The song matters more than the words

Words don't just mean things, they do things!

Hypothetical scenario: you're leading singing at church and you need one more song than expected. You have two choices. One song has only a few basic lines about God's love, but it's sure to get people singing passionately. Another has five verses of theological firepower, but the melody is so daggy nobody can sing it with a straight face.

Gut reaction - which do you choose?

To help you decide, I want to suggest here that the propositional content of songs (what the words mean when you add them all together) is not the be-all-and-end-all of a song (because it is not the be-all-and-end-all of Scripture, or indeed any act of communication).

Of course, my title is deliberately provocative. (Made you look!) I’m not for a moment suggesting that the lyrical content is unimportant. I’m not asking for heretical songs, I’m not asking for vacuous songs. This is my tenth year of training and blogging and trying to get people to pay more attention to music ministry as a Word ministry.

But in doing so I also want us to avoid a reductive approach to words, and avoid divorcing words from music in a song. Here are my two points:

1. Words don’t just mean things, they also do things. They can do lots of different things. And I’m disturbed when I hear people assume that song lyrics can be reduced merely to true statements with a melody attached.
2. A song is not just words put to music, it is a new creation which is more than the sum of its parts.

Words do stuff

A youth group leader complains about a line which says ‘I will say blessed be the name of the Lord’ because she’s not sure whether that is a true statement about a future action he will in fact undertake.

A songleader changes the words of a popular song because it says ‘I’m dancing on this mountain top’ and he’s not sure that everyone in the church is, actually, dancing and even if they were the church is in a valley so mountain top dancing is probably inaccurate.

The problem with these examples is they treat words as if they can do only one thing. They either report a true fact, or a false one. But words can do other things, like encourage people to a future act, or bring a picture to mind which inspires a certain response.

This is a theological observation, not just something that applies to songs. It applies to the Bible. Kevin Vanhoozer is a brilliant evangelical writing on the issue of how to interpret the bible. His best observation is that communication is an action. God is speaking. He does thing with words. And he does different things with different words.

‘Because God does many things with words, our responses too will be varied: we must affirm the doctrine, obey the law, hold fast in hope to the promises, rejoice in the gospel.’ (Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scriptures and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2002), 39)

‘Do not steal’ is not true or false, it’s a command to be obeyed or disobeyed. ‘Do not take your Holy Spirit from me’ is not a comment on the perseverance of the Saints, it’s a prayer to be prayed. ‘Sing unto the Lord a New Song’ is not a command, it’s an invitation to sing with our eyes set on him.

Songs are more than the sum of their parts

 A  songwriter feels that there are not enough songs on the seriousness of judgment (which is true), so puts the phrase “everyone one of us deserves to die” (which is also true) to a boppy tune with large major chords and exciting off beat rhythm.

A youth minister rewrites the words to a well known song about sexual healing to make it teach profound truths about ‘spiritual healing’

The problem is with both examples that what the words might mean in a different context is totally being undermined by a mismatch with what the music means.

The lyricist of the classic song ‘Over the Rainbow’ (picture Judy Garland singing in the opening scenes of Wizard of Oz!)‘ puts it like this:

“Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.” (E. Yip Harburg)

Here I go... out on a limb

Our songs are meant to do something. They are not simply meant to be true words.

So what was my gut reaction to our big decision - simple truths joyfully sung, or theological firepower which nobody can standing singing?

Of course if songwriters are doing their jobs then you'll never have to choose between great lyrics and a great song. But hypothetically, I’d go for (I think I’m happy to say this … I know it’s going to irritate some people!) a song which joyfully inspires a congregation to sing a few simple truths about God together (‘Jesus loves me this I know...’) than a song which puts four volumes of the Church Dogmatics to to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’. There, I said it. Am I wrong? (Or am I just trying to make you think).

The artist and their life's work

As artists, we love art. We love going to concerts, exhibitions, reading books, listening to music. Having created our own art, we are aware of the thought processes and techniques that often lie behind art created by others - so we are equipped with analytical tools that allow us to carefully critique and experience art in great depth. We love immersing ourselves in the creative realm of life.

Then there is the art we create. When you are in the middle of creating, the energy is flowing, the momentum is building, and you know something great is lying just over the horizon, the feeling is amazing. It is truly enjoyable. It's exciting. It brings a thrill and a natural high like nothing else. And it often brings those who are creating together in a truly unique way. Seeing the piece of art finally completed is the ultimate reward - and seeing it being appreciated by others is an added bonus. Over the course of our lives, we long to create a body of work - our 'life's work' - that will say something about us, and capture the imagination of others.

Of course, art and creating can be all-consuming. Art often engages our senses in a way that other things in life don't. It can seem like our whole being is being channelled into experiencing or creating that piece of art. It's often that very focus and attention to the smallest of details that makes experiencing art so enjoyable, and creating art so rewarding.

But the thing is, art can take over. The pursuit of excellence in creating can fill every little gap in our minds so that there is no room left for other things. Even the pursuit of experiencing art can do the same - we go to so many concerts, read so many books, listen to so many albums, that we have no headspace left for other things. Relationships slip down the list of priorities. Bible reading and prayer time suffers.

Without realising it, by sheer virtue of the amount of time and headspace we dedicate to art, we find ourselves worshipping creation, and not the Creator. We would not go so far as to deny God - we still deeply desire to follow him and serve him. It's just that by filling our minds with so much other stuff, we have, in reality, neglected him.

In 'Art and the Bible', Francis Schaeffer challenges us to think differently. He writes: "... there is a very real sense in which the Christian life itself should be our greatest work of art. Even for the great artist, the most crucial work of art is his life." (p49).

And of course our lives are to be viewed not just as a work of art, but as an act of worship. As the Apostle Paul writes - we are to offer our bodies as "living sacrifices" to God as our "spiritual act of worship" (Romans 12:1).

Certainly, art and creating are wonderful gifts from God, the one true Creator. Seeking to create a body of artwork throughout our life is a great thing. But what will we prioritise each day? Will we prioritise creating our 'life's work' in art? Or will we humbly acknowledge that as we seek to follow Jesus, our 'life's work' should quite literally be a lifetime of work on our life itself? Will our life's work - work that says something about who we worship, who we are, and captures the imagination of others -  actually be our life itself?

GC

Please manipulate my emotions

There is a great deal of suspicion of emotional manipulation. Sometimes I think that suspicion is justified. A friend told me a story about a church where the keyboard was hooked up to an electric shock machine, and just at the right moment the keyboard player would hit the button and people in the front row would be brought to their knees by the ‘electrifying’ power of the sermon.

But sometimes I wonder whether we are oversensitive to the power of music on our emotions, as if being moved emotionally by a song is less ‘worthy’ of us than to be moved intellectually by a sermon.

Consider the tension felt by the great father of the faith, Augustine. His conversion story was marked by an emotional musical encounter:

“I wept at your [God’s] hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of your sweetly singing church. Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth was poured out in my heart, whence a feeling of piety surged up and my tears ran down. And these things were good for me.”¹

Yet at the same time, the Platonism which Augustine’s culture had subscribed to made him suspicious of such animal attraction merely based on music:

“the gratification of my flesh – to which I ought not to surrender my mind to be enervated – frequently leads my astray ... when it happens to me that the song moves me more than the thing which is sung, I confess that I have sinned blamefully and then prefer not to hear the singer.²

For similar reasons, another thinker, Athanasius, decided that it would be better not to sing at all. For him it was important that the Psalms were recited not ‘from a desire for pleasing sound’, but as a more spiritual ‘manifestation of harmony among the thoughts of the soul’.³ Augustine, to his credit, didn’t go that far. But he did look down on the role of music, saying it merely enabled a ‘weaker soul’ to ‘be elevated to an attitude of devotion’.⁴

But I don’t think it is an admission of weakness in our soul to recognise that we are embodied: our thoughts and actions are influenced by what we eat, whether we have slept enough recently, and whether our brain chemicals are balanced. To recognise that music can have a non-rational effect on our souls is simply to recognise that we are human. Rather than be afraid of any emotional effect, we should seek out music which draws us closer to God and honours Jesus. Provided there is no deception, and the emotional power of the music is anchored in the truth, and we aren’t trying to substitute for the Spirit’s work in changing hearts, I can’t see the danger. If ‘manipulation’ means simply helping me to feel the weight of Jesus’ glory then please, go ahead: some days I could do with a bit of musical manipulation.

1 Augustine, Confessiones IX, vi, 14 in James McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 154.

2 Augustine, Confessiones X, xxxiii, 49-50 in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 154.

3 Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum 29, PG XXVII, 40-1 in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 53.

4 Augustine, Confessiones X, xxxiii, 49-50 in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 154.

Great acoustic inspiration

If you're thinking about how to do acoustic music in your church, check out the youtube channel Watch Listen Tell. It features a bunch of less mainstream artists doing acoustic performances in random places.

One particularly to watch out for are Cloud Control, some amazing musicians from the Blue Mountains. 

Worship on Channel 7's morning show

It was so wonderful to see worship music featured on the Morning Show for a mainstream TV audience to enjoy. Darlene Zschech is an incredible songwriter and performer, and you can see her in full flight here singing 'Amazing Grace' with a little bit of 'shout to the Lord' snuck in at the end.

The extremely good looking guitarist on her right is my friend Nathan Eshman from MusicEntourage. 

History: the ever present danger of baby and bathwater

The most interesting thing about early church singing is that almost without exception no instruments were used. They almost certainly sang – the bible talks about their singing in Acts 16:25 and 1 Corinthians 14:26 – but they didn’t use any instruments.

This is strange, because in Judaism there was singing with all sorts of instruments (See Ps 33, Ps 150). Two things influenced this almost total rejection of instruments:

First, Jewish practice by the time of the church had become centred on synagogues. Unlike the temple, which at its peak had probably hosted some pretty impressive instrumental worship, synagogues had much more stripped back unaccompanied singing with a focus on teaching the scriptures. Jewish Christians would have been used to this.

Second, instruments reminded Christians of something they deeply feared: Paganism. That’s why Clement of Alexandria (who lived AD115 to about 216) told Christians to ‘no longer employ the ancient psaltery, trumpet, timbrel, or flute’, which ‘inflame desire, stir up lust, or arouse anger.’¹ The only exception he allowed was for some instruments (cithara and lyre) at Christian agape meals. Likewise John Chrysostom (347-407) decided that it was only because of Old Testament people’s ‘dull temperament’ that God allowed instruments: as a concession, not an ideal.² Instruments reminded the early Christians of pagan worship of idols; they were so keen to distance themselves from it that they deprived themselves of something the Bible clearly celebrates.

Musicians use the term ‘a cappella’ to refer to unaccompanied singing. This literally means (in Italian) ‘in the chapel style’, because of the way Christians sang together for hundreds of years.

The lesson for us here is a simple one: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. In distinguishing ourselves from the world, and the practices we disagree with, we need to be careful not to sell ourselves short, and deprive ourselves of something great.

That said, there is nothing wrong with great unaccompanied singing. But it is a good lesson to be aware of how we tend to hold art forms guilty by association. I’ve heard people say that we can’t use a certain style of music because it is ‘pagan’. I’ve heard church services criticised for being ‘too much like a rock concert’. No doubt there are things about pagan music and rock concerts we want to reject, but I suspect we often do so too quickly, without doing the hard work of filtering through what is good, bad and indifferent.

1 Clement of Alexander, ‘The Tutor of Children’, in Lawrence Johnson, Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2009), para 832; Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, 73.

2 John Chrysostom, ‘On Psalm 149’, in Johnson, Worship in the Early Church: Anthology of Historical Sources, para 1470. Likewise Nicetas of Remesiana, ‘On The Usefulness of Psalmody’, para 3197.

What keyboard to buy?

Buying a keyboard for your church band is a significant investment, and it’s important to make a good choice. Here are some things I’d look for. 

- Buy the best instrument you can afford 

There is no sense in skimping on a musical instrument - quality really matters, so make sure you plan to spread the cost over a number of years. A good quality instrument will sound better, last longer and be less frustrating to play.

- Work out what you want

There are a couple of basic questions you need to answer before you know what to look for. 

Are you looking for a weighted keyboard (full size 88 note piano style keys which feels like a real piano when you play it) or a non-weighted keyboard (usually 61 notes with lighter touch but the same size keys). Weighted keyboards are preferred for playing mainly 'acoustic piano' type sounds, but unweighted keyboards are better for playing organ or synth sounds. 

Are you looking for something which can play mainly acoustic piano sounds (these are usually called 'digital pianos' or 'stage pianos'), or do you want to be able to play organs, synths, electric pianos etc as well (these are usually called 'synthesizers' or just plain 'keyboards')?  

- Don't buy any synthesizer with a built in music stand or speakers

This is a stereotype, and there are some notable exceptions, but on the whole professional keyboards don't come with these things built in. The situation is a bit different if you're looking for a 'digital piano' or 'stage piano' as these usually come with speakers and a music stand built in. 

- Make sure you sit down and play them lots

There is no sure fire way to guarantee you'll like an instrument unless you play it. I'm about to give you some guidance as to brands which I'd look at, but it really comes down to your taste and style. Set aside some time to go into a good music shop which lets you play them all through good speakers for as long as you like. 

-Here are some brands to look out for

If piano sound is your main requirement (and let's face it, nobody wants a bad piano sound) then I highly recommend Yamaha's range. Look at the CP series digital pianos. If you want something with an excellent piano sound but also some great synths and organs a great all rounder is the s90 series. I have an original s90 which has served me well for almost 10 years. 

Roland also make a very attractive bunch of keyboards in the 'RD' series (RD300, RD700) which like the s90 have a good piano sound and weighted keys, plus heaps of other sounds. To my ear it's not quite as good as the Yamaha, but my old church uses one and I grew to appreciate it. 

If synthesizers are your best bet then have a go at the Korg offerings - they have a billion different products at different price points, but the Triton is what I've been using for a long time and it still serves me really well. 

The Nord series (electro2, stage, etc) are very popular but are a little more specialist. They do electric pianos and organs very very well, but are a bit hit and miss with the piano sounds. And they have limited other sounds depending on the model. Can be a bit intimidating for the average keyboard player. 

Other great brands to look out for are Kurzweil and Kawaii.    

He is risen: free easter download

It's 7:16 am on Easter Morning, in the year AD 2012. We are about to go meet with the saints at a Uniting Church in Toowoomba to play some songs for them and share our testimony.

Christians have been meeting on the first day of the week (=Sunday) since that first Easter Sunday, when Mary Magdalene's horror at a desecrated grave was broken by a single word: "Mary," said Jesus, who was executed before her very eyes two days before (John 20). 

This unbroken tradition points to the resurrection as a defining moment for us as a people.

And it reminds us that the sky, not the grave, is our destiny.

So happy easter everybody. Here is a free download of Sunday Came to mark the occasion.

The Artist and The Struggle

If you have ever created a piece of art - be it a painting, a piece of music, a written work - you will know that it takes work. Lots of work. Occasionally pieces of art may be fuelled by flashes of inspiration and almost complete themselves... but then there is the finishing of the work, the touching up, the refining, and so on.

If you then go on to create more and more works of art, you will know that the work load increases substantially, that it almost seems to get harder and harder the longer you work as an artist. Sure, you are getting better and better at your craft, but for that very reason you are raising the standard of what you expect of yourself, and others are raising the standard of what they expect of you. And then there is the challenge to innovate, to produce something different to what you've done before.

What's more, art by its very nature is seeking to make a statement, and that often attracts criticism, criticism that hurts... And yet there is something inside of us that knows we have to create - we are continually drawn back to creating. This is not a mere coincidence - God has gifted us with creative skills and abilities and it is a wonderful thing to be using them for him.

Although we may not think of it this way, we are creating works of art each time we prepare music for church. Someone else may have written the hymn or song, but we are creating through interpreting the music in our arrangements and playing.

The thing is, creating is hard work. Amongst the busyness of life, it's a struggle to find space for a rehearsal - in both your calendar and in your mind. Then you need to make sure all your musical equipment is in order. Then there are the slight frustrations you may have with the playing styles of other band members  - they play slightly differently to the way you do, so the sound isn't gelling. And then you realise you need some new musical equipment before Sunday, so you have to find time to get to the music store. Then you need to find time to practice yourself before the service. And after a long day at work, it's hard to be disciplined and remove distraction, in addition to spending good time loving and caring for your family. And then after all that, you play music at church that Sunday, thinking it went really well and that it was a huge achievement to have overcome all the challenges in the week. And then you receive some unpleasant feedback on how it sounded. Then you brace yourself to do it all again next week. Sometimes it all just seems too hard.

In his book Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer challenges us refocus and remember why it is we are creating. As Schaeffer writes: "[t]he man who really loves God, who is working under the lordship of Christ, could write his poetry, compose his music, construct his musical instruments, fashion his statues, paint his pictures, even if no man ever saw them. He knows God looks upon them." (pp 37-8)

When the work in creating seems hard, and the comments from others about our art seem too disheartening to take, we can pause, take a deep breath, and know that our sovereign God (ever-present and all-knowing) has heard and seen our art - art that has come from the abilities he has graciously given us. And that alone is more than enough reason to make the struggle worth the struggle.

GC

On Hymns

I'm going through some of my grandfather's old papers at the moment for a history project (which involves researching our heritage through primary sources), and I've come across some gold nuggets on hymns. Check out these thoughts:

- 'Not all rhyming verses set to music are hymns, even if printed in a hymn book. Some hardly deserve any place at all in corporate worship. But mark well those which exalt God and his Christ in direct praise and adoration. This is the kind of hymn the Christians of Pliny's day addressed to Christ at day-break.'

- 'the selection of hymns, in general, needs to be undertaken with regard for the place in the service where they come. We sing far too many hymns Three is a maximum for most services. It is too easy to destroy coherence in a service, and to distract from what has just been said or read, by an ill-chosen hymn. There is a place for hymns of recitation, declaring the mighty deeds of God, and hymns expressive of trust and hope and of mutual exhortation. Butt heir selection requires sensitivity and skill. Only the minister who orders the other details of the service can really select the hymns. The responsibility cannot be delegated to organists.' [grandpa was an organist, and a minister, so I guess he can say that!]

These quotes are from the 70s -- when liturgical reform was at its peak in the Anglican Church of Australia. Do you think we've gone backwards or forwards in the planning of our average services? I know at my church the organist does choose the hymns (her name is Nola and in her day she was a monster pianist). But she chooses them with such care and skill that I've often finished preaching a sermon, then found a hymn placed straight after it that says better than I have everything I wanted to say! Is that your experience?