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The Divisiveness of Church Music
For the past few decades, churches have lamented the exodus of young people. Their answer has been uniform: Make the service more like a rock concert through praise music, and the young people will flock to church in their skinny jeans and hipster vests. Nowadays, it’s more common to find special music consisting of electric guitars, drums, and lighting effects than traditional choirs and organs. But has turning church into a dressed-up version of Bonnaroo really helped bring the coveted Millennials back to church?
I am vehemently against praise music, though I thoroughly recognize that this is a matter of personal preference. The pervasiveness of praise music has made finding a church I like very difficult. It has made it difficult to attend church with friends, because I just stand there with my hands folded in front of me while everyone around me sways their hands in the air, singing with their eyes closed. The difference in worship style preference has even made dating difficult in some instances. Still, I was interested to see how many of my fellow Ricochet Millennial contemporaries have a similar bias towards traditional music. They may not be as militantly against contemporary worship as I am — I will turn and leave if I walk into a sanctuary and see it looking more like a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert than a church service — but they still seem on the whole to enjoy the traditional worship style.
In short, I contend that this:
Is more reverential and evocative of God’s divine love than this:
But I’m also a classical music snob, admittedly. So what do y’all think? How much does worship style influence where you worship? Have your churches embraced a contemporary style that has successfully brought young people back to church? My fellow Millennials: which style do you prefer?
Perhaps all this boils down to this question: What is the purpose of music in a worship service?
Published in Religion & Philosophy
What a great thread. I’m glad you made this.
Thank you, Fred! That means a lot coming from you.
I’ll contend with the first statement. You wrote:
I’ve attended my fair share of churches with contemporary music, and this is never the underlying motivation for the choice of music styles. They do it, from my experience, to enter the same state of worship, to express the same sense of love and awe of God, and to experience the same presence of the divine and holy just as every other believer throughout the entire history of the church has done when lifting up voices and playing instruments. Whether it works or not is personal and subjective, but it certainly is not an objective matter of doctrine. They do it to enable worship when they’ve found other styles hinder it.
Two minutes of this, I contend, would bring back many more young people than all the hipster combined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDS9LYbe78k
But I’m old. Just old enough to have watch superficiality chase many away.
So I literally have to run, and don’t have time to listen to your clips, and haven’t even read as carefully as your piece deserves. But I totally understand. And I’ll come back to the thread later.
I’m also admittedly something of a classical music snob myself.
Huzzah for the MoTab! I’m with you pretty much down the line, VC. Millenial, classical music snob, vastly prefer sacred music in worship services. Of course, I am a lifelong Mormon, and we have a long tradition of being very conservative in our approach to music in worship services.
-E
WOW Hits 2015 Deluxe Edition [fwiw]
01. We Believe (Newsboys)
02. The Only Name (Yours Will Be) (Big Daddy Weave)
03. Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) (United)
04. Thrive (Casting Crowns)
05. Do Something (Matthew West)
06. Back To You (Mandisa)
07. Keep Making Me (Sidewalk Prophets)
08. I Am (Crowder)
09. Waterfall (Chris Tomlin)
10. All The People Said Amen (Matt Maher)
11. Shake (MercyMe)
12. You Won’t Let Go (Michael W. Smith)
13. My Heart Is Yours (Passion feat. Kristian Stanfill)
14. Glorious Unfolding (Steven Curtis Chapman)
15. Forever (Kari Jobe)
16. I Will Follow (Jon Guerra)
17. Beautiful (Dan Bremnes)
18. Lay It Down (Sanctus Real)
19. Mercy (Radio Version) (Matt Redman)
20. Lift My Life Up (Unspoken)
01. This Is Amazing Grace (Phil Wickham)
02. Fix My Eyes (for KING & COUNTRY)
03. Speak Life (TobyMac)
04. Beautiful Day (Jamie Grace)
05. Multiplied (NEEDTOBREATHE)
06. More Of You (Colton Dixon)
07. Write Your Story (Francesca Battistelli)
08. No Man Is An Island (Tenth Avenue North)
09. Press On (Building 429 feat. Blanca Callahan)
10. Come Alive (Jeremy Camp)
11. Alive (Young & Free)
12. Love Alone Is Worth The Fight (Switchfoot)
13. Don’t Deserve You (Plumb)
14. Your Love Is Like A River (Third Day)
15. He Is With Us (Love & The Outcome)
16. Satisfied (About A Mile)
17. Words (Hawk Nelson feat. Bart Millard)
18. American Noise (Skillet)
19. Ready Set Go (Royal Tailor feat. Capital Kings)
I wanted to put this in the OP, but wanted thought some might object to the Latin. This is pretty much it for me as far as profoundly beautiful sacred music goes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5ken3RJBo
Oh, and it’s the snobbery — real or only perceived — that turns people off at any age.
My short answer: Neither of those were how the first century church worshiped. These are matters of taste. To criticize contemporary forms of worship solely because they are contemporary boils down to
Also, the title could be “the divisiveness of church music” fwiw. Lol.
Lauridsen is a contemporary composer that wrote the O Magnum Mysterium I just posted above. There’s nothing that says contemporary music has to be the same 7 words repeated 11 times.
Praise music (while I generally loathe it too) can be tasteful, but the endless orchestrated repetition of it will drive me out of a church too. I’ve joked before that it’s “Protestant Chant”, and I dispute that it puts people in a reverential mood so much as induces the same sort of mass emotional contagion that you find at so many other events (using the same sort of tools of repetition and peer pressure – “hey, why aren’t YOU singing along with us?”).
The real kicker, though, is when the praise team leader starts excoriating the congregation for not being emotional enough, and keeps on repeating the same 2 or 3 lines until he deems the congregation “ready”. This truly is nothing more than the lead singer putting himself up on a pedestal and making himself great.
I attended a church where such cretin gradually gained carte blanche over the music program, at which point I (and a great many others) left en masse.
My current church uses such songs, but in rotation with lots of other music, and they don’t let the praise team singers go on and on and on. It’s far more respectful the varied tastes of the church goers.
I think it boils down to this question: what is the purpose of music in a worship service?
I have an entirely different approach, which I don’t think I can put in 250 words.
However, I will provisionally agree with King Prawn. When we reorganized for a more “contemporary” service (in quotes because we also maintained a “traditional” which is really more of a mixed service) the reasons were explicitly: college students have a hard time getting up early, so we put a student service later in the day (11, instead of 9:30), college students respond better to more contemporary musical styles, which is convenient because most of the musicians we have to work with are guitar, drums, piano, and that as an evangelism tool, using a mix of music that leans more heavily towards contemporary forms is fine.
For the same reason, the pastor doesn’t wear a tie in that service. However, the sermon is exactly the same, and even a good chunk of the music is the same.
My only addition is that I do think the youth are missing something when they don’t hear the 500 year old music (and we do expose them to it), but it isn’t the loss of theological depth. It’s the history and connection to their particular spiritual -yes -tradition.
As one who plays contemporary worship music I’ll tell you that you’re not alone in believing this. We want music with rich meaning and even complex doctrinal themes. Some writers do it better than others. There are some songs that are real groaners. There are also some that are sublime.
But isn’t there snobbery around praise music? Like “We’re so genuine with our joy when we rock out for Jesus. Not like those old fuddy-duddies singing out of a hymnal.”
I am not a millennial, so let me get that out of the way. I am not a classical music snob, either. I prefer rock and roll/modern rock/etc. I enjoy listening to Christian rock sometimes, but I do not enjoy contemporary praise and worship. It drives me bananas to listen to the same chorus repeated over and over again ad nauseum. There is so much amazing theology contained in traditional worship music that it disturbs me to have it so casually tossed aside in favor of something with a beat. I find a body of believers reciting the Apostle’s Creed to be spiritually moving (something else that tends to get tossed aside in contemporary worship.) There are elements of traditional worship that I hear criticized as empty gestures, but I do not find them so.
As a member of our church’s leadership team, I have heard contemporary worship advocated during planning meetings for the express purpose of attracting “seekers”. I have countered with the idea that when young people come into a new church service seeking something, they are seeking God and they want to see a church body display evidence of a relationship deeper than a few songs during an hour on Sunday morning. If we want a contemporary worship service it should be because there are people worshiping at our church who prefer that style of worship, not because we are trying to influence a visitor.
You have articulated a great frustration of mine.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2014/07/22/reasons-why-we-should-still-be-using-hymnals/
To entertain, of course!
But seriously, folks… music is a form of, and complement to, worship. The music is an offering to the One being worshiped. A corollary is that the form of music should be chosen to accentuate its separateness from, and superiority to, the common.
What you’re describing is largely traditional, white-Eurocentric Christianity. Would you tell a church in Nigeria that they’re doing it wrong because they don’t dress like you do, sing in a style that is relevant to them, or play instruments other than a pipe organ?
God speaks to different peoples in different ways at different times, and the form is not what is important. The substance of what is said is what matters, and that substance has not changed. What does it matter how one worships so long as they’re worshiping Jesus? Isn’t that the point? Paul makes a similar point in Philippians 1:15-18 when he says even when people preach with false motives, Paul rejoices because the end result is Christ is preached.
Further, the proscription on forms of worship that are simply matters of style and not content is more in line with what Jesus condemned the Pharisees for: getting hung up on style over substance. Consider Psalm 150 which has an expansive view of praise that encourages it in all places in any way possible:
Yes. Both come from the same failing.
Whether on pipe organ or electric guitar, inviting people into the presence of the thrice Holy Almighty God is not something one should take lightly or with a haughty spirit.
I think a key difference comes down to whether a congregation is actually singing, or being sung at. If the congregation is actually singing, then whatever music is used is actually working. When it is being sung at, then the music has a serious problem.
When my old church went to all praise music all the time (backed by a full orchestra), the congregation sang less. When the leader started sermonizing during the songs, they stopped altogether (which made the music leader excoriate all the more). It went from participatory to a performance, and proved to be a sign of deeper problems in the church.
Agreed. My thought on it was that if the power should go out in the middle of a song it should have absolutely no effect on the worship that is happening.
I love all music that evokes a sense of awe. I find that in most of the secular music that I choose to listen to. What is awe inspiring to me differs from most of what I hear on the radio and often differs from what I hear in church. Mrs. Pessimist is more enthralled with the praise music style of worship than I am but I appreciate competency and enjoy an enthusiastic approach to worship. When we are visiting our second home in West Palm Beach we usually attend a Life Team worship service at Our Holy Name. The music is professional but does descend into some of the things you find distracting. What I find distracting is that although all of the lyrics and mass parts are displayed on a large screen for all to read there is a woman standing up front frantically signing everything in sign language like a mime with Tourette’s syndrome. That is distracting.
There are absolutely problems with churches as entertainment that are just as insincere in their worship as dead churches who sing the same songs every week because to do something new would disturb the cobwebs. Both are wrong. What I hear too little of is either side having tolerance (and this is the true definition of tolerance) for other styles that are not to their taste and celebrating the fact that Jesus is praised no matter what form it takes.
My experience in this is limited since Mormon culture is pretty monolithic and pervasive. Nevertheless, I have had a few opportunities to attend services by other churches. I’ve found that the traditional protestant churches line up pretty well with what I’m comfortable with, but that those more evangelical/born again don’t.
My first exposure was as a teenager; my high school choir agreed to perform at a local born-again non-denominational service. We were later on the program, so we experienced most of the music. It was… uncomfortable. I had never seen band instruments on stage, hand waving, clapping, etc. I was glad when we could sing our set and leave. The whole experience was a striking dichotomy to the quiet reverence that we enjoy in our services.
To this day, I strongly believe that the volume and timbre of the music makes a big impact on how strongly the Spirit is felt in a service, and it’s usually inversely proportional.
-E
This nails it. This can happen with any form. When we elevate the form above the substance, we have made the form an idol and a stumbling block to worship.
This is also my experience with church music. I attend masses without music simply to avoid the problem.
The cynic in me says that church music is merely a pretense for subpar musicians to perform in front of a captive audience.
I had one priest who relegated the music away from view (up in the Choir Loft), so they wouldn’t be performing. It mitigated, but didn’t quite solve, the problem.
Now that I think about it, the fact that choirs have lofts tells me that we’ve had this problem for a very, very long time, and it’s a human-nature thing.
I’ve always stated that low church misses some of the awe of worship while high church misses some of the intimacy. I’ve not seen an argument yet to dissuade me from that opinion.