The Song ‘Mary Did You Know’ Cloyingly Misses The Point

“Mary’s Magnificat is subversive. We may want songs with sentimentality, but Mary knows - seemingly better than we do - that the messiah that is coming is going to turn our world upside down."  - Pulpit Shenanigans 

It’s Time For New Church Music Metaphors - Craig Greenfield

I guess I'd like something more in church music; something grittier, something truer to my context.

There are a ton of nature metaphors we go back to time and time again in church music. Our Creator God made all this and it is definitely good.

However, it’s not a complete picture of my day to day reality. Nor does it reflect the day to day reality of most of my neighbors.

I guess I'd like something more in church music; something grittier, something truer to my context.

As Pete Rollins points out, a church that only knows how to celebrate can become like a spiritual crack house - a place we go to get our regular fix, our weekly high (which has to get more and more intense in order to give the same satisfaction).

I'd like to sing from the reality of the world I live in. I'd like to learn how to see and connect with God while surrounded by people, not just individualistically in nature.

And I'd like to sing through the tears I shed for the brokenness around me.

The full article is available here

God's Love Isn't Reckless, It's Thoughtful and Intentional - Andrew Gabriel

God loves us with clear and thoughtful intention.

The chorus of the song in question speaks of the “overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.”

I searched for the meaning of “reckless,” and Google tells me that “reckless” describes someone who acts “without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.”

I tried the more respectable Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, and, similarly, it defines reckless as “marked by lack of proper caution: careless of consequences” and even as “irresponsible.”

I don’t think too many Christians would like to say that God is “careless” or that God’s love doesn’t “care about consequences.”  Instead, God loves us with the clear and thoughtful intention “that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

I think the author meant that God’s love is relentless. At my church, we've changed the lyric to "perfect love."

The full article is available here

Why My Church Doesn’t Use Songs by Hillsong or Jesus Culture/Bethel - Dan Cogen, New City Church

If my church was singing songs from churches that teach dangerously unbiblical doctrines, that would mean several negative things.

My concern is that if we embrace the songs these churches are writing, it would lend credence to their ministries whose theologies are significantly erroneous, at best.

Perhaps the most significant error that Hillsong and Bethel teach is the Prosperity Gospel.  Bethel's senior pastor Bill Johnson even claimed that he could not accept a theology that allows for suffering (not sure how he squares that with Jesus' temptation, agony in the Garden, or crucifixion?)

So here's what it boils down to for me.  If my church was singing songs from churches that teach dangerously unbiblical doctrines, that would mean several negative things ...

1. that we endorse them and are willing to promote their music
2. that we are willing to contribute to their financial progress to continue spreading more erroneous music
3. that we have a deliberate willingness to compromise our theology
   

(Editors aside: this article doesn't even touch on gay conversion therapy, which psychologists have categorized as child abuse, which both churches continue to promote and support).

The full article is available here

5 Of The Most Problematic Christmas Carols - Bob Hiller

All I want for Christmas is you … to think critically about the songs you sing in church, even during Advent and Christmas.

This is the time of year where some of our weakest, most heterodox, and downright strange church songs get lots of attention. It is rather frustrating that these songs tend to be quite popular!

It's likely these songs will be sung in your church this season, despite the fact that they contain some significant flaws. Sentimentality and nostalgia are powerful emotions , but why can they be problematic in Advent?

Because a vital component of the story of Jesus' birth is that it wasn't all warm and fuzzy. It took place in the midst of real life pain, blood, poverty, imperial oppression, and discomfort. Jesus was fully human, and cloying fictional and sanitized stories can obscure or distract from this crucial understanding.

All I want for Christmas is you…to think critically about the songs you sing in church, even during Advent and Christmas.

(5) Do You Hear What I Hear? Here’s a song that is just trying too hard to be profound. Instead of propounding some penetrating spiritual insight, it merely creates a fictional game of telephone taking place on the night that Jesus was born.

(4) Away In A Manger. This song exemplifies one perpetual problem we find plaguing Christmas hymns: sentimental Gnosticism. There is something inside of us that doesn’t want to think of our Lord as being fully human. We want to clean him up. We think it impious and crass to speak of the holy infant as a baby who fills his holy diaper and keeps his parents up at night crying for milk.

(3) We Three Kings of Orient Are. Liturgically, this song doesn’t belong to Christmas either. The magi are men of Epiphany. In light of this, I am recommending that my church do an Epiphany Living Nativity. Only, in this one, instead of everyone standing around, reverently gazing at the baby Jesus doll, we’ll have six or seven overly costumed magicians chasing my two year old around our parking lot while Mary cooks dinner and Joseph has bad dreams.

(2) Little Drummer Boy. The story isn’t true, it's fiction. It also puts forth some works righteousness (do your best and then the baby Jesus will smile at you). But most crucially, it doesn't seem plausible that an exhausted, sore, and still pain-addled mother would let a drummer bang a snare drum for her newborn baby.

(1) Silent Night. The main idea of this song is not…well…true. The night when Jesus was born was not a silent or calm one, just as no human birth has ever been silent. Far from the Gnostic, sentimentalized picture of a baby with glorious beams of light shooting from his face, our Jesus was born into a loud, sinful, messy world in a loud, painful, and messy way. Mary gave birth next to a feeding trough.

Praise Music Industry Has Led Many Churches To Exchange Worship for Emotionalism - Les Lamkin, longtime church music leader

Consider what (not who, but what) is being adored in much of current Praise Music. It is certainly not our Triune God’s great saving work celebrated throughout history and in our own lives. Rather, it’s our own emotional status, our own emotional wants, our own psychological selves.

With the sweeping popularity and utilization of songs produced by the Praise Music Industry - specifically those from non-denominational megachurches like Bethel and Hillsong - the having of an emotional experience has trumped all other criteria for determining faith and practice during Sunday services.

Here's the problem; the Bible never connects worship to emotion or music. It encourages emotion as a response to experiencing God - but it also warns against allowing emotion to be our sole guide regarding faith and practice.

Worship is supposed to be the gathered congregation together accepting God's invitation into God's way of life; into the Divine Life of God as it is expressed in selfless and absolute love of God lived out forever in the Trinity as community.

Worship is meant to be formative too, not merely expressive.

The music currently coming out of the Praise Music Industry has reversed all this and made worship about us individually, our individual wants, our individual feelings, our individual emotions..

Consider the thematic and lyrical content of much of current Praise Music; it is certainly not God’s great saving work celebrated throughout history and in our own lives. Rather, it’s our own emotional status, our own emotional wants, our own psychological selves.

Current Praise Music Industry culture has substituted the Divine Communal Life of the Triune God with content that is borderline-sensual, manipulative, has a lot of emotional-neediness, and prioritizes instant emotional gratification.

The full article is available here

How To Help Church Move On From "Praise & Worship" Music - Jonathan Aigner

Even by its own standards (i.e., number of butts in the seats) commercialized, contemporary praise & worship is a failed experiment at the congregational level.

I see the 3 main reasons for the decline (if not demise) of the commercialized "Praise & Worship" model.

(1) Younger generations are seeking old ways of doing things. This thankfully means an increasing rejection of the church of the 1990s and 2000s. More emphasis is being placed on liturgy and community, and less on using corporate worship chiefly as a contrived evangelistic tool. There is a burning desire to move past the shallowness of contemporary evangelicalism.

(2) Contemporary worship is an unstable and non-theological movement. To be thoroughly contemporary necessitates a slavish allegiance to the new, the current, the hip, the cool, and the commercial. It requires a thorough rejection of what is old, passe, not current, not cool, and what doesn’t make money. The bright shiny objects that get butts in the seats must continue becoming brighter and shinier. This bait-and-switch tactic is wearing thin.

(3) It's a failed construct. Even by its own standards (i.e., number of butts in the seats) commercialized, contemporary praise & worship is a failed experiment at the congregational level.  While it may fill ostentatious megachurches and suit their money-changer business model, it is an AstroTurf approach when congregations work best with grass-roots approaches.

Here are a few ways we can push forward toward a more profound understanding and experience of corporate worship.

• Choose music that can be sung well by a congregation. Corporate worship is about a time of gathering together, not about conformity to commercial forms. The "Praise & Worship" music that the Christian industry produces deemphasizes the human voice, and emphasizes soloistic interpretation, affected vocal production, and contrived performance.
• Stop conditioning attendees to be spectators. Look for liturgy, not entertainment. Worship is supposed to be the work of the people, not the jesusy entertainment of the masses. Music in worship isn’t supposed to be a vehicle for emotional manipulation, sensory gratification, or hooking an audience. Be a church where music serves the liturgy, not the masses.
• Reduce the influence of the commercial worship industry. It should disturb us greatly how much of contemporary worship is driven by money. It leads to a Sunday morning flood of poor compositions, both musically and theologically. It leads to what Michael Raiter calls “Hillsongization,” when everyone sings the same songs in basically the same way. It leads to the quality of a church’s “worship” being judged solely by how good their cover band is. It leads to a further loss of the importance of gathered worship, and the understanding of “worship” as more than just cool music. It leads to the mentality of, “With my iTunes, I can worship anywhere!”

It’s not really about music; it’s about the very purpose of gathered worship. It’s about theology, not experience. It’s about participation, not consumption. It’s about liturgy, not jesusy entertainment. It’s about being a church for the world, not getting butts in the seats.

The full article is available here

The Song 'Mary Did You Know' Misses What The Magnificat Is About - Jeff Wiersma

Based on the text of the Magnificat, it sure seems like Mary knew, which would render the song 'Mary Did You Know' moot. 

In addition to that, the lyrics of 'Mary Did You Know' glosses over the subversive social message Mary sings of in the Magnificat.  

As Nadia Bolz Weber writes in Preaching The Whole Magnificat:

"Mary's song isn’t a docile picture of obedience singing about how great it is to be pregnant. Mary is singing of nothing less than complete overturning of the social and economic order.

You see, there’s a reason why the Magnificat is said to have terrified the Russian Czars. Because, the message is that if you find yourself rich and powerful then … watch out! This young little Jewish girl is not singing about a whole lot of good news for you."

Real Worship - The Rev. J. Gary Brinn in Constructive Faith

What we do in our faith community only matters if it changes what we do everywhere else. Mouths without hands is empty praise.

God is a powerful force of creativity, compassion, and love in the universe. Our praise or worship is an attempt to align ourselves with that powerful force because it is both our source and our end.

This is all well and good as an abstraction, but what does that look like in our lives? Is it only about interior faith and exterior avoidance of sin? Or is there something more?

For those of us in the Christian tradition, the construct of a God with agency and a passive creation changed radically with the arrival of Jesus, the Hebrew prophet and teacher. We Christians believe that, - in Jesus - the world had a direct experience of the divine.  God was in fact instead a force for healing and justice rather than being other-worldly or a warrior-king. 

If our purpose in praising and worshiping God is to align ourselves with the original force of creativity and compassion - of love and growth, of the ordinary miracles of today - then we should know that this is neither interior and nor static. It is not “give my heart to Jesus.” God does not only need your heart. God needs your hands.

The trajectory of our faith - our growing understanding of God and the event of God’s anointed in the person of Jesus - demands that we no longer be passive lumps waiting for divine intervention. We are the divine intervention. This is how God chose to act in the world, through the beautifully imperfect flesh and blood of humanity. That is how God acted in Jesus. It is how God acts today.

What we do in our faith community only matters if it changes what we do everywhere else. Mouths without hands is empty praise.

The full article is available here

Why Worship? The Rev. J. Gary Brinn in Constructive Faith

We worship God because we are toward God and toward God- as-experienced-in others. Moments of communal worship are moments of doubling, of tripling, of giving and receiving; a threefold relationship of self, other, and God.

As many studies have shown, communal worship is in decline. Many of those who were raised in the church no longer regularly attend what the church offers as worship services.

Yet many of those who no longer attend still seek for meaning and still have spiritual lives. It's just that our worship services often tend to fail to both emphasize a communal experience of God and to connect attendees to something larger than their individualism. 

This perhaps isn't surprising - given that we have worked on the how of worship often without ever addressing the why. The failure is ours as the church.

It's inarguably true that experiencing moments of transcendence and being a part of efforts that make a difference in the world can happen in places other in than in church services; perhaps even in better and more authentic forms.

So then why do we gather together to worship?

We do not praise God to bargain with God, so that isn't the reason.

We do not praise God for God's own sake, so that also isn't the reason. 

Praising God should driven by our humanness and our hardwiring for connection and community because we are oriented for that interrelation with God in our being.  Praise is just one mood of this relatedness.

Our thriving as humans depends on our interconnectedness. We are not simply animals designed to rut and reproduce, because we have this x in the equation; our souls. We see evidence of this mysterious x in art, in sacrificial love, and in that part of us that soars toward God and toward the other (the other beyond one's own family/tribe, for even thieves take care of their own).

And so we act out our praise of God - and of the way in which we are hardwired toward connection God - in community, in acts of communal worship which are moments of doubling, of tripling, of giving and receiving; a threefold relationship of self, other, and God. This is why no worship that is about meeting my individual needs will ever be real worship.  

Worship can involve transcendence, can speak to changing the world, can give you the tools to get through next week, and can give you comfort when you need comfort and challenge you when you are stuck, but it does so properly only when it aligns with being toward God and toward God-as-experienced-in the other.

The full article is available here

Worship Words: Too Important to Neglect - Joan Huyser-Honig in Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

Our words form us whether or not we pay attention to how they are doing so.  The church is starving for a richer picture of the God we worship. 

God speaks through Balaam's donkey and speaks through flawed humans.  So is using worship cliches or cliche practices that much of a problem, as long as we're sincere?

The answer = when your congregation's worship language includes only a couple names for or aspects of God, then worshipers receive an imbalanced understanding of God.

Worship language deserves far more attention than it gets in the average congregation.

Ron writes, "Christians frequently talk about salvation as 'inviting Jesus into my heart," as if the day you got saved, you made a bargain with God.  That's such an incomplete understanding of salvation and especially dangerous in our consumer culture."

Debra writes, "Our words form us whether or not we pay attention to how they are doing so.  Just as children quickly learn to speak with the vocabulary, tones, and inflections of their parents, so we learn to 'speak' our spiritual lives with the words and tones, with the emotional and theological range, of what we experience at worship.

"The [church] is starving for a richer picture of the [God] we worship," Debra writes.

To discuss how songs picture God, Worship Words quotes Lester Ruth's research on Trinitarian language in contemporary worship music. Ruth, who teaches worship and liturgy at Asbury Theological Seminary, used Christian Copyright Licensing Information (CCLI) top 25 song data from 1989-2004. (Many songs stayed so popular that only 72 songs made the list during that time).

None of the songs named the Trinity or God's triune nature. Just 3 songs mentioned all three persons of the Trinity.  Most named only Jesus.

This research demonstrates the difference between how God is spoken of in contemporary worship song and how the Bible speaks of God.

The full article is available here.

The Not So Hidden Message in Contemporary Christian Music - Ken Dahl

There seems to be a continual psychological love affair for some distant place that is “Oh, so much better than Earth,” which sadly creates a contempt for the world of the here and now.

This irreverence for the world we're all born into is almost like wishing death would come faster so they could get out of this nasty, horrible place God supposedly called ‘good.’

The following is the result of a quick research project I did of just two days of to-and-from-work commutes, listening to a contemporary Christian music radio station.

Out of all the songs I heard, these five messages were loud and clear.

1. How terribly, unbearably hard, it is ‘down here below’ in this burdensome world.

2. A perpetual “I am nothing without You God” underlying theme throughout the music. I call this “not-enoughness theology.”

3. An almost begging, ultra-dependent neediness and crying to ‘God up above’ to please ‘come down’ and help us.

4. An emotion-based romance, almost lamenting for some future utopian, off-planet paradise that will be oh so much better than the life we have to continually struggle through here in the here and now.

5. An endless, very romantic emotion-based adoration and worship.

This continual barrage of sad, desperate dependency actually fosters an emotional, low-self-esteem, soap opera-like, daily lifestyle. And it paints an unrealistic picture of us being an emotionally-unhealthy, ultra-dependent, otherwise-helpless bunch of needy souls barely making it through the week without our God.

Although there are some small pockets of Christians who have moved beyond the theology that many of these songs portray, the majority of evangelicals still unfortunately cling to this belief system cross section.

When we are ‘worshiping’ an up-there-somewhere God it becomes not much different than laying flowers and fresh fruit at the base of a statue in some other religion. In reality, it IS the same thing with extra emotional romance, the feelings of indebtedness, unworthiness, and not-enoughness added.

Why would I want that? Why would anyone want that?
I guess for reasons of comfort perhaps. It is indeed the opposite of taking 100% personal responsibility for our own demeanor, our own maturity, our own personal growth, our own humanitarian benevolence, and even our own happiness and mental wellness. All the music purports that we are simple “not enough” to govern our own lives in such a responsible manner.

Its The Theology!
I began to realize that it is not the lyrics of these songs that are ‘all wrong,’ it is the theology. It is the theology that is creating this perpetual ultra-dependency that never progresses beyond a certain point.

The Strange Romance for Anywhere Else (But Here)
In some of the songs, there seemed to be a continual psychological love affair for some distant place that is “Oh, so much better than Earth,” which sadly creates a strange sort of contempt for the natural world of the here and now. This boredom and irreverence for the world we were born in is strange at best. It is almost as if they wish death would come faster so they could get out of this nasty, horrible place God supposedly called ‘good.’

The full article is available here

Worship Resources for Faithful Climate Action - Center For Public Justice

April 5th is the Global Day of Prayer for Climate Action.  Use these engaging resources and activities to support faith action on climate change in your community!

These sermons and small group studies can help foster healthy dialogue about the causes and consequences of climate change. The songs and prayers can help open up space for understanding and accepting personal responsibility for the injustices of a changing climate.

Please, pray and act for climate justice - and engage your faith community in the same! We hope that these materials will serve as a guide as you express gratitude for the gift of creation, pray for those impacted by climate change, and also to pray for the leaders charged with making the policies that will shape our future.

The full article is available here

The Business of Worship Music - Leonard Vander Zee in The Banner

There’s an old saying that Christians absorb more theology from what they sing than from most other sources. If that’s the case, then, considering the CCLI top 25, we’ll soon be in a theological desert.

Contemporary Christian musicians are not any more immune to the lure of money than you or I are. And they can make lots more by writing songs that are like the ones in the top 25, with similar emotive words and chord changes. The logic of all this is that the songs will begin to sound strangely similar. From there it spreads to Christian music and hymnal publishers.

I fear the same thing may be happening in many local churches. There’s a strong urge to model our worship on what we see as successful and what we hear on Christian radio. As a result, what many congregations sing in worship is overly influenced by a business model rather than what’s theologically rich and spiritually healthy for the life and worship of the congregation.

I’m not saying that all the songs and artists in the top echelons of the CCLI world are shallow or imitative. But I’ve heard from talented songwriters who produce theologically robust and musically inventive music that there is enormous pressure from publishers and distributors to go with what sells. And the results are plain to see.

So what’s the answer? We first need to acknowledge the problem, and it’s not trivial. There’s an old saying that Christians absorb more theology from what they sing than from most other sources. If that’s the case, then, considering the CCLI top 25, we’ll soon be in a theological desert.

Once we recognize the problem, pastors and music leaders in congregations need to be much more careful about what their congregations are singing. It may take some work, but I know of contemporary-Christian-music-singing churches who carefully plan worship music with musical and theological sensitivity. The material is out there, and sometimes it comes right from budding artists in their own congregations.

The full article is available here

How Christian Music Sanitizes The Wilderness - Chaplain Mike in Internet Monk

The Christian life is not all sweetness and light.  People know this, but praise music doesn't often help them know what to do with that knowledge and the feelings that go along with it.  We live in real wilderness.  We do best to acknowledge it.  Sanitizing it helps no one.

Praise music is especially weak when it comes to giving voice to the full spectrum of human experiences and emotions.  Today's church has largely embraced a theology of glory and neglects the trinitarian reality of the suffering God. It shows in Praise Music.

Psalm 42 was the basis for a winsome little song "As The Deer." The song exemplifies a big problem Praise Music has when it comes to using imagery from the Bible, especially the book of Psalms.

Rather than meditating on the Psalmist is actually using imagery, it is interpreted in a way that is easily grasped in our culture - in romantic fashion.  That is manifestly NOT what the imagery refers to in Psalm 42.

The psalmist is NOT longing for God because he has a precious "personal relationship" with God and wants to celebrate that.  Rather, HE PINES FOR GOD BECAUSE GOD CAN'T BE FOUND! 

The deer in the psalm can't find a stream.  It is dying of thirst and desperately concerned for its very life.  This is why the psalmist is thirsty for God.  He is dying of thirst for an ABSENT GOD.

Even when today's songwriters make use of the Psalms they tend to transform the raw, earthy language that describes our complex, often messy relationships with God and others into easily digestible spiritual sentiments. 

This is similar to what today's Christianity does to the Bible.  It takes one image from a rich, profound, complex and realistic description of life and latches on to it because the image evokes a simple, devotional sentiment that prompts an immediate emotion.

The Christian life is not all sweetness and light.  People know this, but praise music doesn't often help them know what to do with that knowledge and the feelings that go along with it.

We live in real wilderness.  We do best to acknowledge it.  Sanitizing it helps no one.

The full article is available here

Reconciling With The Church Through Worship - Shannon Hollemans in do justice!

How can we show people Christ when the church is keeping them away from Christ?

Like many, I am a Christian both in spite of the church and because of the church. So how can we show people Christ or disciple them when the church is keeping them away from Christ?

Reconciling worship can be characterized by what happens outside of worship as much as anything that happens within it. It is not about a sermon series or carefully crafting congregational prayers.

This is a DNA issue.

It is one thing for the church to be heartbroken over injustice; it is another for the church to practice justice—in the decisions of those with power and in the life of the congregation. It is about us, all of us, being the church, together.

1. Reconciling worship embraces and celebrates the diversity of God’s people. This means that the images used convey that everyone is represented and reflected before God in worship. This mean it is a way of seeking participation from members representing every walk of life, not merely making room for diverse expression and participation, but actively pursuing it.

2. Reconciling worship remembers the causes of the hurting and oppressed. If there is any sin of which the North American church needs to repent together, it is our apathy. Oftentimes, the hurt caused by the church is not a result of what the church does as much as what it does not do. Great pain is caused when the church is silent. When people are devastated and dumbfounded and at a loss for words, that is where the Church should be—offering comfort, lamenting injustice, remembering, and speaking hope.

3. Reconciling worship recognizes and addresses the need for community. Much of worship music implies a “me and Jesus” understanding of our relationship to God. But in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 we read that it is not my body that is a temple of the Holy Spirit but the body, us.Reconciling worship has both vertical and horizontal aspects because worship, at its heart, is about communing with God and one another.

4. Reconciling worship fosters space for lament and grief. It should speak to the hearts of the many who come to worship with emptiness stemming from loss. Reconciling worship creates space that leaves room for diverse expressions of lament.

5. Reconciling worship nurtures repentance. There is immense power in confession, particularly when we do it as a community.Worship can only offer us comfort when it speaks to our very real pain, often as the result of sin. It is in turning and returning to God that the broken, all of us, can meet the God of heaven and earth face to face.

6. Reconciling worship uses language with care. Our hearts are revealed in our language, both verbal and nonverbal. And all too frequently, so are our biases. Reconciling worship avoids “us” versus “them” language, like “believers” and “nonbelievers”. It recognizes the diversity of the people in the pews, and of the people that they love. It's all about not allowing our biases to speak when leading worship. It’s about asking ourselves: how do my biases come through here? If person X were in the crowd, how would she or he hear this?

7. Reconciling worship cultivates restoration and hope. Reconciling worship turns our lens from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life. It is for both the wounded and the one who has done the wounding. Our hope in Christ is the source of our unity in our diversity. When the focus is on God, not on us, it is much easier to find hope. [It should focus on the kingdom coming and God's will being done now through restoration and renewal.]

As followers of Christ we are meant to be ambassadors of reconciliation. It is an overwhelming task that we have the privilege of participating in through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The full article is available here

Why People Aren't Singing Along At Church - Kenny Lamm in Renewing Worship

Many of today's Contemporary Christian Music songs are not suitable for congregational singing by virtue of their rhythms (too difficult for the average singer) or too wide of a range (consider the average singer—not the vocal superstar on the recording/stage).

Prior to the Reformation, church music was largely done for the people. The music was performed by professional musicians and sung in an unfamiliar language; Latin.

The Reformation gave music back to the people, including congregational singing which employed simple, attainable tunes with solid, scriptural lyrics in the language of the people.

Church music once again became participatory.  The evolution of the printed hymnal brought with it an explosion of congregational singing and the church’s love for singing increased.

But within the past 15 years, a shift in church music leadership has begun to move the congregation back to pre-Reformation, pew potato spectators.  What has occurred could be summed up as the re-professionalization of church music and the loss of a key goal of music leading – enabling the people to sing their praises to God.

Simply put, we are breeding a culture of spectators in our churches, changing what should be a participatory environment to a concert event.

We are singing songs not suitable for congregational singing. There are a lot of new church music songs today, but in the vast pool of those songs, many are not suitable for congregational singing by virtue of their rhythms (too difficult for the average singer) or too wide of a range (consider the average singer—not the trained, professional vocalist on the recording/stage).

We are singing in keys too high for the average singer. The people we are leading in music generally have a limited range and do not have a high range. When we pitch songs in keys that are too high, the congregation will stop singing, tire out, and eventually quit, becoming spectators. Remember that our responsibility is to enable the congregation to sing their praises, not to showcase our great platform voices by pitching songs in our power ranges. The basic range of the average singer is an octave and a fourth from A to D (more).

We have created spectator events, building a performance environment:  A discouraging trend in church worship lately includes the use of fog machines, lasers, and sophisticated light shows.  This used to be the domain primarily of mega churches, but technological advances have enabled even the smallest churches to blind and deafen their congregations.  This performance philosophy calls undue attention to things other than corporate expressions to God.

The congregation feels they are not expected to sing. As music leaders leaders, we can easily get so involved in our professional production that we fail to be authentic, invite the congregation into the journey of worship, and then do all we can to facilitate that experience in singing familiar songs, introducing new songs properly, and singing in the proper congregational range.  Stay alert to how well the congregation is tracking with you and alter course as needed.

Vocalists ad lib too much. Keep the melody clear and strong. (It often helps a great deal to have a member of each gender singing the melody an octave apart from each other so that every one in the congregation has someone to follow).  The congregation is made up of people with limited ranges and limited musical ability. When we stray from the melody to ad lib, the people try to follow us and end up frustrated and quit singing.

The full article is available here

4 Ways The Church Can Make Good Art Again - David Ryan Gutierrez in Relevant Magazine

Real talk: there is very little about the modern evangelical church that is creative. And this is a huge problem.

The church was once the workshop for the greatest art the world has ever known. Past tense.

Many churches are no longer seeking to create unique encounters with God. Instead, we’re often settling for following a successful model from CD's, books or personalities.

Real talk: there is very little about the modern evangelical church that is creative. And this is a huge problem.

1. Embrace The Crazy Beauty of Artists. Most of us can’t hear the music anymore. We’ve grown creatively deaf. So when faced with an artist who can still hear their internal song loud and clear, it’s easy for us to assume they’re crazy.

Artists can be a challenge to work with. They’re an emotional crowd. But that’s only because they’re more in tune with their emotional spectrum than most. That’s how God designed them. And because of that, artists can give language and vision to our deepest emotions. When we reach the end of our limited emotional bandwidth, artists take us further.

2. Demand A Higher Standard. While art is subjective by nature, there are elements that are objectively good or bad. An out-of-tune note is displeasing to the ear. Wooden dramatic performances are uncomfortable to watch. Poor writing fails to engage the mind.

The Church is, of course, meant to be a place of support and encouragement. However, we have to be careful that we don’t extend this to a point that costs us objectively good art.

3. Refuse Mimicry. If the Church is going to re-establish itself as a birthplace for creativity, it has to take a stand against mimicry. Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, but when our efforts end at imitation, we've missed an opportunity to grow.

It’s certainly easier. It’s safer. But it’s wrong. With so many new songs to write, new sermons to speak and new pieces to perform, why would we ever settle for the art that’s already been created?

4. Take Risks. Standing on the front lines of a revolution will always carry with it greater risk. Many of us who take up the charge as creative leaders will find ourselves taking the first shots from the opposition.

Great art is an investment of self and soul. Any investor will tell you that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Artfully leading people into the story of Christ is a risky endeavor.

But that’s only because there’s no greater reward than inspiring creation to return to its Creator.

The full article is available here

How To Write A Worship Song In 5 Minutes Or Less - from The Blimey Cow

2 Big Ways To Keep Your Church Music Fresh - Church Leaders

There is no pat answer for avoiding cliché. It takes extra care and intentionality by each and every person involved in the creative process.

The common misconception is that if something works for a while, it will work forever.  This is commonplace in the Church. We become attached to our practices.

In order to keep the Gospel message of Jesus Christ fresh, you do not need more. But you do need change. Innovation means something new.

For church band leaders, we can keep things fresh by doing a couple of simple things.

1. Remove “safety” from your Sunday service ideals
Safety is important when it comes to keeping my children alive or making sure I stay on the right side of the road. I promise you that the person who is stepping into church for the first time in 10 years fully expects to be rocked a little. Precaution from you will only lead to precaution from them.

2. Look at what has comatosed your congregation
There is no pat answer for avoiding cliché. It takes extra care and intentionality by each and every person involved in the creative process.  A good idea would be to go back through your services and see what has comatosed your crowd, and disturb and disrupt them to a place where they are able to see Christ’s face fresh again.

The full article is available here