What's Going On Here?

The old order changeth, yielding place to new.

The Passing of Arthur (1869), Alfred Lord Tennyson

I had to stand for forty minutes during a song service," said a surprised older gentleman after attending a worship service at a church he had not visited before. He added with indignation, "And some of those choruses were sung repeatedly!" His legs, his heart, and his mind all disapproved. He, a churchgoer for many decades, had been distracted in worship by such changes and downright disturbed in his spirit!

Wasn't he right and they wrong? Or was it the other way around? Having lived a few decades myself, his remark caused me to remember a typical evangelical church practice which he forgot.

And what was that? He forgot about the 'invitation hymn' sung at the close of an evangelistic service when a congregation stood fifteen or more minutes while the invitation was given to sinners to come forward. Repetition? The stanzas of the same hymn were sung over and over.

Several years ago, I attended a ministerium meeting at a church location that I had not before visited. The exterior of the modest building was traditional in architecture. After stepping into the sanctuary and looking around, I couldn't help but inquire, "Where's the pulpit?" The pastor replied with a smile, "Oh, we put that out in the shed; we don't need it because we all sit in a circle." I wasn't sure whether I should have said, "Amen!" to that or offered to pray for the younger pastor!

It doesn't take much observation these days to conclude that there are radical changes taking place in contemporary church architecture, furnishings, worship style and especially music. If pulpits are not removed, we may find a clear Lucite one. In some sanctuaries one may be hard put to find a piano, organ, or a hymnal;

they have all been stored. We also find praise choruses in place of hymns, 'worship leaders' instead of 'songleaders,' words projected on screens freeing hands to be raised during the long song service (now labeled 'worship'), and handclapping.

Historically, church splits resulted from doctrinal differences.

Today church splits occur because of differences over worship style-and especially over the musical style used in worship. A thoughtful Christian might ask, "Has an important part of worship been rediscovered?" Another might ask, "Has something alien to worship been introduced?" The introduction of change slowly is always advisable, but the conclusion as to what is legitimate change for evangelical congregations requires diligent study and heart sensitivity.

Call for the 'New’

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The church that would escape change had better relocate on the moon. Change is knocking insistently on the door. Nor will it go away with inattentiveness. If leaders are turning a deaf ear to such changes, many congregants are not.

Some Christians have strong ties to the traditional because there is a sense of security promoted by changelessness. Scriptures urges us to remember. Long-time church members may view change as blasphemy. Others find excitement in trying something new, urged on by a growing suspicion the 'old' is actually worn out.

The concept of 'new' is biblical as well. God commands believers in not a few places to "sing a new song" (Psalms 33:3, 40:3, 96:1, 98:1, 101:1, 144:9; Isaiah 42:10). In the book of Revelation, St. John said believers will sing a new song before the throne of God.

What is the new song Christians are to sing? The Psalmist tells us that it is "a hymn of praise" (40:3), a "shout of joy" (98:4,6), a song of His "love and justice" 001:1), a song of "victory" 044:9-10), and a means whereby His praise is conveyed "in the assembly of the saints." Since the Lord's mercies are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:22-23), there is no end to the praise God's people may offer Him in speech and in song. Every Christian believer should have a new song to sing about the Lord's mercies at the close of every day!

There is no argument about the exhortation; the question is rather how shall we praise the Lord in song?

Reynolds and Price tell us, "Christian song is never static, never quite the same from one generation to another.,,1 Today the call is to sing more about God in Scriptural terms, and the renewed emphasis on the biblical psaltery (the book of Psalms) is commendable if not a bit out of balance (e.g., where are the new songs about the person and work of Jesus Christ, and especially about His resurrection?). And the call by many younger folks is to bring the rock musical style into church services.

Is the hymnal not enough? Charles H. Kraft, professor of anthropology and intercultural communication at Fuller Theological Seminary addressed that question in a short article published by Christianity Today in the late 1980's. The article was titled, "The Hymnal Is Not Enough." He wrote:

While I have always enjoyed singing in the church, it wasn't until I freed myself from exclusive use of the hymnal that I experienced what praise and worship can be. And it is the new music, sung with eyes closed for 10, 15, or 20 minutes at a time, that makes the experience possible. These short, repetitious songs helped me focus on God; I don't even need to look at the music.

This writer tells us that singing helps him "focus on God" and these "short, repetitious songs" enhance worship. He implies that the hymnal was tried and found wanting. True, hymns are not "short and repetitious" because they were intended to be a source of teaching doctrine. Are we to accede to his argument that these short, repetitious songs of praise are better because they help us focus on God whereas hymns do not? Are we to accept his contention that unless one is freed from exclusive use of the hymnal, one cannot focus on God?

Many agree with Kraft's view while others vigorously reject it believing that compromise, heresy, and even blasphemy are appropriate counter-charges.

The hymn focuses the mind on God, while the new worship or praise choruses sung repetitively focus one's feelings on God. Is one better than the other? Is either one better without the other? Is this change for the better, for the worse, or merely change for change's sake because we are just plain tired of the old? One line in an early Madrigal by an anonymous fifteenth century composer says, "All things change except the love of change." Help, Lord! Where do we go from here?

Shaking up the Comfortable

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Why does change come with labor pains? To appreciate the difficulty of change, we do well to remember that tradition is not just a logical set of ideas. Tradition is drenched in emotion.

An older gentleman was invited to a joint service in another church facility of the same denomination. He soon found there was no altar rail in the beautiful new multi-million dollar facility. When the reality sank in, he began to shake his head in disbelief saying, "Where's the altar rail? I was saved at an altar rail forty years ago!" He was very uncomfortable!

Church v. Secular Music

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In the late 1960's I attended a National Religious Broadcasters' regional conference in Chicago. Two musicians who were often featured on Moody Bible Institute's radio station, WMBI, and at the Moody Church in Chicago, hosted one of the sessions and introduced the conference to what they believed was the trend in Christian musical styles. They played two hymns for the conference and one was the gospel song, "Higher Ground.,,4 The style, however, was that of the big band sound of the 1940's.

One of the delegates whom I judged to be in his late thirties or early forties stood up and voiced his disapproval with a tone that was unmistakably that of one offended: "I danced to that sound before I became a Christian!" He believed there was a line between secular and Christian music, and these selections were over the line.

To him, it was unacceptable on the grounds of association. The two men leading the seminar, Bill Pearce and Larry Mayfield, were prophets, for, right or wrong, that sound is now common fare over Christian radio stations.

Traditionally, it was assumed there was a difference between church and secular music. This trend challenged that assumption.

But it also raised serious questions. With these trends, I thought, "Tomorrow, would we be hearing 'Christian hard rock' and 'Christian heavy metal?'" My thoughts were certainly on target!

I wondered, "Are there no boundaries or limits?" Perhaps music is music. . . is music. . . is music. . . Is musical style nothing more than personal preference?

If we have a category known as 'church music' will there be a sameness to all the tunes? "will it be a style that lacks creativity?" as a friend once asked. My response was that there is no one more creative than God, and if His children are composing godly church music it ought to be characterized by all kinds of variety!

Posture in Worship

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Many years ago, a woman said, "Pastor, I am having difficulty with your services." The problem sounded serious. "What disturbs me," she explained, "is the hymn-singing." I listened intently as she continued, "I am used to standing every time the congregation sings a hymn, and you don't have the people stand." She had not come from a charismatic congregation where standing and singing often go together, but from a more formal, liturgical church where worshipers always stood to sing hymns from the hymnal in the Sunday morning worship hour. With her, it became habit somehow tied in with spirituality. Is there a spiritual posture?

The evangelical pastor of another mainline denominational church invited me to be a guest speaker for a Lenten service.

Midway through the service, ushers distributed a sheet of 'praise choruses' to the congregation. At the appropriate moment in the service the 'worship leader' directed the congregation to sing through the choruses without further announcement. "Of course," the leader emphasized, "we will have to stand to sing." I took from his tone of voice that it would have been unacceptable worship to have remained seated.

One charismatic church leader told of the time he had opportunity to visit Africa and be part of a service where there was a great crowd of people. He says they stood for close to two hours and sang a single, simple song with two lines to the lyrics. The words went something like this:

Have you followed Jesus?

I did.

He concluded, "When they finished singing, there were no unbelievers left in the crowd." Whether he meant everyone got converted or unbelievers gave up in puzzlement and went home is not certain.

Handclapping

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In the mid-nineteen seventies, a young married man delighted me by asking if he could share something with me from the Scriptures. It gladdens a pastor's heart to know members of his congregation are studying the Word on their own. He was about to suggest some change, and I had no problem with that. He shared Psalm 47:1, "0 clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph." Then he gave me cause for concern by adding, "When we worship, we must clap our hands." He added to my consternation, "This is a command according to this psalm." I was a bit taken back.

"Must?" My mind raced to the "Old Hundredth" tune that we commonly use for the Doxology and to "Holy, Holy, Holy" and other similar hymns. How would clapping make those hymns more worshipful? How would a congregation even clap to such hymns?

I am not opposed to handclapping. For a dozen years, my wife and I lived in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), West Africa, as missionaries. We were encouraged to introduce hand-clapping to African Christians as an accompaniment for singing by The Christian and Missionary Alliance Area Secretary for Africa, Rev. George Constance, who himself had served previously as a missionary to South America. He visited a local church service with us on the field and discovered the Bwa (formerly Red Bobo) church did not use any instruments,. nor did they clap to accompany their singing.

The first generation of Christians did not feel they could associate with the native musical instruments (principally drums and an xylophone-like instrument called the balaphone) because of their close association with fetish worship and obscenity. Hand-clapping turned out to be a great asset in singing while trying to deal with the problem caused by the loss of instrumental accompaniment.

The Bwa loved handclapping while singing, and the change proved to be a blessing to the church. Later, we introduced percussion-type instruments imported from England, including cymbals, musical sleigh bells, a triangle and a tambourine. The tambourine was an instant success and in time, home-made tambourine-like instruments began to appear. The next generation of Christians developed a new style of drum.

Returning to my friend and his view of Psalm 47:1, I must report his comments puzzled me. I was not sure why he was troubled since, in the very church he attended, the congregants often clapped their hands while singing. Now he seemed to be saying that he had found a scriptural basis for the notion of must: "When we sing, we must clap our hands!" Clap for all songs? As I mulled over his exhortation, my first need was to understand what Psalm 47 was saying. I began thinking out loud as I answered my friend. "Psalms are poetry," I said.

"Is hand-clapping here just a figure of speech?" He replied instantly but not unkindly, "I knew you were going to suggest that." I tried another line of thought. "If we must clap, then to be consistent with this verse, we must also shout, for the verse says, "Clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph." He thought that was probably true, but he was not ready to insist on shouting.

I researched the question in Scripture and found handclapping and shouting in the Hebrew culture originally had to do with the coronation of a king. The first instance is found in Second Kings where we read:

Jehoiada brought out the king's son and put the crown on him; he presented him with a copy of the covenant and proclaimed him king. They anointed him, and the ~eople clapped their hands and shouted, "Long live the king!"

Psalm 98:8 contains the phrase, "Let the rivers clap their hands. . ." which is obviously poetic, but the theme of the group of Psalms from 93 to 99 has to do with the King and His kingdom: "The Lord reigns!" The theme of Psalm 47 is the coronation of Messiah as King, so hand-clapping is consistent with this occurrence.

Clapping had other social functions among the Jews, one of which, when connected with hissing (Job 27:23), implies rejection of an authority figure or unseating a leader (we would call it impeachment). After this explanation, my friend and his family left the church to join one he felt was more consistent with his preference. Happily, we continued to regard one another warmly as brothers in the Lord.

Are certain physical movements or gestures a must for proper worship or are they a matter of personal preference?

Attendance Rationale

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One approach for promoting contemporary music is the attendance argument since this up-beat, happy and more informal worship style attracts people, especially younger people. "If it attracts young people, isn't that sufficient justification for using the new worship style?" goes one argument. Americans cherish 'what works' and success is generally viewed as having something to do with increasing numbers. And if it attracts young people who are "the future church," is that not sufficient justification?

This can be countered with another argument. "If it offends and repels older people, isn't that sufficient justification for not using it?" The exodus of younger people from traditional churches was-and should be-of great concern to the church. Today, there is an exodus of older people from traditional-turned-contemporary-churches.

That should be of equal concern to the church.

The attendance argument has not been lost on pastors of traditional evangelical churches who see this new 'worship style' as a God-sent answer to declining attendance. But there is no benefit in solving one distressing problem by replacing it with another equally distressing problem!

Worship: Why? and How?

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Why we worship is a question addressed in Scriptures. How we worship is addressed only indirectly since the 'how' has something to do with culture and symbols. We know we are to pray, and we are told why in the Word. One cannot make a case, however, for an exclusive gesture or posture for prayer. In the Bible, God's people stood, knelt, lifted their arms to heaven, and fell on their faces in prayer. The basic New Testament exhortation is, "Pray continually” and the body posture is left to the individual.

Rabbis instruct Jewish men to wear a prayer shawl, a small head-covering, and to bob the head up and down in visible assent.

The 'how' of prayer for Muslims is to bow with their forehand touching the ground while facing towards Mecca, and that only after a ritual bathing. The Bwa of Burkina Faso coined a word to describe Muslim praying by making the noun 'forehead' into a verb, 'to forehead,' indicating the Muslim posture in prayer.

A fundamental requirement is for a church to review its practices and in painful honesty separate doctrine from methods. It will hurt. It is well to remember, however, that it is not wrong to do things because it has been the custom to do those things for many decades even when there is no other justification than, "This is our custom." It is also very right to re-examine those practices to make sure they have not become self-serving or tests of spirituality.

While a missionary in Africa, I devoted some of my time to the formation of the native hymnody and suggested on one occasion to my older missionary colleagues that since many of the tribes in French West Africa (the area I was familiar with) were pentatonic in musical scale-a five-tone scale similar to the five black notes on the piano-and the music in our American hymnals is written using seven tones, our Western hymn tunes ought to be rearranged to accommodate this cultural factor. This is not as novel a thought as it seems. A quick check in my French language hymnal showed American gospel songs were put into the French hymns with some musical rearrangement.

The explosion probably was not heard in the next county, but there was a negative reaction to altering any hymn tune which, to some, ranked in inspiration right next to the Bible.

After I published an article on the subject for a Christian anthropology journal, a missionary working in Burma wrote to the editor criticizing me for suggesting that the hymns written by Adoniram Judson were no good! I did no such thing, but it appears I somehow cast reflection on this great missionary pioneer's work by suggesting hymn-tune adaptation.

One Christian musicologist left the distinct impression during a public lecture which I attended that raising hands and falling down were part of biblical worship. He implied clearly that it was therefore mandatory if believers were to worship God truly. To some, this is methodology; to him, it was theology.

Is worship somehow better- without instruments which have been associated with jazz or rock, such as saxophones, guitars and drums? Or, is a service more worshipful because they are used? The younger folk in some churches demand the use of guitars, drums and keyboards and disparage what older folks cherish-organs and pianos.

In some evangelical churches it is 'theologically incorrect' to play secular classical music; even Bach who wrote music for the church would receive a very cool reception. In the late 1940's, a teenager shared with me that the leadership of his small evangelical church asked him to play his violin for a service, but when they found out he had selected "Minuet in G," they refused to let him play.

In other churches, classical music is welcomed while gospel songs of the "Power in the Blood" variety are not. Who is right? Who is wrong? Why has this come to either/or?

New methods in worship include the addition of wonderfully sophisticated and powerful sound systems. Unfortunately, they are often manned by audio technicians who crank the sound up and give the impression (intentionally or not) that the louder we bang on our drums, strike our cymbals, or bellow out our songs, the greater the praise. It brings to mind the sarcasm of Elijah to the prophets of Baal:

At noon Elijah began to taunt them, "Shout louder!" he said, "Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." So they shouted louder. . .7

Electronics can enhance musical sound powerfully, but technicians can make the music appeal more to the emotions than the mind or will by cranking up the accompaniment and obscuring lyrics. These days, who has not been exposed to music where the soloist's message was drowned out by the accompaniment? Sound that bathes and overwhelms hardly qualifies as a guarantee for better worship.

When that musical style is brought into the church as a means to worship, is the euphoria or ecstasy produced by it 'of the Spirit'?

Or, has the 'how' obscured the 'what' and the 'why' by indulging in emotional excess? These are questions we shall address in later chapters.

Is It Edification?

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The primary test of appropriateness for any change in the church is not whether one leaves worship feeling good, but rather, does it edify (build up)? This is the one thing St. Paul sets forth as a requirement when the church meets together.s Edification suggests a rational component.

Does that mean all emotions are to be left outside the church door before entering? Of course not. St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost stirred up emotions; his listeners were "cut to the heart" and in great distress.9 There is no biblical justification in denying public expression of feelings in worship.

A number of years ago, an underground Seattle newspaper, Helix, printed a rave review of an acid rock group called The Doors.l0 In his work, The Making of the Counter-Culture, Theodore Roszak quotes this graphic review and suggests it should not come as a surprise that after such events "a fretful call for rationality should be raised:"

The Doors. Their style has overtones of the Massacre of the Innocents. An electrified sex slaughter. A music bloodbath. . .

The Doors are carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians. . . Their talons, fangs, and fold wings are seldom out of view, but if they leave us crotch-raw and exhausted, at least they leave us aware of our aliveness. And of our destiny. The Doors scream into the darkened auditorium what all of us in the underground are whispering more softly in our hearts: We want the world and we want it. . . NOW!ll

The line between frenzy and true religious ecstasy is easily blurred, and with examples like this account of the Doors, the senior generation can hardly be blamed for being apprehensive about cranking up the emotions in worship services.

In the early nineteenth century, spirituality was measured in some churches by the 'holy laugh.' The practice blurred the true meaning of spirituality and happily soon passed.12 This practice has been revived in the 1990s, but should come as no surprise given our renewed emphasis on and acceptance of the public display of emotions.

The test of whether a gift is truly from the Holy Spirit or a counterfeit gift from the adversary centers around this issue: does its practice edify?

Safeguards

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One church leader, not skilled in music, asked, "What are the safeguards to keep us from being led in the wrong direction?" When should we shift into high gear? When should we put on the brakes?

Unfortunately when it comes to music, we have little to fall back on other than personal preference expressed in the words "I know what 1 like!" This implies that what 1 like is right and good but for no reason other than, "I like it!" The reasoning (if that's the proper word, and 1 doubt that it is) goes like this; "Since 1 like it and 1 am a sincere Christian, it follows that it must be good, right and therefore spiritual." It does not.

What is 'must'? What is compromise? What is optional? We must examine these issues and find appropriate boundaries if we are to develop safeguards. Can there be boundaries in the arts? Surely, say some, the arts must be allowed to be totally free-absolutely spontaneous, reasoning that whatever is art must be good simply because it is art. Spontaneous creativity with no boundaries whatsoever? That actually is a definition of cancer.

When all is said and done, believers need to know what is 'must' (this is foundational for spirituality), what is compromise (this is antithetical to spirituality), and what is personal preference (optional but still subject to the law of love).