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WORSHIP RENEWAL: TIME TO FACE THE MUSIC

While worship renewal encompasses everything from architecture to Bible translation, changes in music are often the main focus of both effort and conflict in renewal efforts. Not long ago the question was whether guitars, drums, projected lyrics, and casual decorum would have any place at all in the Sunday worship of mostly white, mainstream American evangelicals. Now, almost a quarter-century after the appearance of such standards as Henry Smith’s “Give Thanks” (1976), and Laurie Klein’s “I Love You, Lord” (1978), contemporary praise music has become a fixture in much of evangelical worship. Consider:
 

•  As of mid-2000, Christian Copyright Licensing International reported 112,532 church licenses issued in the U.S., out of perhaps 300,000 total U.S. churches. (CCLI is a Portland-based, evangelical-oriented copyright clearinghouse specializing in praise music; www.ccli.com. They currently license about 150,000 individual songs.)

•  The widely influential evangelical megachurches of the present generation (Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, CA; Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL; the Anaheim Vineyard, CA; and Saddleback Valley Community Church, Orange County, CA) are all especially known for band-led contemporary pop/rock worship music.

•  There are now adult Christians who have grown up never knowing anything but contemporary praise music; and innumerable new worship spaces built or remodeled for bands and projected lyrics, and without organs or hymnal racks.

The question is no longer whether praise music will have any place on Sunday morning, but rather, What to do now that praise music has taken its place either fully alongside or even fully displacing traditional hymnody in so many churches? Is it simply a matter of the inexorable flow of generations, with hold-out hymns-only churches vainly trying to stave off the inevitable? Or are there consequential issues still to be pressed?

The basic arguments for and against praise music have been endlessly repeated. Opponents argue that we are abandoning the gold of our heritage in hymns for the dross of noisy, theologically vapid ditties; that commodified pop/rock is inherently inimical to worthy doxology and spiritual maturity; and that the popularity of praise music is no more an argument for its spiritual value than the popularity of fast food is an argument for its nutritional value. Proponents argue that no musical style is inherently more spiritual than another style; that every generation has had to defend the legitimacy of its music against the music of its elders; and that believers should sing and evangelize in the music of their hearts just as they should read and proclaim Scripture in the language of their hearts. Is there a way to get beyond these entrenched positions?

As in so many areas of life, here it is largely the unbalanced emphasis of some valid principles to the neglect of other equally valid principles that fosters belligerence and polarization. In conflicts over musical styles for worship, there are typically two basic contending principles in play. These two principles are rooted in the first and second greatest commandments as pronounced by Jesus. We are told above all else to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” But we are told also to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31, NIV). I will refer to the first commandment as the “rule of self-offering” and to the second as the “rule of self-sacrifice.” Contention over music styles is largely a consequence of these two rules being variously emphasized, neglected, obeyed, and abused over against each other as they are applied to music in worship.

The Rule of Self-Offering 
The rule of self-offering calls us to devote as much of ourselves as possible—mind, body, emotions, and spirit—in our offering of praise. This involves giving the fullest possible expression of worship in our own language, culture, and “voice.” One of the fundamental principles of the Reformation was that worship is the work of the people, that it is their offering of their lives in all the particulars of time, place, and custom that have shaped them. All peoples and cultures are “clean” in the sense of being fit as settings for contacting, embracing, and celebrating the gospel (Acts 10). God fully embraced cultural particularity in giving us Scripture in human languages and ultimately in becoming incarnate as a first-century Jewish man. Further, God encourages—even necessitates—cultural diversity in worship by having declined to prescribe the details of New Covenant worship. With the details left up to our wisdom and creativity, we have no alternative but to use cultural particularity in worship. The rule of self-offering directs us to take the cultural particularity available to us and make the fullest possible use of it, and so make the fullest possible offering of ourselves to God.

It follows that music in worship should be of a style that speaks as directly and fully as possible to and from the hearts of a particular gathering of worshippers. The music should emerge deeply and truly from their identity and life experiences, it should fit their personality and cultural manners, and it should engage them as holistically as possible. It should be fully their music.

But here is where the problems begin. If each culture were unfallen and had its own fully developed range of musical styles appropriate for worship, and if each local church setting identified with only one culture and had all the musical resources it needed within that culture, then the choice of music for worship in each setting would be self-evident. But neither of these options is ever the case. Available styles of music are limited in the range of meanings and emotions they can well express. Styles of music also all participate in the fallenness of humanity—that is, each style can and sometimes does express badly and falsely; and each style has some spiritually empty or destructive cultural associations. The available styles of music are never comprehensive for any given culture. Some cultures identify with many styles usable for group singing while other cultures identify with few or even none. Also, those usable styles vary greatly in how much of their cultures they successfully express. The African American church has music that well and deeply expresses the suffering and pain of its people. How many of our other church cultures also display this reality?

Furthermore, cultures are not discrete. They overlap in complex, inconsistent ways. Each individual’s experience of culture is even unique and ever-changing, with individual musical attachments, abilities, and aspirations. Individuals and churches are also moral agents, faced with unavoidable choices about whether and how to change and grow in response to God and neighbor, whether and how to bring not only the present “all” of ourselves to worship but also a greater future “all” as well as they (hopefully) develop and mature in both character and skill. While the rule of self-offering calls us to respond to God with as much of ourselves as possible, it turns out that “as much of” and “ourselves” are complex, changing, and conflicted matters.

The Rule of Self-Sacrifice
God’s solution to such complex, changing, and conflicted matters is the rule of self-sacrifice. We are called to die to ourselves, to put others first, to adapt and defer to others (Matt 10:39; 1 Cor 9:12, 22; 10:24; Phil 2:3; 3:10; et al.). The cross is a symbol of utter self-sacrifice. The reigning principle behind so many debates over church music—that everyone has a right to the music they like—is sub-Christian. The Christian principle is to focus not on rights but on responsibilities to edify and evangelize. To be sure, Jesus promises me I will “find my life” in the process (Matt 10:39), which will include finding a music I can truly call my own. But that comes not by defending my music as something I need and must have (for then it has become an idol for me) but rather precisely by getting myself out of the way as much as possible. Things become mine not by grasping but by letting go. And in the process, perhaps I will find that getting myself out of the way opens me to “find myself” in a much wider range of music than I ever imagined.

This rule of self-sacrifice can only be worked out relationally. What two contending musical factions in a church will do when each resolves to put the other first is not something that can be worked out logically, for it is a logical conundrum. It can only be worked out in real, living relationships. And the process of working it out will be as important as the eventual outcome. It may involve one side deferring to the other for the sake of evangelism. It may involve the younger deferring to the older to honor them and to make the most of their fewer remaining years. It may involve attending to other weaknesses in the fabric of a church community so that its musical life need not be so much of its “glue.” It may involve discovering, adapting, or inventing whole new styles of music. It may involve integrating different styles in a single service or segregating them into separate services. It may involve a sustained program of music education and exposure to visiting musicians. But whatever it may involve, it will always start by asking, How can I love my neighbor?, and then persevering through the hard, relational work that follows.

Conclusion
To follow the rule of self-offering in devoting as much of ourselves as possible to God in worship; to also follow the rule of self-sacrifice in setting aside as much of ourselves as possible in service of our neighbor—this is the fundamental tension in cultivating music for worship. A singular, resolved, straightforward calling (like the consumerist calling of everyone getting want he or she wants) would be far easier and maybe more comfortable, at least initially. But a tensive calling drives us to faith and grace by revealing our utter inadequacy in ourselves. A tensive calling resonates with the tensive nature of the God we worship: three yet one, transcendent yet immanent, incarnate as a Palestinian Jew yet savior of all humankind and Lord of all. And a tensive calling reflects the already/not yet nature of our journey this side of heaven. In that journey there are no formulas, pre-packaged solutions, or black-and-white cultural categories that easily settle our debates. It is a journey shot through with tensions between discipleship and evangelism, strong and weak believers, pragmatism and idealism, the needs of the many and the needs of the few, tradition and creativity, and life in but not of this world.

It is in such a world that God gives us this beautiful, powerful, contentious, life-giving, corruptible, transient, eternal, universal, infinitely varied gift of music. Music is God’s gift to us all. As we learn to share this gift we become God’s gift to each other, and in turn, together become a pleasing gift offered back to him.

For Further Reading
C. S. Lewis writes hopefully of the rule of self-sacrifice in his essay, “On Church Music,” in Christian Reflections (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1967): “Where both the choir and the congregation are spiritually on the right road no insurmountable difficulties will occur. Discrepancies of taste and capacity will, indeed, provide matter for mutual charity and humility” (97). J. Frame provides an extensive musical and scriptural evaluation (and eventually qualified affirmation) of praise music in Contemporary Worship Music: A Biblical Defense (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1997). He writes as a theologian and classically-trained musician in his 50s, who adopted praise music late in life and with much initial resistance. Of special note is his detailed, constructive response to M. Dawn, D. G. Hart, and others who dismiss praise music outright. B. Liesch’s The New Worship: Straight Talk on Music and the Church (Baker, 1996) is an enthusiastic affirmation of church music generally and of the balanced, purposeful, appropriate, and skillful use of both hymns and praise music in churches seeking spiritually mature worship.

For a greater appreciation and appropriation of hymns, see any of the several books of E. Routley and P. Westermeyer; and issues of The Hymn (quarterly journal of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada). The Society’s website (www.hymnsociety.org) includes one-stop shopping for more or less every English-language hymnal and hymn-related book in print.

For the big picture of the history of Christian music, A. Wilson-Dickson’s The Story of Christian Music (Lion, 1992) is an accessible, illustrated guide; and D. Cusic’s The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Bowling Green, 1990) fills in the history of American popular developments including the early history of Contemporary Christian Music.

By Russell Yee, Ph.D., pastor of New Life Christian Fellowship in Castro Valley, California, and an Adjunct Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary/Northern California.