Tom Schwegler: Why Contemporary Music Makes Congregational Singing Difficult.

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inCommentary, Guest Bloggers

IM reader Tom sent me some responses to the Riff on “The Slow Death of Congregational Singing.” I thought his comments were well worth posting here for your reading and discussion.

Thanks Tom.

Michael,

I don’t read your work as much as I used to, but I caught and appreciated your excellent post on congregational singing. I just wanted to offer a few thoughts, mostly brief. To begin with, Americans of all stripes are increasingly reluctant to sing together. Observe, for example, how the National Anthem at sporting events has become mostly a performance, often with performers who sing in keys and/or with flourishes that the general public has no chance of singing along with. It is no longer fashionable or expected for Americans to sing in massed groups.

Beyond that, the increased adoption of contemporary-styled music and projected lyrics creates some very practical difficulties for congregational singing:

1. The rhythms are, generally speaking, more complex. A lot of praise choruses have syncopations that don’t come naturally to many people, especially older people who have not immersed themselves in CCM. Getting comfortable with those rhythms often takes more time than is available during a worship service. If the praise team has to rehearse in order to be “in sync”, what chance does an unrehearsed congregation have?

2. The “road map” of the songs is more complex. Contemporary worship songs have all sorts of “bridges” and (frequently ad lib) repeats that most hymns lack. It’s harder for a novice to figure out where the song is going, let alone guess what it’s going to sound like when it gets there.

3. Most of the instruments don’t play the tune. In a traditional worship setting, the accompanying instrument (piano or organ) always plays the melody, and a good accompanist will emphasize the melody above the harmony notes. In a typical praise band, the guitars are playing chords, and the drums merely reinforce rhythm; there may be a keyboard and/or other instrument playing the melody, but they are probably outnumbered (and possibly outgunned) by the guitars and drummer(s). This creates the need for the inevitable team of vocalists, who must, of course, be miked so that they may be heard over all of the electronic, amplified instruments. If the sound man is not particularly judicious, the result can be a blasting contest which drowns out the singing; if the vocalists mistake themselves for performers and start embellishing the tune, there may still not be any pattern that the congregation can easily follow.

It is, of course, quite true that many organists have drowned out their congregations over the years. But at least they were playing the tune when they did it, and everyone could hear what the tune was (possibly to the exclusion of their own thoughts…).

4. Less information about the songs is available to the average worshiper in advance; only the band has the full story. When only the words are available, especially when those only become available when the song starts, it’s nearly impossible for an individual worshiper to familiarize himself/herself with a new song ahead of time. In a traditional setting with hymnals, I, as an experienced musician, can often do a passable job of teaching myself an unfamiliar hymn simply by looking it over prior to the service; then, when the time comes to do the actual singing, I can join in heartily. With contemporary songs, no such luck; I’m at the mercy of whoever is leading the singing and running the Powerpoint. Personally, I find it frustrating.

5. The songs are transmitted largely through oral tradition (radio, recordings, and church meetings) rather than via printed materials. Praise choruses are often sung differently from one church to the next, and even all of the people in one particular place may not have learned it precisely the same way. The net result is often a group of people who are singing at the same time, but not necessarily singing together. It’s a subtle difference, but I think it’s a significant one. Furthermore, for a novice trying to learn the song, it can be confusing to try to figure out exactly who to follow. I think that this is where a lot of people, especially the nonmusical and/or those unfamiliar with the song, simply give up and drop out; I know that it’s happened to me more than once.

I’m not saying that all contemporary songs should be done away with, even though I don’t much care for many of them. But some of the stuff congregations are attempting to sing should be left as solo material, and nobody should underestimate the difficulties of congregational singing in a contemporary environment.

Yours in Christ,

Tom Schwegler

54 thoughts on “Tom Schwegler: Why Contemporary Music Makes Congregational Singing Difficult.”

  1. hmmmm…for me as our church music/worship (they’re not always the same thing, right?) leader, it doesn’t matter into which box a particular song may fall. We use then all.

    Songs are tools that offer us a thought, an understanding, a glimpse of God and His attributes.
    We then respond to those truths in our minds while singing, whether found in O Worship the King or It Is Well or Rock of Ages or the latest Chris Tomlin, Tommy Walker or Dennis Jernigan tune.

    I’ve been guilty of being so consumed with wrong notes, new tunes, old tunes that I’ve left the platform after “leading worship”, sat down in my seat and realized I never thought about God once, much less given Him anything or allowed Him to minister to me. Music, at least that day, had become an idol. Obviously, this is sin!

    I’m determined to keep God as the object of my devotion and of my church as well. We use a test for selecting music, whether am old hymn or a newer tune.

    Criteria for inclusion in a worship service:

    Is it TRUTH? ie is it theologically accurate?

    Is it singable after hearing it two or three times?

    Does it cause me to worship? (not sing! Worship!)
    You don’t have to sing to worship. We don’t have to control the Holy Spirit or congregations by demanding they respond in a certain way. I have often worshiped most deeply by sitting quietly and thinking and thanking God for His love.

    If it is singable truth that causes me to worship, how can we best introduce this to our group? How many different ways can we teach this in the context of a worship service? Instrumental versions, solos, choir features etc. “You’ve heard this now at least three times. Join in this new song of praise.”

    Support the new song offering with Scripture. Tie it into a sermon point. Talk BRIEFLY about the thoughts the Spirit placed in your mind when you first heard or selected this song.

    Every church has it’s particular bent. Let’s use what works for our congregations and get off the crusades to destroy anything we dislike, misunderstand or in many cases, can’t pull off because of our personal tastes, training and talents.

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  2. I accidentally deleted this comment from Martin:

    One thought that comes to mind – triggered by the comment about Maddy prior and the CD “Sing Lustily and With Good Courage – Gallery hymns of the 18th and early 19th centuries” Saydisc CD-SDL 383 The cover notes quote Wesley’ instructions for singing 1761.

    1. Leanr thses tunes beofre you leanr others….
    2Sing them exactly as they are printed without altering or mending them at all…
    3. Sing All. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can…
    4. Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift your voice with strength…
    5. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony…
    6. Sing in time… Whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it…. take care not to sing too slow…
    7. Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature…

    The cover notes then explore the transformation of church music from the 17th century into the 18th discussing the move from the Psalmody to a more personal relationship to God focus using secular music and popular tunes.

    praise of God is something that is not confined to the devout or the more spiritual. The christian church needs to mine the musical traditions and contemporary scene for anything thatmakes our hearts leap and focuses us on the God of Creation.

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  3. I grew up in a small Baptist church that was big into hymns as the average age of the congregation was around 70. When I was about 15 (1975), a guy showed up with a guitar (also known as a church wedge) and tried to split the church like a log.

    I learned that music was way too divisive and it makes the services last 30 minutes longer than they really need to. For me, I have found that true worship happens in the closet or car or on a mountain when you are alone.

    I just wish we would sing “row row row your boat” and have Jesus in the boat. It is hard to get too carried away or divisive with that.

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  5. The original post and many of the comments were o helpful to me.

    I’m not musical at all. We recently moved across state, and I’ve visited several churches over the last months, and I’m so frustrated with trying to sing. I WANT to, but unfamiliar contemporary songs are so hard to pick up for all the reasons you mentioned, OR I quit because it’s one of those chanting “7-11” things that just feels silly and new-age-y by about the 8th repetition.

    Recently, I was so frustrated at only being able to really sing a line or two, in time and pitch, out of the whole song, but then they began “All Creatures of Our God and King” (David Crowder version), and it was easy. More people joined on that than any other and it was a great experience. I don’t know why that song was so much easier, but maybe many of you will.

    May I point out another difficulty I’ve noticed in tuning in and becoming absorbed in corporate singing?….The best example for what I have to say is the blasted coffee/donut bar that so many churches offer now. I’ve been to three different contemporary evangelical services lately where people bring their coffee and donuts into the sanctuary! It’s hard to join corporately in focused worship when the guy next to you is slurping coffee and the lady in front of you is gnawing on a donut. Then, there are the people checking text messages, etc. I think it’s indicative of a general nonchalance about corporate worship that you’re hearing (or not) from your places up front. There no longer seems to be a reverence for the act.

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  6. To Rob,
    I love these words that you’ve used “you people. You can go before God, fall onto your knees and thank Him that you are not like “us”

    To Michael,
    thanks for the post. I think that the “professionals” have taken over contemporary music in the church. Twenty years ago I could play every song in church.(At most 4 chords.) Nowadays I’m useless. Just like clergy-laity, perhaps a new breed of worship leader has emerged that surpasses the “ordinary”.

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  7. I agree with so much of this, and see the points. FWIW, our pastor explicitly insists on a “concert” atmosphere for worship, quoting some statistic he found somewhere that people won’t sing if they can hear the person next to them. Which is rubbish, of course… The fun irony of this can be illustrated by what happened yesterday. Our church currently meets in a school, so all the computer stuff is portable. Well, when the “video” folks tried to boot up, guess what? Corrupt system file, computer DOA. Somebody scrambled back to the office and printed up lyric sheets, which they handed out to the congregation as they came in! I loved it.
    I was asked to lead worship for last PM’s service (I’m a guitar player). When the WT was rehearsing, I casually suggested that perhaps we should do the service a capella. Their reaction was comical. They ended up voting that I should do it as a solo. All in jest, of course, but it was illustrative that even the WT singers can’t actually sing unless there’s a roar of sound behind them.
    Our church is Assemblies of God. For what it’s worth, in this context when you say the word “Hymn”, it’s usually translated “Camp Meeting Song Written Around the Turn of the Last Century”. In other words, I’ll Fly Away” is a hymn.
    Sigh…

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  8. Jerimiah & Dana, Thank you for your advise and insight. Much appreciated.

    Criffton, Thank you for your insight on the Traditionalist side of our faith. As an adult I too appreciate the history/traditions of our church, including Gregorian chants. Chants are often played as background music before each mass, and when our church offers the extra Sacrement of Reconciliation services around Christmas and Easter. Melodically, most are very beautiful and help me relax and get in the right mindframe for the mass. But, as I hear from many of the teens in our group, they don’t share the same appreciation, and honestly, I’m sure I didn’t either when I was a teen. I think it’s the rare child that is sentimental enough to appreciate the traditions of the Church.

    I think the same applies for many of the converts. I would guess that statistically, most converts are probably under the age of 40. They don’t have any prior ties to the old traditions of the Church, including the use of the latin language. The Tantum Ergo you reference is a beautiful melody (I just listened to it on youtube.com), but I dare say most of the converts (including myself) are completely lost when latin is read, spoken or sung during mass. It basically then becomes meaningless gibberish that does nothing to enhance the meaning of the mass. (I’ll probably be excommunicated for saying this! lol.)

    It is my understanding that some of the Christian music publishers have theologians verifying the theological accuracy of their songs before they are recorded. I would hope that as Christians they would feel a sense of responsibility to make sure they are accurately sharing God’s word. (Of course, this thought is now skewd by whichever flavor of Christianity is considered THE real flavor…)

    Anyway, I can appreciate your love of Gregorian and polyphonic music if that helps you become, and stay, closer with God, as well as continuing to use many of the timeless classics. But, weeding out some of the really bad songs might not be a bad idea. We use the Gather II hymnals. Maybe when GIA Publications is selecting songs for their Gather III hymnals they can ask themselves the following questions: Is this song still being used by the parishes (maybe take a poll from music directors)? Are we keeping this song only because of tradition or does it realistically contribute to the mass? Can we replace this song with a one that better conveys the same message? Can we change the key to one that is easier to sing, instead of just what is easier for the musician to play?

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  9. so much here. Too much for a comprehensive reply now. However my husband is a composer, and I do the contemporary worship at my church, so I have opinions about this: theological and practical. I think if the Spirit is moving at all, there has to be some good NEW music, not just the stuff written before 1950. I don’t get people who don’t like hymns and think they are “dead” either — although it’s possibly that they are played and sung as if they were. I love hymns.

    1. It’s true. People don’t sing together any much any more.

    2. At least one person in my church tells me that the farther she sits in the back, the more difficult it is to sing. The church was built very traditionally, and people in the back can’t hear the music or each other and don’t participate. Also, the church is very rarely full, so that contributes.

    3. I don’t mind projection screens if they work in the worship space, because it gets people’s heads out of their books. they don’t work in our space, though.

    4. I read music, so having the music is important to me. But talk to people who don’t read music, and the notations are a foreign language to them (no, really, talk to them, having the music doesn’t help them at all).

    5. there was a time before the printing press and the book when music was primarily passed down orally. Indeed, the music of the people, folk music, has always been passed down and learned orally. I love hymnals, but we had singing long before we had hymnals. And let’s talk about singing before we had hymnals. Or before there was much literary.

    6. If you can hear each other, singing together is on of the greatest things a group can do. it’s like a drug. I wish people could experience it.

    There are a lot of ironies here, but here’s another one: singing disappearing in an era with such a high literacy rate.

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  10. I’ve appreciated the privilege of being Michael’s guest blogger, and am enjoying the comments. Thanks to all for a good discussion!

    My original post is really an attempt to address the pragmatic matter of getting people to sing, rather than to advocate for certain types of songs over others. Of course, there are people who can’t sing (due to injury, infirmity or age), people who are averse to singing in general, and people who regard music solely as entertainment; my thought, however, is that there are some people who are not familiar with particular songs, but who might sing along if sufficient cues are provided to help them learn the songs they don’t know. In a nutshell, my original thesis was that the traditional environment generally provides more help to such learners than the contemporary one, for the reasons I originally stated.

    Since there are probably no songs (except, possibly, for “Happy Birthday”) that literally everyone knows, there will always need to be a way for the people of the church to learn the songs of the church (new songs or old) from the church. (I don’t think we can get by with outsourcing this responsibility to Christian mass media.) If we do not attend to this need, then I rather suspect that congregational singing will continue to decline — regardless of what we’re asking people to sing.

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  11. You know, there ARE Christians here in America who have never heard a praise chorus, who don’t know who K-LOVE is, and frankly, don’t care. Who love the sound of a ginormous pipe organ played by someone who REALLY knows how to crank it out. We go to churches where it is inconceivable that powerpoint would be used for anything and where music is not only a means of praising God, but of teaching his children about His goodness and mercy.

    Really, you people complain about the shallowness of contemporary Christianity, but you have bought into it. You take communion with the prepackaged shrink-wrapped juice-cup-and-bread-combination and never think a thing about it. You have only yourselves to blame.

    I apologize for the snitty tone of this, but the snarky comment about K-LOVE got to me. Yes, I googled it and I read the wiki on it. Yay. Now I can be in with the in-crowd. (Cue eye-roll)

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  12. I personally believe that we, as God’s children, get wrapped up in what we should sing or not sing and what is appropriate for worship and what isn’t. Some like hymns and some like contemporary Christian music. You can never please all of the people all of the time. But I think the point that is missed is this: Who is worship for? Is it for us or is it for God? If the Spirit of God is in the worship (and the only way that happens, is if our hearts are worshipping in spirit and truth) then, most anything we sing will be worship unto God. I can worship God with a hymn or a contemporary song, if the Spirit of God is there. Our dislikes and opinions of what we should sing as worship can easily cause us to miss why we are singing what we sing, and that is to totally and completely enter into God’s presence through our heart cries of songs of worship to Him. My mom won’t go to church on the Sundays that we have contemporary worship and alot of others won’t come for the same reason. What if we stayed home on days that we sang hymns…it’s not about us, but about God. Our differences get in the way when we should be focusing on just worshipping God, not worrying about if all the types of songs we sing please everyone.

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  13. I don’t publish comments that tell us the conversation itself is a waste of time. I don’t want to implicate such commenters in our sin 🙂

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  14. Confessional Lutherans believe that hymns should teach and reflect church doctrine and practice.

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  15. I appreciate the variety of responses on this thread. I, too, struggle with some of the poorly written “praise” music that not only is difficult to follow (I’m a musician, I like to see the music), but has texts that don’t seem very theologically sound or very sophisticated. If our worship is to glorify God, the music we use should point to the person of God.

    I’ve become a little concerned about the prevalence of worship bands in the church – not because there’s anything wrong with a variety of instrumentation – but because it starts to look more like a concert than a time of worship, which leads again to the decline of congregational singing. I was recently horrified when someone came to me after a worship service where I am substituting as a pianist and commented that she felt like she was at a concert. I thanked this person but expressed to her that I hoped that the music had directed her attention to God.

    There is not too much that can lift the spirit like voices joined in singing. I remember attending a Promise Keepers event in the Los Angeles Coliseum many years ago where about 75,000 men were singing together. It was an incredible and spiritually uplifting experience. This is what will be lost if we abandon the tradition of congregational singing.

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  16. I too am Catholic, and, like the poster above, agree that the majority of the songs in the “modern” Catholic hymnal are junk. However, where I differ is I am traditionalist Catholic. To us, Wesley is new-fangled. We mostly have Gregorian Chant and polyphony. There is the missed cultural element with good hymns, both in receiving and passing on hymns.

    There is something cool about knowing hymns that were being sung in Churches 900 years ago. Search for a recording of Tantum Ergo, imagine passing that down to your children as one of the most beloved hymns of the western world. Know try to imagine the same with a modern Sonic Flood or something song.

    Old, old hymns are timeless. For example, O Come all Ye Faithful is something that will never go out of style. Hymns and liturgy ground out faith, both the theology and the spirituality (is anyone else concerned that most of the modern praise songs are written by people under 30 without any theological training. I don’t find heretical things very often, but that is more to a lack of meaning to many songs rather than good theology).

    As Fr. Z from http://wdtprs.com/ says, Save the Liturgy, Save the World.

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  17. It is hard for me even to post a reply to this without being sarcastic…like….
    I’m just here for the sermon…or…
    I’m just here to watch the show…

    just seems to be a lot of use of the word “I” in our songs lately, first person reigns…
    I will serve you…I will love you forever (really…really…do you have the power to do that without the Holy Spirit?) …I will give you all (what do we have that is not His anyway?)
    i’m not trying to be picky but if our response to God is to tell him what we’ll do for Him i can understand why folks don’t want to sing.

    songs from the previous centuries seemed more humble and submissive and don’t sound so much like “the pocket savior” or “god my buddy” sappy religion in my opinion.

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  18. Where do I begin. A lot of contemporary music is aimed at the lowest common denominator (to make to “sell”). Examples: “These are the days of David, rebuilding the temple of God” – did the writer even read the Bible? David didn’t even build the temple – because he was a man of war. His son built it. He certainly didn’t rebuild it. Or how about “Lift Jesus higher, for He said if He was lifted up He’ld draw all men to Him” – The very next verse says he was speaking of the manner of His death. That song is appropriate for the Roman guards, maybe, but certainly not for Christians to sing. Then there are the 7-11 songs – seven words repeat 11 times. Of course you must be a high tenor, because they raise the key every couple times. And don’t bother trying to sing baritone or bass – they aren’t going to show you the music – just the words. Improvise and hope the person next to you isn’t improvising differently.
    And don’t get me started on the people on stage performing in what is supposed to be corporate worship – with their choreographed hand motions and special musical riffs. If it is choreographed, it certainly isn’t an expression of emotion.
    And loudness in our church is certainly a problem – they may think that 75 db isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t necessary.
    Ugh.

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  19. There are new hymns being written. Keith Getty & Stuart Townend have done some theologically sound AND singable ones.

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  20. I recently visited a traditional church that sings hymns with out any musical accompaniment. These songs were traditional hymns, sung from a hymnal. I had never seen anything like it. One worship leader, leading acapella. There were some people singing. There were more people not sining. A couple were playing with the baby behind them through the whole song service! I don’t think the people weren’t entering in because the songs were unfamiliar, too wordy, have weird syncopation, or a different bridge.

    For those looking for a twentieth century hymn, “Without Him” by Mylon R. LeFevre. Its in the hymnals, too.

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  21. Speaking as a guitarist I think there’s a tyranny of the guitar in modern worship settings. Guitarists assign keys based on what is easy to play, rather than what is easy to sing. As an experiment try singing a melody in any key that is comfortable first, and then try to strum chords for the key you’re already singing in rather than singing in the key that’s easy to play. I tried this a lot in my college years and discovered that people left to their own devices never just pick a note out of thin air that leads to a guitar-friendly key.

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  22. LeftyRuss,
    when the old traditional hymns got published, the publishers put them in keys that pianists/organists can play more easily because of the fingerings. Churches usually have a piano, if not an organ, and around the turn of the last century just about as many families had pianos as did not. Pianos were mass-produced and relatively affordable, and singing around the piano was home entertainment before radio came along.

    It’s possible to put hymns into keys people can actually sing, and to use a guitar to accompany a great many of them. I do it a lot for my worship team.

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  23. I think the best examples of hymn writers are Neale and Newman during the Oxford movement, who took much older medieval hymns and placed them in the vernacular of the people of their generation. Neale’s “O Come O Come Emmanuel” I think is the best example, because it retains that ancient, gregorian feel but in an arrangement, language and tonal range which was singable for the people of his generation. What we need are musicians who can write music which proclaims the mystery of the faith in our venacular.

    Music should also return to a supporting role in worship, rather being the main attraction (which happens in traditional and contemporary services). Worship used to culminate in the eucharist. I’m not saying that is the only model, but worship needs focus and purpose. Focusing on the sermon has its own problems. Worship has got to be more than merely another form of amusement and entertainment. At some point, people are going to find pagan rituals far more entertaining. That maybe what is behind recent scandalous revivals, because I keep seeing people defend them by pointing to similar esoteric movements in remote parts of the world, where Christianity may be syncretized with pagan rituals.

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  25. Richard, I’m actually a hymn advocate myself. It’s one of the reason why I critique hymn advocates so harshly, I am one.

    iMonk, I’ve been saying for years that there is no reason why hymns can’t be re-worked (it’s what they were written for until the very late 1800’s, after all). I just wish more people would get the concept!

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  26. Good point, Michael.

    That IS the great thing about hymnody is that if there’s an amazing text and a so-so tune enough of the stuff is public domain you’re not stuck with a bad text and bad music. 🙂 If we have an old hymn with bad music and a great text it can be salvaged. Nowadays if we have a hymn with a great tune and bad theology or a bad tune with good theology it’s under copyright and we won’t live the requisite 75 years it may take to salvage the material!

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  27. Repeated point: I think we have a lot of creative room to work with hymn tunes, music, instruments, etc. A lot of “bad hymns” are just bad, but a lot have redeemable texts and with some TLC, can be rescued for contemporary singing with the right instruments and arrangements.

    Check out the Hymns section of the RUF website, where all the Indelible Grace hymn project is archived.

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  28. Wezlo, I hear you on most hymns not working. What hymn advocates (and I count myself one of them) need to remember is that at most 10% of any set of hymns in a hymnal actually get used. The rest are there to more or less literally fill out the functionality of the church year or just fit prescribed themes that fit publishing purposes or theological/musical traditions. It can be amazing what great songs DON’T end up in hymnals just for these sorts of reasons (and more mundane ones like who owns what copyright of what arrangement).

    Music from AD 100-about AD 1500 would be tough to include because the whole approach to tonal organization and metrical phrasing is different. We often don’t realize that the major/minor key system we take for granted didn’t really get consolidated until the early Baroque era at the earliest (i.e. about 1600 AD). Even though pop and rock and jazz reintroduced modality it’s not the sort of modal concept that applied to earlier music.

    What the earlier music has in rhythmic simplicity can be lost in having a different conception of harmonic and linear organization. Sure, those lines are easier to sing because they’re chants but they’re harder to remember because they’re in phrygian or dorian, modes that people don’t just naturally sing in these days.

    LeftyRuss, there’s an old book called Why Catholics Can’t Sing that might touch on some of those questions. It’s a bit parochial in its complaints and doesn’t always account for the fact that in classical music some of the people farthest out in the avant garde were Catholics (Webern, Messiaen, Penderecki,for instance) but it has some useful talking points.

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  29. Regarding the suggestion for including music from every century of Christendom, I like the concept but don’t believe it to be actually possible. I’m not a musicologist, but my understanding is that the corpus of Western music only goes back roughly a thousand years or so. (Words to hymns are a different matter, of course.) And yes, any hymn book with any pretense of being at all comprehensive should have some older examples.

    Probably the oldest hymn that is still (I hope) widely known to general churchgoers is the Advent (NOT Christmas) hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, which is based on music from at least the 15th century and possibly older, though usually sung in a modern setting.

    Congregational singing in the more modern sense was popularized with the Reformation, so the flood gates open in the 16th century and there are innumerable splendid examples of hymnody (along with even more examples of bad or mediocre hymnody) from then on.

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  30. By the way, when I asked the question “why are so many of these songs are written in keys that are next-to-impossible to sing?” I am referring to old traditional hymns. Two other notes: First, I was raised in a pentacostal church (Assembly of God) so I heard a LOT of old old hymns growing up too. (Bringing in the Sheaves… give me a break.) Second, I’m 45 years old, so I’m not exactly a spring chicken either.

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  31. Wow, what great conversation! I just stumbled upon this page through a Yahoo! link. I would love to comment on each and every one of the previous comments but that would be extreme so I’ll just throw a little rant down.

    I’m Catholic. Our “new” hymnals are a joke. The few “newer” songs are at least 30 years old, and most seem as old as the Church. Once in a while we’ll sing a Rich Mullens or Matt Redman tune but most are oldie- moldie songs that nobody wants to sing. You look around during a song and most are closed-mouth.

    My wife and I are the youth leaders at our church. I just returned from a week-long retreat with some of the teens. We sang contempory worship and praise songs every evening. It was awesome. The kids were belting it out at the top of their lungs. I don’t think all of the songs we sang would be considered instant classics, but at least the kids were singing praise to our Lord. (I may be a little naive, but isn’t that the main point of all this?) Of the songs we sang, I can imagine some of them showing up in hymnals in the next 5-10 years. Maybe even in the Catholic church!

    Good or bad, the Catholic Church is steeped in tradition, and our music probably 20-30 years behind our Protestant brothers. Change will be slow. I’ll admit there are some great old songs (Amazing Grace) but we need to incorporate more newer songs. Just like clothing, music should change with the times. If the music in the Church doesn’t evolve and make more of an attempt to appeal to a younger generation, then it will be harder for the younger generation to identify with the Church. They will think if the Church as their parents’ Church, not theirs. The Church will die. Okay, I’m off my soapbox.

    On question: Can anyone answer why are so many of these songs are written in keys that are next-to-impossible to sing? like E-flat? You’ve got to be Celine Dion to hit some of these notes.

    (well, so much for a small blurb…)

    Thanks for the great dialog! I’m saving this page to my Favorites!

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  32. That’s funny I didn’t see any of you at my prayer group meeting last night, yet you sure have it pegged. 😉

    The leader asked for favorites so that we could get some enthusiastic singing. (I was silent, since I didn’t think that “None of the above” was acceptable.) One that we did was very bad in one section. The men and women singing two completely different things at the same time. Perhaps, in a large (convention center size) with very well trained singers leading it may have worked, but with 12 people and 1 guitarist it didn’t.

    I also agree that some songs work much better as a solo than as a group. I was listening to Randy Travis and really enjoying a song, only to realize it was one that I don’t enjoy when attempting to sing it.

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  34. I am of the age that I should love all these boomer-centric praise choruses, but I agree 100% with Michael’s orignal post. We are tossing out our treasures like yesterday’s garbage and we celebrate our new praise choruses, no matter how bad they are (Yes, a thousand times, yes, some of them are pretty good …. which doesn’t affect my point.) like they were mannah from heaven. And we are killing our own musicality.

    Here’s irony for you:
    American protestantism produced gospel music.
    Gospel music produced the best pop music singers America has ever had.
    The boomers wanted to sing songs like the pop singers were singing.
    The churches started jettisoning the old hymns in favor of the new pop praise choruses.
    American protestants can’t sing anymore.

    Tom said,
    If the praise team has to rehearse in order to be “in sync”, what chance does an unrehearsed congregation have?
    Right on. In fact, I think it’s even worse. Many of these rhythms and melodies simply can’t be sung successfully by a group of more than ten people, regardless of how talented or rehearsed they are. Syncopation and trills are really for indivudals and small groups.

    Steve Scott said,
    This is because time and generations have already weeded out the truly bad hymns; something that has yet to happen with choruses.
    Which is a great argument for sticking with the classics. They have proved themselves and the new stuff has not.

    It’s not like, here we have a bunch of choruses and we just have to wait for the bad stuff to filter out. The new choruses — most of which are going to be horrendous — are just going to keep on coming. So, since we already have a bunch of good stuff …!
    No, we shouldn’t sing only what was written before 1950. But when a new praise chorus comes along we should ask, “Is it really all that good?” before we let it bump something like “A Mighty Fortress” out of our repertoire. (And generally, the answer will be no.)

    I really like what I heard an older minister of music say one time: “Every generation, including my own, has had some bad church music. And every generation, including the one now, has had some great church music. But, on the whole, the music that we have now is just sorry in comparison. It’s just sorry.”

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  35. iMonk, I don’t think I was saying that – if anything I mentioned the bone-heads who want to get rid of the hymns and I didn’t want to be associated with them.

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  36. My experience with congregational singing before I jumped the fence into Quakerism – was that they wanted to sing these relatively brainless choruses over and over and over and over again. Singing the same four lines which ofthen amount to, “Grass is green, sky is blue, isn’t God nice…” endlessly over 10-15 minutes just gets old. Instead of feeling that I was having a worshipful experience I would start thinking this is stupid and sit down.

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  37. Jason: Use that Google thing 🙂 K-LOVE.

    Wezlo: I’ve not heard anyone advocate hymns only in either of these posts.

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  38. Really not sure I agree with any of these points. Point one has been true for any transition in worship style (not just music). I mean, it takes time to get used to the kneeling and standing in liturgical churches, and the Christianese language of a Baptist meeting.

    It’s also true with any shift in music style. Good grief, I go down an lead worship at a local Baptist retirement home and some of the songs they sing are in rhythms that I find so weird that I can’t keep up. Would it be better to sing those in worship? (Note, the theology is often worse than what I find in the praise songs that pass muster at our congregation – so for me they have two strikes).

    The whole road-map and oral tradition points ignore the development of English Hymnody. First, hymns weren’t written with tunes in mind. The author wrote the lyrics (or a church bought a book of hymns) and then handed it over to the music director to create (or, gasp, adapt) a tune for the congregation. This meant that you could sing the “same” hymn in several different congregations with a huge variation of tune and meter. It wasn’t until the early 20th Century that hymnals were widely printed with lyric/music combinations. If churches could manage to do this with even more variation than we do today with the worship songs, in an era without the ability to record variations and bring them to other congregations, why on earth is it so difficult for churches to do it in an era of the internet and near-instant communication?

    Look, I’m not an advocate of “do away with the hymns.” It’s a stupid argument to make filled with the arrogance of novelty. The recent items I’ve read advocating for hymns, however, leave much to be desired. They tend to be unaware of the history of English hymnody, built upon anecdotal evidence, and speak nothing of the weakness of a good chunk of the corpus of English hymns. By over-stating the dignity of hymns (not done in particular case) and ignorning how the hymns came to us (grossly done in this particular case). Hymn advocates are acting as mirror-images for their contemporary counterparts – it adds nothing to the theological reflection of worship that is so needed in the American Church.

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  39. Couple of points…

    I’d buy a hymnal that genuinely had a balance of songs from every century. Most that I see have little from pre-Wesley and masses of Victorian mush, that is only CCM for that era.

    Second, concerning the complexity of songs. I could sing every bridge, harmony and the guitar solos from the charts of the 60’s and 70’s. My children will (unfortunately sometimes) do just the same with the hip-hop of today. Why do we lose our ability to sing absolutely anything when we walk into church?

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  40. Michael,
    I had to weigh in because our church just got new hymnals for the first time in a long time last week. Everyone is excited about the new ones(who doesn’t like new, shiny things? ), but I am grateful to see a good mix of old and new and a lot of songs that I already know well. Some of them will be new to our people, but we are all excited about it. In answer to Brian’s somewhat sarcastic question, this hymnal is a first edition this year and has some songs that have been written within the last decade. : )

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  41. Hmm

    Not every contemporary song is well written, easy to sing to or suitable for congregational singing.

    However, the difference with older hymns is that there has been a filtering process through the process of history. For example, Charles Wesley wrote around 6,500 hymns – yet I’m not sure more than about 300 are in regular circulation now. There are many hymn writers who may only have one or two hymns in a hymnal, but probably wrote many more. Imagine that awful service that was full of all those hymns we no loner sing?

    Regarding tunes, most of them are very different from those that would have been previously used. Maddy Prior did a CD recently using the folk tunes that had been used in the UK to Wesley hymns before the organ expelled the ‘choir’ (a group of local musicians and singers using whatever instruments available) in the name of ‘taste’ and ‘culture’ – thus alienating the local culture and imposing a musical culture. These tunes were far more syncopated, often varied from location to location and were passed down orally rather than codified.

    Sound familiar?

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  43. Hmm, this is a well thought out post, but as I was reading I kept flashing back to all the rock concerts I’ve been to.

    All five of the points made here are true to a much greater degree in rock concerts (they don’t even project the lyrics!), and yet “congregational singing” at those secular events is off the hook (sorry, couldn’t resist).

    I still maintain that this is a heart problem. It’s not about song-craft or thoughtful facilitation. Those who don’t sing abstain because singing ANY worship song to God (well or poorly written, loud or quiet) is an act of sacrificial submission, and that is an affront to the ego. Our response to this particular problem as leaders should be to encourage, exhort, and instruct the (non)singers.

    Tweaking the soundboard dials, re-writing songs, and dusting of the hymnals is a response to a very different set of problems (namely, badly mixed sound, poorly crafted songs, and discontinuity, respectively). But they’re the wrong responses to the problem of people refusing to worship.

    @Mike: our perspectives couldn’t be more different. Most of the churches I’m in and around drastically overpower their congregation…and they still don’t sing. Besides, people love the sound of their own voices no matter how bad they are. Haven’t you watched American Idol? : )

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  44. I find this a thoughtful post. There are other reasons that contemporary music has more difficulty than traditional hymns. The traditional hymns we have are better than the comtemporary choruses. Yet at the same time, traditional hymns are not better than contemporary choruses. Huh? This is because time and generations have already weeded out the truly bad hymns; something that has yet to happen with choruses. We’re still in the process of weeding them out. A higher percentage of hymns are good than are choruses. I read a historical article a while ago that listed some old hymns from some of the more popular hymn writers. These might have been written shortly after the writer’s conversion when their theology wasn’t very advanced. Passionate, yes, but some bad lyrics from immature theology. They have been weeded out. We who live today don’t realize that those bad hymns even existed. This is why old isn’t better, but just the ones that survived.

    Also, traditional hymns were made to be sung. The vocal melody was primary, and the intrument was supporting. Contemporary choruses are often adapted from artists’ recordings where instruments and style are at least as important as the vocals. The artist’s original intent might not be to have them sung by a congregation. Trying to sing many of these “a capella” in a small bible study can be an exercise in futility, yet with musical accompaniment in church they fare better, yet not as well as with the hymns.

    I’ve come to like contemporary choruses (the good ones) as good as the hymns, and am glad I get to sing from both groups.

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  46. KLOVE, classic. I realize I have become a part of the problem that I described rather than a part of furthering the conversation of worship. A curse on me.

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  49. Any hymns been printed in the 21st century? We’ll have to wait until 2050 when the next printing comes out.

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  50. >One suggested that sing a song from every century dating back to the early days of Christianity.

    That’s what you have in almost any good hymnal. On the criteria of diversity- historical, theological, whatever- a good hymnal wins hands down, slam dunk. The problem is pushing all those songs through the same instrumental, stylistic grid musically, so thank God for people like Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace, who can take that diversity and give it the musical unity needed for congregations now.

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  51. As a musician/music lover/”worship pastor” I would say that I agree, and could argue as Zach suggested the plethora of difficulties for the “modern” worshiper in singing hymns.

    I think that we continue to go round and round an argument of ‘contemporary’ and ‘traditional’ that we don’t need to be having.

    J.D. Walt has posted some great arguments on his site lately. Two of which have recently caught my eye. One suggested that sing a song from every century dating back to the early days of Christianity. The second suggested three questions that I think apply to any of our corporate worship times whether contemporary or traditional. 1. Does the worship magnify the glory of God on His throne in heaven while emphasizing His saving work here on earth. 2. Does the worship help people understand their dislocation from God. 3. Does the worship help people understand their relocation because of His grace. (These were paraphrased).

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  52. I absolutely agree with Tom’s last point – many CCM songs have fast, syncopated words that are fine for a solo artist but are difficult for the worship team and the congregation to follow. I argued and argued with the song leader at my last church about choosing songs with lines like that. Everyone in the worship band were singing the words at different rhythms and it was difficult to follow.
    But the worship leader wants to add a new song that he/she heard in the car and got teary-eyed over this past week.

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  53. My family and I have taken a break from our church of 13 years where I was very involved in the music program. We’ve visited 10 different churches over the last few months–just to see what’s out there and what people are doing.

    From what I’ve seen, the biggest reason congregations don’t sing is that the music isn’t present enough. This goes for any style or any complexity.

    People don’t like to hear their own voices, and most churches are so busy trying to be quiet that they leave people on their own to sing solos from the pews (in their mind).

    “Loud” music is almost never actually loud. It’s just poorly mixed or improperly EQ’d. The music needs to be louder, but not harsh. That’s kind of tricky with most current sound reinforcement.

    My observation is that where the music (of any style) is louder, people sing. When the music is conspicuously managed to be quiet….the people don’t.

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  54. I’m sure we could write a post as well on the challenges of hymn singing, but that said, I affirm much of what he writes here. As a guy who leads music in the church for a living, I am trying my darnest to lead with songs that are just good songs to serve my people. Some of those songs were written decades ago and some where written a few months ago. I am finding more and more that if we have good songs (Christ-centered, good melodies, etc) and good people leading those songs (Authentic lovers of God, good leaders, skilled musically, comfortable up front) most of these problems take care of themselves.

    I also want to caution us here to not be reductionist in our analysis of this problem. People not singing has much to do with other factors (though I affirm what he writes above). If you want to read some of those other factors you can click here and read the post, but the comments section as well has many good responses.

    http://takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com/2008/07/slow-death-of-congregational-singing.html

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