Choral Music and the Gospel
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I'm part of a city centre church that celebrates choral excellence. I enjoy singing in one of the choirs and it's fun - but what is the point?
It's said that if you want to know what is important to an organisation, look at how it spends its (discretionary) time and money. Our church spends lots of time and money on music and bells.
I am not sure how what we do relates to the gospel (good news to the poor, release to the captives etc)
Cheers
Asher
It's said that if you want to know what is important to an organisation, look at how it spends its (discretionary) time and money. Our church spends lots of time and money on music and bells.
I am not sure how what we do relates to the gospel (good news to the poor, release to the captives etc)
Cheers
Asher
Comments
Not everything that a church does has to be doctrinal, didacticc; some of it is numinous. It also allows you and your fellow musicians to offer your skills back to their source, and in the process enrich the lives of many people. That is the element I enjoy myself, on the occasions I get to do it. It's far more than fun - it's a vital part of my life of faith, both when offering my skills myself and when particpating in services when others' skills are offered.
There is a clear attempt to decry and trivialise this kind of worship and the associated skills and tradition going on with the Church of England, as a side-effect of the HTB franchising process. It's deeply depressing to find it being belittled from within.
WTF?
I just reread my OP, and I just don't get this comment from you that I am belittling the choral tradition of the CofE.
You and I share an interest and passion. We spend our time in similar way in this instance.
Why the shut down?
Asher
A lot of people understand their faith on the basis of the hymns that they sing so it very much relates to the gospel. And St Augustine said that 'he who sings prays twice.'
It’s a lovely phrase. But apparently, it doesn’t actually appear in anything St. Augustine wrote, nor does it seem to have been quoted before the mid-20th C.
I may have read it wrong, but I got the idea that Thunderbunk meant the 'within' of the certain church traditions eg, HTB, which he refers to. It looks more as if he's criticising how 'the Church' itself belittles the potential of certain kinds of music and musicians by its prioritising flashier, or more contemporary stuff, like the HTB 'franchise'. I didn't get that he was saying you were belittling it, specifically? But I could've read it wrong.
I was intrigued enough to look this up and this quote is an abridged version of his commentary on Psalm 73: 1 - 'For he that sings praise, not only praises but praises with gladness; he that sings praise, not only sings but also loves him of whom he sings.'
St Paul was keen to encourage Christians to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God (Col 3: 16). I think a choir is a great asset to the ministry and mission of a church.
How can choirs (which I like and value BTW) be "good news to the poor" unless (1) they put on concerts which raise funds for charities such as Shelter; (2) they offer to brighten up poor peoples' lives by going into homeless hostels and the like; (3) they run projects like "El Sistema" in deprived areas?
This.
And other things too. Where the pursuit of excellence can result in people's value being located in their musical capital. Where opportunities to sing in a church choir is restricted to those with a (high level of) musical education. Where the choral scholars never seem to come from state schools. Where the music is the end, not the worship....
Thanks for that. @ThunderBunk - sorry for misreading you.
Nothing that happens during a service directly affects social justice - very few people have ever been fed, clothed or released from prison during a church service. This is equally true of all traditions, and of all forms of worship. Are you saying that God is more satisfied with tedious mediocrity than with the kind of excellence that liturgical choirs and musicians strive for? The attainment of that excellence doesn't strike me as essential, but striving for it does. God, as a creator, gives us gifts extravagantly, and an equal extravagance strikes me as appropriate in our response. Christ took the side of the woman breaking the jar of nard over his feet and wiping its contents from them with his hair; he did not take the part of the person suggesting that that jar could be sold and the money used to feed the poor. The point of a church service, to my mind is to approach God and offer ourselves in his service, and to be nourished for that service as the reciprocal to that approach. In that context, I have no compunction in suggesting that striving for excellence in the life of the church is the equivalent of that action of extravagant generosity, in response to the overwhelming generosity of God.
I can see some merit in your point about the people who take part, but we will always be self-selecting, and again, I see no greater merit in mediocrity than in excellence. If those are the people with the skills, let them come forward, providing always that a musical education is available to those with the talent to make use of it. There are all sorts of problems with musical education and the provision of suitable facilities for practicing, but I would vehemently challenge the idea that these problems are a good reason for abandoning the whole tradition of Western church music, and making doctrinal dirges mandatory.
This would fulfil the fantasies of far too many within the church, for my mind, especially the bureaucratically minded non-entities with whom the House of Bishops is stuffed. Let them manage each other out of existence, not one of the main sources of beauty in the life of the church.
But “He who sings prays twice” can’t really be called an abridged version of the more complete quote. The quote says nothing about praying, or about doing anything twice; it talks about praise, gladness and love. At most, it is as gloss or riff on what Augustine wrote.
I went to a very average comprehensive school in South Wales, but we were lucky enough to have a gifted music teacher with strong socialist principles, who believed that anyone who wanted to join the choir should be given the opportunity to learn to read music and join in as best they could.
I don't mean to suggest that. Only that I believe that God calls us, sends us and nurtures us in different ways. Music, thinking, contemplation, social action, scrubbing the floors, preaching a sermon, refuting a sermon -- so many more ways that God can use, and I'm sure God has many more up the sleeve. IMHO all those ways are God's joyful energy flowing into our lives, God's looking upon all that was made and saying "it is good".
I find a simpler service e.g a form of contemporary-language Vespers (the Lutherans do it well, even if they sometimes double the length of the service by introducing Herr Bach) rather more conducive to prayer, but this is, of course, purely subjective, and YMMV.
Or, IOW, by all means use music/singing. but keep it congregational (mostly) and simple......
To return to the OP, is there a way in which churches can have a great musical tradition and use that to somehow serve the wider social aspects of the Gospel (outside the church building)?
Horses for courses. You've just consigned a great deal of skill, dedication and tradition into the dustbin, and I will not let that pass without protest. Have your vespers, and sometimes I will want to join you, but less contempt if you don't mind awfully, for the skill and beauty required for a good choral evensong.
On the other hand, there should be a royalty fee of at least £1000 per performance for Balfour Gardener's Evening Hymn and Stanford's B flat Mag & Nunc. They have become cliches, in my observation, and thus lost their power to point beyond themselves. Except when they haven't, I suppoe.
What is wrong with that?
There are of course some ethical ambiguities in this system. But there are ways to address this. Rublev's program seems a fine example of how to proceed.
We are a city centre parish with a reasonably high level of poverty within the parish. As a congregation, the church has always tried to have beauty and magnificence around in worship in the Parish. This included times when it was surrounded by slums. Some of this has drawn people who like that sort of thing but more importantly, but it does two things
- It everyone who comes through the parish access to a place of beauty and quiet (it is open a lot of the day time and we seek ways to extend it)
- It hints at wonder and joy that is part of the divine worship and suggests God is worth worshipping
We do engage in other ways with the community including soup runs and have a church-sponsored mental health charity based next door in the former church rooms but this perhaps is our most open evangelical action. So I will support the congregation in doing that. It also changes the dynamic between those who come in at our door asking for help. They often settle down to pray instead.Let us be clear it is a good thing to give a starving person bread or to clothe a naked person but until we see them as an image of Christ we are just another institution doing good works. Beauty does not meet a basic need but to invite people to join in an action of beauty says something very deep about their humanity. Or maybe I have that wrong, maybe this is the most basic need after, going back to my tradition, as the Westminster Confession says
I hope you'll take some time to find out what is going on before you commence stirring. Quite apart from anything else, members of the choir will be the people who attend church the most, and you're also likely to find that they'll be the first to volunteer for other stuff, such as delivering magazines, helping with sales and fetes, etc. And when it comes to "occasional" worshippers you may find it is choir partners/ parents who make up these numbers too.
At our own place the choir provides 75% of the ministers of the eucharist, 80% of fete stallholders; 100% of the volunteer caterers, 100% of the after-church coffee rota, 90% of the magazine deliverers, 100% of people who run confirmation classes, 95% of the regulars at churchyard working parties. To be blunt, without the choir our place would fall apart. And yet whenever there is some urgent need - someone needs emergency accommodation, the local food bank puts out a frantic appeal, etc - it is choir members who are first to come forward.
Just saying...
So do service delivery mechanisms. Feeding the poor used to involve leaving the margins of fields for gleaning, or bringing extra produce to the church for distribution. Those forms have also largely passed, in industrialized places.
How we worship and serve will always change in the course of history. But I'm pretty sure that we're called to do both as followers of Jesus. I'm also sure that there is defensiveness (and sometimes superiority) around these aspects of discipleship and their forms. It's the embattled defensiveness and the judgmental superiority that truly grieve me... and you can find those in both service and worship.
But worship is an offering. I think Jesus pointed clearly to the acceptability of such offerings, despite Judas's criticism, when reflecting on the woman who anointed his feet with expensive perfume.
Much depends on the heart of those making the offering. For example, when we sing "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain", is it just about the dramatic beauty of the music? Or do the words and music represent a conscious offering of thankfulness to God?
That's a question only the singers can answer. It is not our place to judge their sincerity, any more than it was Judas's place to point the critical finger.
What Aravis describes, especially with education cuts, is now sadly unusual. Like it or not, traditional choral music (and classical music generally) is most definitely nowadays something that excludes many. If churches are serious about keeping choral music they must get serious about widening participation. Honestly I enjoy choral music, but the snobbery and lack of self-awareness is very offputting.
A bit of personal testimony. As an 11 year old choirboy, singing the classical sacred oratorios, I was away of the technical challenges of learning the music, conscious of the hard work in advance of performances and also of the dramatic beauty of the music. It awakened my aesthetic sense without me being aware of it. But I was dimly aware that there was more going on. The music itself was an evangel, doing something to open up my awareness to a greater Something. I don't think my experience was unique. It's what C S Lewis calls the awareness of the numinous, moving, transcendental, almost but not quite in our grasp.
I think great music can do that. But I would not rule out the possibility of contemporary music working in the same way.
Perhaps some folks are deaf to the spiritual power of the classic genre and some to the spiritual power of the contemporary genre? I can say here for example that I find the contemporary song 'Oceans' to be spiritually enlightening and moving and the experience of the numinous feels very similar to singing "Worthy is the Lamb/Amen" from Messiah. That may seem very strange to some of you, but it is so.
I really don't think I or anyone else have said anything that warrants getting so personal. It would help a lot if you could quote parts of a comment you're replying to, because I genuinely don't see any relation between my comment and your response.
I'm not sure if your post was addressed to me or Pomona. I thought my post made it clear that in my own experience the awareness of the numinous may be helped by both the classical repertoire and the contemporary repertoire.
There is indeed an issue of access in traditional church music. Personally I think those who dismiss it are turning their back on a rich resource. Losing out. People who are deaf to the repertoire, or deaf to classical drama or literature, may indeed be demonstrating ignorance, or arrogance or snobbery.
But that can work in both directions. Personally, being able to "see through both windows" I do not wish to throw stones at either.
Nor do I wish to patronise any Shipmate. We all have blind spots.
It's worth saying that while I haven't seen people be clothed or released from prison during a church service, I think churches with decent refreshments before and/or after a service, or regular meals served afterwards are a good example of being fed during a service (maybe technically not during but as good as). I know Vineyard at least have coffee and donuts/pastries before and after their services, and when you have nothing it does make their services much more tempting! So while I don't think more formal styles of church (formal isn't meant negatively here but I can't think of a better term!) would have refreshments beforehand, maybe 8am service, breakfast, 10.30am service would be a way of having both spiritual and temporal succour for those who need it, and those who wishto fast beforehand can do the 8am service and breakfast afterwards. I would much rather be able to get breakfast before a sung Eucharist (medically exempt from fasting) than a Vineyard service....
I'm sure the short answer is 'of course'. But I don't think it's ever as straightforward as that.
Not about music, but I always remember a story in a Lent book by David Sheppard about someone who did a lot of work with homeless people in London. Can't remember the exact details but I think he was asked by someone how he could reconcile attending the church he did - high church, posh chalices, vestments, everything gold and silver etc - and then going out to offer styrofoam cups of soup to the needy and poor.
He answered along the lines that it was while sharing in such worship that he felt inspired and lifted in his spirit to go out and do what he did. The 'job' of the church, in one way, was to help him feel connected to the Holy God who was worthy of the best of our worship, so he could take the love of that God out to those sleeping on the streets. Then the chalice of the communion became the styrofoam cup of soup. He saw a direct relation between the two.
I think the story was connected to Mary's ludicrously extravagant gesture of breaking her jar of nard over Jesus's feet, when she could've flogged it and solved a few social evils on her own doorstep.
Still, no doubt church communities should certainly attempt to connect practically with the needs of the people around them, if possible.
I think food is such a basic and immediate need to meet. If someone is hungry then they are not going to be able to fully hear the Gospel, whether it's delivered via a choir or a hymn sandwich or whatever. I think churches in general could learn so much from Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists - I don't know what it is about faiths with a large Indian subcontinent community or origin (Buddhism originated in India) but growing up in a city with a large South Asian community, their places of worship regardless of faith consistently fed people via am attached canteen or mobile soup kitchen. Of course churches feed people too, but I never see anything like it on that scale. I'm also always struck by all the free food given out during Ramadan by Muslim businesses - I was staying in a Muslim area during Ramadan a few years ago and once the sun had set, all the takeaway and shop owners were on their doorsteps giving out food. Sometimes just sweets, but it was incredibly moving and has really stayed with me. I do wonder why churches do not do similar during Lent.
Musical repertoires are a side issue, raising strong feelings and certainly connected to Church of England politics. If you are suspicious of the HTB stream or the New Wine stream, then you will be suspicious of the extensive use of contemporary musical repertoires in those streams. Which can kind of get in the way of discussing the intrinsic value of choral music.
If you think all 'jars of nard' are wasteful (compared with social action on behalf of the poor), you won't be in the least interested in whether the 'traditional nard' has a nicer smell than the 'contemporary nard'. Or vice versa.
I am sure that the 'nard offering' has an intrinsic value as an act of worship. Whether contained in a traditional or contemporary jar.
I would wager that most CoE churches (for now anyway), most traditional Nonconformists, and probably most RCs have a fairly MOTR musical repetoire. Some traditional hymns, some 70s/80s material (usually bad), some 20th century stuff. Even conservative evangelical Anglicans go down this route (often with a more worship band focused evening service) and they'd object to choral services just as much as HTB types.
I think perhaps the charismatics and the choral services (within the CoE) both appeal because they are more unusual. There is something unique. I think therefore that we - dare I say it - possibly have areas those two groups could collaborate in...? I certainly think there is potentially more in common than meets the eye. I even know of Methodist and Pentecostal churches joining together to explore their shared heritage. Don't get me wrong, I have huge issues with much of HTB and similar churches but I don't know that I would feel less at home there than a church that's all 80s choruses (not even the good 80s) and weak tea in Berylware cups.
Or Gopak folding tables!
It has a culture, which requires invesment of resources of all kinds for its maintenance and can be of huge value in nourishing its members and giving them the resources for their work beyond the church building, but which can amount to self-worship if it is totally overbalanced.
It has, in most cases, a building, and again a balance is required between working with what one already has and working to change it to meet different needs. This balance will change, at least in terms of kitchens and toilets, according to whether it's a gathered congregation or a parish-bound one (this is mostly a C of E question, but probably has its equivalent in other churches, e.g. town vs. country churches and their different "catchment areas". Gathered congregations need all of the "plant" on site, unless they are to impose considerable burdens on their members in terms of fetching and carrying. This also gives them the opportunity to serve their local area, but then of course members of the congregation have to come in to the building in order to provide those services.
It's all a matter of balance, and whatever element receives an unbalanced level of attention from the community, including the needs of outside parties, is in danger of becoming the object of the worshipping community's worship. That focus has to remain God, of course, but there are infinite ways of achieving that focus, and this seems to me to be one of those debates which have to continue throughout the lifetime of that community.
First of all, bearing in mind all the heavy duty technology, and professional 'worship leaders'* involved, I suspect the HTB approach is probably just as expensive, and demands just as much organising as a traditional choir.
Second, these days, it's also likely to involves just as little congregational engagement as a traditional choir. Unlike the more informally recruited bands of 25 years ago, a lot of what they sing now isn't really either designed or suitable for the rest of the congregation to join in with - apart perhaps from standing up and jigging along in time to.
Third, either way, if you're one of those who directly participates and for whom the model chosen has become a really important part of your faith life, is it strengthening your Christian walk, or without your perhaps noticing it diverting you from it? C. S. Lewis wrote, probably about 80 years ago about 'Christianity and ?'. The ? can be all sorts of things, politics, the environment, in past eras, often temperance. If you have a ?, is it in step with your Christianity, or has it subtly replaced it? Has it become not the outworking of your Christian walk but a less demanding, less embarrassing, more socially acceptable, replacement for it?
They may not be campaigning for a cause but both choral worship and Christian rock can become that for people.
Fourth, do you subtly think that people who aren't turned on by Gregorian chant, Bach Passions, your favourite choruses from the 1990s, Hymns Ancient and Modern or the latest from Hillsong like you are, are somehow less spiritually 'woke' than you, whether deaf to wonder or stuffy and unspontaneous? And
Fifth, whatever our preferences, if we insist on doing a cost-benefit analysis of worship and then value it solely in terms of measurable, number of people converted, paupers fed etc, we're in danger of getting like Judas who complained when Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus that the perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor. St John, of course, attributes an even worse motive to him, but true worship, if truly worship, is good for its own sake.
Rant alert
(* If you must use the term 'worship leader', it should describe, and only describe, the person leading the service at the front. If the Eucharist/Mass/Holy Communion/Lord's Supper/Breaking of Bread Service/Holy Liturgy, this is the celebrant. Worship is not just the music.
Rant over.