David Rowe

Great project here! I can't wait to see it! I love the values driving this anticipated hymnal.

One classic problem that concerns me is, how do we handle some people's heart songs that frankly are mushy sentimental pieces with unsavory or unbiblical theology?

Major blessings on your work!

Good stuff, Christy. I'm always haunted by the Augustine statement "He who sings prays twice" and I definitely think of our hymn-singing as prayers with notes attached. I wonder to what extent our God is musical at the core and hears us kind of speaking His language when we sing...?

Good, insightful stuff here, Sam! I am challenged in a good direction by your urging of an integrated, basic style to set the overall format of worship, thus avoiding the disjunctive "variety show" problem. And I love your notion of pushing the boundary outward to other worship sensibilities! I note all three of the major musical orientations you see operating are Western. But then, of course, we are here in the West! That, however, is rapidly changing because of the demographic shifts in Euro-American society--shifts happening even faster in the churches. So we'll get to explore the boundaries that include more global music styles; some congregations will have dominant styles, as well, from Asian cultures, African cultures, Islander cultures, etc. Here in Salt Lake City we have strong Tongan and Samoan congregations, strong Hispanic congregations, and various others--Nepalese, Burmese, South Sudanese, etc. I work for The Vine Institute which equips leaders from these various groups, working multiculturally; two or three times each year we sponsor a multicultural worship experience and usually feature two different ethnic groups in a service leading with their own style and language (translations on screen). It is very rich, but I must say I hunger for more integration in the service as a whole--thank you for your wisdom and encouragement toward this! 

Great post, James! But you left me hanging with the Lincoln encounter: were those 300+ souls spared? 

As to your main point, sadly I am disturbed along with you about the state of Christian unity nowadays--especially unity of the deep sort you and Whipple describe, in which we can see Christ in our disagreeing siblings. A major factor is the non-denominational denominations, which seem to splinter and balkanize the church more than ever. So many, whether mega or mini, seem to become a law unto themselves, and the megachurches that jump on the permanent multisite bandwagon have effectively formed mini-denominations and thus they exacerbate the problem of vulgar, proprietary denominationalism.

I really applaud what I think I hear in your all-too-brief description of the "bubble church" model. It does not seem to be the same as a multisite arrangement where the second church is a campus--a fad I'm decisively not a fan of, as a permanent arrangement!--but rather a needy daughter-church arrangement in which the daughter can grow up and be on her own eventually. This seems like a great use of resources for kingdom of God church planting. 

Nice reflection, Tom. I recognize this coffee practice thing with its "vibe" as an example of what's called "organizational climate." We telegraph that climate--arising, yes, out of our church's DNA--in myriad ways. Another example is dress code. I preach for a local Lutheran church once a month and they ask me to don a robe; my youngest son attends a local church campus where the billboarded slogan, practiced by the pastors and nearly everyone else, is "Wear jeans to church" (yes, jeans is bolded). Not long ago, three different people, independent of one another and from three different churches, told me in the span of a single week "our pastor wears jeans and an open collar shirt with the tail hanging out." At this point it became to me a copycat fad, a visual cliche--effectively the new "robe" it's vogue for the minister to wear. Contrast that with African American church culture where they dress to the nines to be in the presence of the King of kings and, as a friend of mine observes, "it's all about honor." Of course turning any of those three styles into an occasion for hubris is equally sinful--"We're oh-so-cool and relational" no less than "We're oh-so-honoring and reverent." But ultimately I'm with you, Tom (despite my personal preferences toward greater honor in our visual language of attire): The underlying DNA of a church will bleed through these artifacts of climate and people will sense and know whether or not they are among a people who authentically love and honor and serve one another and most of all our Lord. How do our dress practices embody (or not) our organizational climate as God's kingdom people who are marked by "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:17)?  

Some months ago I recall an article on why Millennials are leaving the church, especially the megachurch, in droves--something I see happening right in our neighborhood. One comment among others by a respondent was "they will not tolerate any longer going to services where the platform team worships on their behalf." It seems like that's right on the money: very little of this is about style or genre of music, but rather about taking the voice of the congregation away from them. 

Thanks, Melissa--really inspiring! 

Here's my experience. Our son, a jazz bassist, got a quartet together and performed a delightful jazz vespers worship service at our church (First CRC, Salt Lake City) a few weeks ago. The quartet had piano/keyboard/Hammon B3 organ, guitar, drums and his bass. His final number, an old, upbeat gospel song, was rolling along nicely with the four instruments when, utterly unannounced, we all began hearing a saxaphone somewhere in the sanctuary! Heads turned (including mine) to see the horn player swinging his way down the center aisle from the back. Then when he was near the front, a trumpet began sounding out from the rear; then (you guessed it) there was a trombonist following him down the aisle; finally a clarinetist came swinging and swaying his way to the front where they continued in a crescendo of dixieland, raise-the-roof praise! Of course this brought the house down: we were all on our feet clapping and dancing along and, as one elderly Dutch woman said, "I thought 'Oh, we're in New Orleans now!'" The flash mob effect had worked its wonder of surprise and joyous beauty in this moment of Kingdom ecstasy. It made an indellible mark on my soul with a heaven-sent memory I'll never forget--and I'm surely not alone in this!  

I quite agree--much better, no doubt, to articulate some pastoral counsel on this than to keep silent. The homosexuality thing is such a polarizing hot button that people are afraid and confused, or they just glibly join one of the poles and batter away at the other side, it seems. Where's the gospel sweet spot in all this? Can't our respect for human dignity (yes, despite our fallenness) be heard as clearly as our perspective?

There's good wrestling here, even if it waxes a bit long on verbiage. Perhaps this reminds us the question/topic is tremendously hard to get a solid fix on--slithery as an eel--so we keep fishing around with our many words to try responding to it.

Richard, I totally agree with the "lead worshiper" notion as a major key to authentic, life-giving worship: at best, this person ignites worship in the congregation by incarnating a worshipful heart in front of others in a kind of self-forgetful mode that makes the person, mystically, almost disappear before the Majesty, "lost in wonder, love and praise."

And Bev, of COURSE this frame of heart and mind is created, perhaps animated, by the Holy Spirit. Who can argue with that? The glib question-begging that usually happens here, though, concerns what we accept as evidence that the Holy Spirit is indeed at work: is it only tongues and tears? or perhaps upcranked amps and Christian dervish-dancing? What about prayers of penitence, reconcilitation of people in the foyer afterwards, a soul that relinquishes an idol during a moment of silent prayer....?

This attitudinal frame extends--again, at best--to ALL the elements of worship, not just the musical part! We Americans love to truncate our concept of worship by limiting it to the song set. Do we not worship in prayers, in reciting the creed, in Communion, in passing the peace, in giving our treasure, in listening from the heart to the reading and expounding of Scripture....? Why does it seem so hard for us to own a comprehensive, holistic view of (a) congregational worship and (b) worship as all of life?

Well, enough of my own windy verbiage for now.

May we all worship well!

David Rowe

Fine post, Joy--I really resonate! Despite the risks, both a heart for the missional and a recognition of "the de-Europeanization of American Christianity" (Soong Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism) certainly urge us in a global worship direction at least some of the time. As a worship leader for 30 years, I found myself increasingly choosing multilingual repertoire from time to time and in this way seeking to infect our congregation with the thrill of being caught up in God's global mission. Last Pentecost Sunday I got to co-lead a mulitethnic worship ensemble for the Global Day of Prayer gathering here in Salt Lake City: it was magnificent! The simple African song "God is So Good," led by Sudanese friends on the team, never sounded so good as it did when we progressed through seven languages in singing it.

One reality certainly seems obvious to me: usually a song's expression in poetic meter and language and image sounds best in the orginal language in which it was written. For example, "Mi Salvador" just loses beauty and power, feeling flatter and more pedantic, when we sing the English translation.

Resources? One excellent repertoire is Taize music: it's simple, accessible, musically beautiful (especially if you use multiple instruments and play from the instrumental version of the books), and all designed as multilingual. Of course it's contemplative in style--great for candlelit services--so you can't use it for everything, but it's truly wonderful worship music for the globally cognizant (or those who need to be).

It was my first time at Symposium, and I was very impressed and enriched by the breadth of topics and angles as well as the sheer quality of organization. Both Brueggeman the gadfly and Wright the erudite stirred me with the profound awareness, arising from the Psalter, that our worship accesses for us an alternative reality, a consummately different order of life, a "counterworld" called the kingdom of God. In good, well-focused, holistic Christ-exalting worship we come to participate in what we are celebrating, viz. a God-drenched context of living full of hope to replace despair, justice to replace injustice, abundance to replace greed...and shalom to replace all lack of well-being--all so utterly and gloriously other, so very subversive of the order of life the world around us serves up! Even in embracing the deep-bluesy-anguished cries of the complaint psalms, we affirm with suffering hearts (and often bodies) before the face of God what is wrong with the present order only in light of our deeper trust in God to rectify and reconcile all things to Himself in Christ as He establishes His new order "on earth as it is in heaven." I must say I fell in love all over again with the all-surpassing goodness of our God and HIs holy intentions for us and our world: again I'm in trembling awe before "the splendor of His holiness."