What I love about Darlene Zschech's theology

I’ve never met her, but I have a huge amount of respect for Darlene Zschech. Until 2007 she was a pastor at Hillsong church here in Sydney. She still tours and leads a growing church in Newcastle. Leaving aside the obvious debt we all owe her for bringing worship music to where it has come worldwide, her discipleship and church leadership off stage has benefited some of my dearest friends.

At the same time, I believe it’s often fruitful to compare and contrast our respective theological positions on worship. Our respective traditions may have much to learn from each other. Realising that I don’t have all the answers either, in this brief blog post I also want to provide some friendly critique of her theology of worship as presented in Extravagant Worship.

There is much I love in her theology of worship.

1. Zschech is dead right in pointing out that worship is bigger than merely music. Worship is bigger than music. “Although music is a wonderful expression of worship, it is not in itself the essence of it. The core of worship is when one’s heart and soul, and all that is within, adores and connects with the Spirit of God.”¹
2. She is right to make Christian education a central goal in our music ministry: ‘make the Word memorable and settle the message into our hearts.’²
3. She presents a balanced view of the place of emotional response in music ministry: music is ‘not about stirring ourselves into an emotional frenzy’, but ‘corporate worship’ should help turn the congregation’s ‘eyes to the Lord.’³

Yet, I do want to suggest some possible tensions in her theology of worship which make me reluctant to adopt it wholesale without thinking it over some more. The biggest tension I detect is over the issue of ‘excellence’.

Zschech rightly puts great emphasis on excellence, something which I have often written about and agree on. Yet I’m more cautious about the reasons she gives for seeking excellence: ‘We are to serve God with excellence because we know an excellent God.’⁴ Like the high medievalists, Zschech wants to ‘enter the throne room of God’.⁵

Largely I think this theology is reactive against more mainline traditions (such as Anglicanism), which have been (I’ll freely admit) too afraid of excellence. She thinks this fear has ‘kept almost an entire generation out of the house of God’.⁶

And to her credit, this emphasis on excellence is qualified: we give our finest ‘at whatever stage your finest is.’⁷ We bring our gifts in a context of grace, and Zschech is too experienced a pastor to seek to establish a ‘performance-based Christianity’ on or off the stage.⁸

However I do take issue with some of the arguments she uses to bolster this argument of excellence. “Extravagant worship grabs God’s attention ... Throughout the stories in the Bible, whenever someone demonstrated extravagant worship, God reacted with extravagant blessing. It’s cause and effect. Extravagant worship brings extravagant results.’⁹

My nervousness about this is that I am very unexcellent! I’m not talking about the quality of music, even. The fact is that the excellence of our offerings, as God measures it, is entirely dependent on the heart. As Hebrews 10 points out, God has never been pleased by sacrifices or burnt offerings. Zschech obviously knows this, and so concludes that ‘the only thing God wants from you is your heart.’¹⁰

I don’t think I’m being too nitpicking to say that there is a tension here. Is God impressed by musical excellence, or does he just want us to serve with the right attitude?

What is missing, I think, is a bridge between the Old Testament passages and the New Testament hope. In the Old Testament even our most righteous works are considered as dirty rags (Isaiah 64:6). In the New Testament, we are given the incredible invitation to continually ‘through Jesus … offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name’ (Hebrews 13:15). What is missing from Zschech’s worship theology, therefore, is the very important concept of a priest: not one who wears robes, but Jesus our great high priest. With Jesus standing as our representative before God, the excellence of our worship is guaranteed.

As much as it pains me to say it, therefore, the excellence (in a musical sense) of our worship, and the strength of our good intentions, becomes much less relevant to how acceptable our worship is. Don’t get me wrong, I want excellent music as much as the next music snob. But I’m not sure that we want to tie that excellence to its suitability for worshipping God.

1 Darlene Zschech, Extravagant Worship (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002)., 27.

2 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 196.

3 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 169.

4 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 127.

5 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 155.

6 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 128.

7 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 127.

8 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 148.

9 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 34-35.

10 Zschech, Extravagant Worship, 46.

Why the methodists had all the good music

Have you ever noticed how many of the great hymns in the English language were written by non-conformists like Isaac Watts and the Wesleys? These were people who stood apart (sometimes at great personal cost) from the mainline Anglican church of their day. This was a time where uniformity in worship was highly valued above everything. Edward VI and Elizbeth I had both laid down guidelines for worship, insiting on a ‘plain and modest song’. Nothing to flash. Thomas Sternhold supplied a boring but competent translation of the Psalter into English, and this was the basis of worship inside the mainline official Anglian church.¹

Not so for the non-conformists. John Wesley wrote to a friend criticising this style of worship, insisting that Christians should:

“sing praise to God ... with the spirit, and with the understanding also: not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Hopkins and Sternhold [i.e. the English Psalter], but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry.”²

He thought the style should be whatever would ‘best raise the soul to God’, and that meant he was not confined to using simple boring arrangements of the Psalms.³

But the reason why Wesley ended up with such a stress on emotion was not accidental. I think it flowed from his theology. The reason why he wanted music to help people in ‘praising [God] lustily and with a good courage’ was so that their hearts could be changed.⁴ I suspect that John Wesley’s Arminianism – his overemphasis on human responsibility while forgetting that only God can soften or harden hearts – set him on this trajectory.

My hunch is, too, that this set much of methodism (and later Pentecostalism) onto this path of emotional music. If you believe that people turning to Jesus is a wholly human decision, not a miracle, then you’re going to do all you can to make sure they make the right decision.

The challenge, then, for those of us who believe that a decision to turn to Christ is both a human choice and a miracle that only God can bring about is to still write incredible songs which move the heart. A belief in divine sovereignty in conversion doesn’t stop us from engaging in apologetics, clear preaching, or trying to live the gospel in an attractive way. So it shouldn’t stop us from having poignant music either.

1 Evans, Music in the Modern Church, 31.

2 John Wesley, ‘To A Friend, On Public Worship’, in The Works of the Rev John Wesley: Tracts and Letters on Various Subjects (1st ed.; New York: J & J Harper, 1827), 233.

3 John Wesley, ‘To A Friend, On Public Worship’, in The Works of the Rev John Wesley: Tracts and Letters on Various Subjects (1st ed.; New York: J & J Harper, 1827), 233.

4 John Wesley, ‘To A Friend, On Public Worship’, in The Works of the Rev John Wesley: Tracts and Letters on Various Subjects (1st ed.; New York: J & J Harper, 1827), 233.

The ends justify the means

 When it comes to music, I’m with Luther: the ends justify the means.

It is interesting to compare the attitude of Calvin, Zwingli and Luther to using secular music styles in church. Calvin (1509–1564) refused to use either catholic styles of music, or the secular styles of his day (which he said were ‘lascivious, injurious, alluring’¹). He was afraid that ‘venom and corruption’ might reach ‘the depths of the heart’.² In a similar vein, Ulrich Zwingli held that ‘spirit and flesh contradict each other’.³ He was dubious about singing, preferring to sing ‘not with our voices, like the Jewish singers, but with our hearts’.⁴ In the summer of 1524 his followers smashed all the organs they could find, hoping to bring things back to pure worship.⁵

So against his reformation buddies, Martin Luther (1483-46) stands out. He was prepared to use any style of music that would help people engage with God: ‘For their sake [simple laymen] we must read, sing, preach, write and compose, and if it would help the matter along, I would have all the bells pealing, and all the organs playing, and let everything chime that has a clapper’.⁶ Rumour has it he used pub tunes – this is not quite right, but he certainly used folk music to drive the gospel messages home. (Incidentally, it is no accident that J.S. Bach composed his amazing Cantatas while working at Leipzig Luthern church). The key values were education, scriptural words, and communion between the church here and the church in heaven. Whatever would serve these goals would be employed in church.

1 Charles Garside, The Origins of Calvin's Theology of Music: 1536–1543 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979), 28.

2 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 156.

3 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 151.

4 Ulrich Zwingli, ‘Conclusion 45’ in Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale, 1966), 45.

5 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 150.

6 Flynn, ‘Liturgical Music’, 780

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.

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.

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?