a community through song

A note to my congregation and others:

The 2007 European meeting of the Taizé community.

Group singing is found in practically every culture.  Even in our own American society, singing brings us together in a variety of ways.  What would a birthday party be without that well-known song?  What about the seventh inning stretch without “Take Me Out To The Ballgame?” 

Just like these occasions in our secular lives, the songs of the church bring us together with a shared identity.  We give one voice to our joys and sorrows and express our wonder and awe at the mystery that is God.

As we build our congregation’s own unique repertoire of songs, we can do more to sing as a community.  One way is to introduce songs to all occasions of church life. Several of the church boards already begin their meetings with song.  We have also added singing before church meals and special events.

During November, I’d ask you to consider yet another way to strengthen our communal song.  Research shows, however counterintuitive it may seem, that once a singer is more than three feet away from another that individual sings more quietly.  Once we start to feel isolated and hear primarily our own voice, we become self-conscious and withdraw.  When we are closer to others, we hear their voices and are more comfortable adding ours.

So what can we do?  It’s rather simple.  Consider sitting closer to others in worship.  Perhaps sit where the larger groups are during worship, or invite others to sit closer to you. Throughout this month, I’ll be encouraging us to gather closer together at the beginning of each worship service.   Perhaps you’ll even want to give up your traditional seat and seek out new places. You might even experience other parts of worship in a new way.

new resource from Living the Questions featuring John Bell

I'm thrilled to see this new addition from the Living the Questions family. 

From their website: 

Singing the Unsung – Liberating the Song of God's People 
Featuring John Bell

Singing the Unsung is a new DVD resource designed especially for music leaders, worship design teams, and pastors seeking the revitalization of worship for the 21st century. Featuring world-renowned musician and theologian John Bell, Singing the Unsung guides the participants' reflection on the theology of the Church's song and offers practical techniques on how we can sing and pray together with integrity.

 

With footage from workshops and worship in both the U.S. and in Scotland, the two DVD discs include nine 30-minute video segments and introduce 30 songs from around the globe for congregational or choral use. Along with the downloadable discussion guide the sessions may be utilized as individual segments or multi-day to multi-week workshops or classes.

Their other resources have been top-notch, specifically Living the Questions (both 1 and 2), and Saving Jesus (although the background soft jazz was a little cheesy for my taste). 

I've got a copy on order and will have a review of the materials after they arrive.

Free To Lament

There's been a lot of discussion lately about a return to lament in worship.  Maybe this is a reaction to what some consider "feel good" worship, or maybe it's the reality of all of the tragedies that we experience in today's world.

The Bible is full of lament, but looking to the Psalms is an easy place to start..

   

  Psalm 42:9-10

  ⁹ I say to God my Rock,

"Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning,

oppressed by the enemy?" 

¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony

as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

"Where is your God?"

Now what does this have to do with music?  I think the rich history of lament attached to music can allow people to express the pathos of lament, where, in Western culture at least, we don't openly allow ourselves to morn.  We don't raise our voices when we cry. We are taught to find solitude and to work it out on our own.  All of this repression and isolation can't be good,  so why not let it all out together?  Hymn writers have always thought so.

 A Soul Cries Out

Horatio Spafford's hymn "It Is Well with My Soul" was his way of working through grief, like a modern psalmist.  A couple of years before he penned the words, he lost his son and was financially ruined by the the great Chicago Fire.  Then in 1873, after sending his wife and four daughters ahead of him for a vacation in Europe, their ship collided with a sailing vessel and sank, killing his children.  His wife survived and sent telegram with the words, "Saved Alone."

As he traveled to meet his wife in Europe, his ship passed over the spot where the collision occurred, and he was inspired to write the words to "It Is Well with My Soul."

NOTE:  I personally find the theology in "It Is Wll with My Soul" hard to swallow for the most part, but it is a beautiful expression of this one man's grief and struggle to reconcile it with his faith.
 
When tragedy occurs, humans feel compelled to express their grief, and where else can we feel safe to do so if not in the church?

Why Can't We Just Lament?

The problem can be that, just like the Psalms, there is a tendency to end these lament songs with a "but everything's okay because I love God and God loves me."  It's a wonderul sentiment, but once again, it doesn't allow us just to cry.

At time like these, we can turn to another example: Lamentations
 

Lamentations 1:20-22

 ²⁰ "See, O LORD, how distressed I am!

       I am in torment within,

       and in my heart I am disturbed,

       for I have been most rebellious.

       Outside, the sword bereaves;

       inside, there is only death.

 ²¹ "People have heard my groaning,

       but there is no one to comfort me.

       All my enemies have heard of my distress;

       they rejoice at what you have done.

       May you bring the day you have announced

       so they may become like me.

  ²² "Let all their wickedness come before you;

       deal with them

       as you have dealt with me

       because of all my sins.

       My groans are many

       and my heart is faint."

I've been looking for songs that do the same thing. And the challenge will be gauging a congregation's reaction to this kind of "despair only" sort of approach.  I welcome suggestions.

being critical

I love the Native American saying that goes something like, "I don't know if these stories happened, but I know they're true."

I think in most progressive Christianity, being critical (def. - exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation) of what we read in the Bible is sort of a hallmark. We scrutinized over difficult theology (for example: Job!), and we ponder how we can see the love of God as it exists for us today in the words of authors from centuries and milennia ago. So why is it that in many of our churches we don't do the same thing with the words we sing?

Our Bible's most recent thoughts are from the second century BCE, but Christian thought has continued to develop. Those ideas are often captured in congregational music, so I put this challenge to my church at our biannual "annual" meeting this week, "Be critical of the songs and hymns we read and sing in worship."

• What does the song teach us about God?
• What does the song teach us about Jesus?
• What does the song teach us about ourselves?
• What does the song teach others about us?

Many Christmas carols are perfect examples of images that don't really correspond to what we're presented in our scriptures. Was it really "in the bleak mid-winter" when Jesus was born?  What about the idea of a newborn baby staying utterly silent in a cattle trough? ("The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.") 

I like John Bell's observation of the perennial Christmas favorite "O Little Town of Bethlehem."  If everyone had been recalled to the place of their ancestors for the census, hundreds or possibly thousands of people could have been flooding into the City of David to enroll.  And if your long-lost friends were back in town, would your town be lying still at night? 

I think it's a simple practice that each of us can do.  Really read the words we sing and be critical.

The problem with familiarity

I think one of the hardest parts of selecting music for worship is hitting everyone's "favorites."  Making it more difficult are the many backgrounds that make up our particular congregation.  We are dually affiliated with the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ.  In addition many of our people are  newly churched or ex-pats from other denominations ranging from Catholics to Pentecostals.

I grew up in the United Methodist Church, and pretty much everyone I ever knew in church had grown up UMC as well, so when we showed up for worship or at a church gathering our communal "song book" was based on the same set of tunes.  I always took great pride (and still do!) in being from such a music rich faith group, but what I took for granted was that we sang well because we were all on the same page musically.

Now I face the issue that the music the rests in the hearts of our congregants isn't always found in the denominational hymnal (The New Century Hymnal), so it's like introducing new music nearly every week.  Adding to that is the fact that this particular church had a period of time some years ago where one of the staff members restricted the hymns to about 20-25 "old favorites" and never strayed outside the chosen few.

So how does a pastoral musician go about discovering what the "song book" of this particularly diverse congregation is?  And how do you then engrave those songs on the hearts of the singers without totally restricting the creativity I usually associate with varying music according to the particular theme of the Sunday?  

To be continued...