which brought out the personal, relational, aspect of worship but things do seem to be stuck there.
That anointing was great in the 90’s. Good used it and many people were able to engage with Him on a new level but it seems that many Christian artists are stuck in this time and are just trying to replicate the ‘past success’ of others.
What we have been left with is a folder full of music that has needed to be split into several boxes for different letters. Songs with ‘I’ at the beginning of the first line almost requite a box on their own as they far outnumber any other letter. I think that tells its own story.
I’m all for God bringing new inspiration. I think new songs are important for the life of a healthy church and bringing in contemporary style is also important, after all, who listens to organ music while at home on their own? However, I think we are at the point of the ‘I’ saturation. It is certainly time for some songs that reference God a little more.
I’ve gone on, sorry. One question. I find the mixing of old hymns with contemporary music to be very powerful. Solid Biblical truth combined with contemporary passion driven music. There are a growing number of songs which have received this treatment. Have you found these helpful?
I agree Rob that the new music has restored something to worship in our churches, perhaps because it is in a style many of us are used to. But you are right also when you say it seems to be stuck in a style, particularly the saturation of ‘I’. I want more variety in content, rather than overdosing on material which often forces the worshipper to be on an emotional ‘up’ all the time. I want songs that focus on God, rather than always having that focus mediated through what he has done for me and its effects on me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excluding that kind of content, just not all the time.
And yes, I have found reworkings of old tunes to be very helpful. Long time ago I also stopped listening to praise music outside of congregational settings. But enough for now! I need to reflect some more on this stuff and maybe blog more later.
Thanks as always for your thoughts.
Taken from the Internet, this expresses my feelings about contemporary music in worship:
Contemporary music impacts church
MILL VALLEY, Calif. (BP) — Contemporary Christian music may not have started in the church, but its profound impact on the church is undeniable, said John Styll, president of Nashville-based CCM Communications and chairman-elect of the Gospel Music Association.
“In the annals of sacred music history, this type of expression is unprecedented in its growth and popularity,” said Styll, guest speaker for the new Worship and Music Lectureship series at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
Historians, Styll noted, generally view “three streams” of church music:
The monophonic music of the early church and then the more complex musical forms of the first 1,500 years of church history. “As composers began experimenting with complex musical forms, it began to leave the congregations as spectators rather than participants as trained choirs took over.”
The simpler music following the Reformation that allowed congregations to sing again. “This returned to the notion of uncomplicated music that even non-musicians could participate in. This gave rise to many of the wonderful hymns and congregational singing.”
The “gospel music” of the last two centuries. This third stream, which began in camp meetings and revival services, has become a multi-million-dollar industry, developing into an entertainment medium with parallels to the secular music industry.
Contemporary Christian music didn’t start in the church, though, he explained. Rather, it started as a “counter-cultural response to the counterculture of the ‘60s.”
An observer of that early movement himself, Styll recalled that many of the young people who were rebelling against the establishment structures of the 1960s found something they hadn’t counted on—a relationship with Jesus. By 1970, there was a “full-scale revival taking place in the counterculture. It became known as the Jesus Movement.”
The movement made the cover of Time magazine, spawned at least two Broadway musicals and created an avenue for new songs about Jesus on the secular music pop charts.”
With music being a big part of the counterculture, it was only natural that the newfound faith of young people would find musical expression,” Styll said. “So they just wrote and played the popular rock music they knew, giving it lyrical content about Jesus.”
What began as a movement from “the long-haired, barefoot worshipers” eventually became an industry, with most large contemporary Christian music labels now owned by mainstream entertainment companies, Styll said.
Total sales of contemporary Christians music have grown from $83 million in the mid-1980s to nearly $700 million last year, with 44 million units sold last year, half of which were purchased in mainstream music outlets.
Contemporary Christian music is not a style of music in and of itself, Styll said, but is derivative of other styles. “At this point, virtually any style of music you can think of has a Christian counterpart.”
He noted contemporary Christian music is the only category in the Grammy nomination process defined by lyrical content.
While there are many styles within the genre, contemporary/pop is the most popular, but the “praise and worship” category is quickly growing. The “Songs 4 Worship” recently released by Time-Life Music is the most successful “rollout” in the company’s history, with a half-million sold in the first 90 days, he said.
The church, too, has become “hungry for contemporary praise choruses,” Styll observed. “Do contemporary worship, and your church will grow; resist and die, or at least stagnate.”
New praise choruses from all around the world have flooded the market, with hundreds of new songs being published every year. A company that provides licenses for churches wanting to publish copyrighted lyrics has more than 240,000 songs in its database.
“What contemporary Christian music has done is make the worship experience more relevant and therefore more meaningful to a new generation,” he said.
“But the danger is contemporary music is very performance-oriented. The line between worship and entertainment can very easily get blurred. Music in worship should draw our attention toward God, but contemporary music often draws attention to itself.”
Styll warned that congregations can take on a consumer mentality, evaluating whether worship was “good” today based on “how well the performances pleased us.”
Things could change in the future, Styll said, noting emerging generations of young people already may be rejecting some elements of contemporary worship. Styll noted a recent interdenominational survey of people in their 20s revealed their “deepest desire is to have a genuine encounter with God” and they seek to “recover depth and substance” in worship.
“The demand for depth and substance speaks to us of the need to find those biblical and transcultural principles of worship that have endured through 2000 years of history and to incarnate deep principles into a new style demanded by the cultural patterns of a postmodern world,” Styll said.
“If we can achieve this, then the new generation will have taken us beyond the contemporary worship of yesterday into the contemporary worship of tomorrow.”