Pairing Cherry Coke with Filet Mignon in Worship

Would you pair this with Cherry Coke?

“Beautiful music,” said Luther, “is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.” Polarized as we are in the church over what music qualifies as beautiful, I do wonder what Luther would have to say after he had a good listen to some of our sung worship today.  

In the last fifty years church music has undergone a radical metamorphosis. While most Christians applaud these unprecedented changes, I sometimes feel like many efforts to blend the timeless truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ with pop music modeled after the entertainment industry work about as well as pairing Cherry Coke with filet mignon. 

Not surprisingly, in response to the tendency of worship leaders to prefer music composed in the last fifty years, there are those who want to recover the beauty of what is often termed classical music. I have the highest regard for composers of great music like Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mahler (and Luther); my music collection is full, among other things, with their music. I would love to see another generation of God’s people develop a renewed appreciation of the splendor and beauty of music that strikes the chord of eternity in worship (regardless of genre). But I wonder if our zeal to bring this about at times consumes our wisdom.

GAZING ON THE MUSIC

In my church experiences over the years, I have found myself jolted out of meditation on the Living God in worship by a liturgy feature that worries me. While I attempt to take the words of the silent prayer to heart—“Turn my heart to you, O Lord.”—I am deftly steered clear of that by a prominent text identifying the music being played, “Prelude in B-flat major, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847).” To be blunt, it strikes me as intrusively academic and, dare I say it, elitist, to be confronted with this information so prominently. While attempting to quiet my heart before the Lord in preparation for worship, I am diverted by details straight from the syllabus of a music appreciation course. 

Furthermore, I wonder how it strikes an unbelieving visitor. There’s already plenty of high register elements surrounding an unbeliever in Christian worship, and then we club him with this wholly unnecessary one. Whereas the music itself might have helped lift him above the ordinary and commonplace, the labeling in the bulletin creates a Berlin Wall, one that in all likelihood will appear to be a snub. “We are a sophisticated church of elite music snobs,” the labeling appears to be saying. “You’re welcome here if you become one too.”

HIGH-BROW MEDITATIONS

For believer or unbeliever, the placarding of the music and composer has shifted us from high thoughts of God to high-brow thoughts of Western art music. The prominent music labeling in the bulletin reminds me of the derailing distraction that happens in a liturgy where worshipers are pointed to a sculpture or painting of Jesus instead of to JESUS himself. So in this case, art enshrined on a pedestal inadvertently trumps the true Object of worship. 

The prominence of the music and the composer is made still more preeminent by what is sometimes left out. Oddly, in some bulletins we do not identify the author of the poetry in the hymns—Newton or Cowper, Watts or Wesley—yet we contort ourselves placarding the music and composer.  Oddly, as I prepare to sing, “Take my life and let it be / Consecrated Lord to thee,” I am confronted with the important fact that Franz Liszt who was born in 1811 and who died in 1886 wrote the music Consolation being now played by the musician (while poet Francis Havergal’s name is never mentioned).

WORDS COME FIRST

But what’s so wrong with drawing attention to the music and the composer? After all, in the opening pages of Genesis (4:21) it says that “Jubal was the father of all who play the lyre and pipe.” And we learn about the Sons of Korah and their important role as musicians and composers of music for worship. And don’t some Psalms lead off telling us the actual name of the tune, for example, “Doe of the Dawn” (22)? What’s the problem? It’s all right there in the Bible?

The problem is precisely because it isn’t all right there in the Bible, not in the way it is in some of our printed worship guides. In the Bible the music is only very rarely identified in the inspired liturgy of the Psalms. While the vast majority of the Psalms identify the poet who, under Divine Inspiration, wrote the poetry of the Psalm, very few of the 150 Psalms identify the name of the tune, and fewer still identify the musical composer. What's more, the smartest OT scholar on the planet does not have a clue what "Doe of the Dawn" sounded like; as much as me may wish they had, not a riff from an original Psalm tune has survived--but ever jot and tittle of the words of 150 Psalms has.

Why are the Psalms so frequently attributed to the poets but so seldom to the musicians? Likely it is because Christianity is all about the Word of God, revealed to us in a book filled with words, including the most glorious poetry ever penned. While “…music is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us,” and ought to have a central place in Christian worship, the Bible and Christian worship is first and last all about the words. 

The way some of our worship guides identify music and text, however, one would think it were the reverse. Music comes first, the words come after. I don’t believe this is our priority in worship, but simply looking at the order of service in some bulletins on a Sunday morning and it feels like this: “Turn my heart to the Sonata quasi una Fantasia Op 27. No. 2, O Lord, and turn me to Ludwig van Beethoven, and to his birth year in 1770 and to the year of his death in 1827, O Lord.” When we do this, our zeal to recover classical music has become the Cherry Coke of the metaphor.

THE SOLUTION

In the interest of doing everything we do in word and deed as we sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in the name of Jesus (Colossians 3:16-17), a Christ-centered liturgy would do well to include neither the composer’s name nor the poet’s name in the progression through the printed guide to worship.

Let’s stop thinking of our printed liturgy as a polemic on our theology of worship in which we showcase our sophisticated classical music taste. If we do choose to identify artists, we would do well to be Psalm-like in our priority, never subordinating poetry and poet to musical composition and composer. The simplest solution? Identify hymn writers and composers in footnotes at the end of the bulletin—back page, small print, after the announcements and notifications. Soli Deo gloria!

Singing Mouth Open--Mind (partially) Closed

THE HIGHEST USE OF POETRY--THE HYMN

In the course of my research and writing and teaching about hymns over the last couple of decades I have learned many wonderful things about hymns, hymn writers, and hymnody—and every time I open the hymnal (usually the Trinity) I learn something new! I love singing hymns. I love the very best of our hymn lyrics from the last seventeen hundred years or so, and I have come more and more to love them not only as heartfelt passionate expressions of praise to God but as the best of English poetry. It was American poet John Greenleaf Whittier who said, "The highest use of poetry is the hymn."  In addition, I love many of the timeless musical settings of great classic hymn poetry, and I appreciate a growing number of the new hymns that are being written by thoughtful Christian poets and musicians. Because I love hymns and singing so much, I totally agree with what John Calvin observed about music, "Music has a secret and almost incredible power to move hearts.”

As I have been incorporating the study and imitation of the best hymns as poetry worthy to be studied as such in my high school English classes, however, I have discovered some significant obstacles to understanding and appreciating hymns for this generation of Christian young people. Nowhere is this more obvious than when students attempt to write about hymns as poetry. I teach my students to explore the meaning of poetry by writing poetry explications, essays written specifically about poetry, wherein they observe and evaluate the effectiveness of the various poetic conventions used and the depth and richness of the meaning. I often have them compare poets with the poetry of hymns written at the same time or in similar circumstances. For example, I include Lutheran pastor Martin Rinkhart’s great lyric, Now Thank We All Our God, written while the Thirty-Years War was raging through Germany, in my course on World War I poets. Rinkhart’s 17^th century hymn was sung August 1, 1914 on the streets of Berlin when the Kaiser announced the mobilization of German troops to invade Belgium. It makes a dramatic counterpoint to the despair and anger of many of the WW I poets.

STUDENT WRITERS PANIC

Here is where I discovered the problem for my students. When I give them a poem of Wordsworth or Cowper or Shakespeare to analyze and evaluate, they know what to do. It looks like and reads like poetry. It is in the format in which the poet originally penned the words. They can observe the basic unit of poetry, the line, with its hard left margins and capitalized first lines (center lining poetry is a Hallmark card reduction of meaning and content to visual form and is unlike the format the poet wrote the poetry in). They can find the parallel ideas, the progression of thought, the figures of speech, the allusions, the meter, the rhyme scheme, the poet’s use of various sound devices, the use of inclusio, and other subtleties of the poetic art. But when I give them a hymn from the Trinity Hymnal (I consider the Trinity to be the very best of American hymnals and use it daily), they are frustrated and confused. When I give them a hymn with the poetry imbedded in and subordinated to the musical score, as it appears in almost all American hymnals since the mid-19^th century, they panic.

Poetic form lost to and subsumed in the musical notation

At first I didn’t get this. I grew up singing hymns in church; I read music; I love music. At first, I concluded it was part of the decline of culture, the loss of the ability to read music and sing hymns. But as I traveled to various other countries around the world, I discovered something very interesting. Maybe its American exceptionalism again. But I’m not so sure. We Americans seem to be the only ones who hand hymnals to our congregations that have the poetry of the hymns in a subordinate role to the music so it does not look like or read like its genre--poetry. Every other country I have visited (UK, New Zealand, Tonga, Europe, Japan, Peru, etc.) the hymnals have the lyric of the poetry visible as poetry, in lines and stanzas the way the poet wrote it. I have  talked to missionaries and Christians from other countries I had not visited. I discovered that we Americans are pretty much the only ones that do this.

REVIVALISM TORPEDOES CONTENT

So I did some more research. As near as I can find, we began doing this as a direct result of the shift in priorities in 19^th century revivalism. We began replacing many of the Psalm versifications from the Reformation, and many of the classic hymns with revival songs that in general were sentimental, repetitive, lacking in theological depth, and addressed largely to the sinner rather than as expressions of worship and adoration to God. This reduction of the content and the quality of lyric went hand in hand with the crafting of new music, designed to attract the lost into the camp meeting tent. The new popular musical sound (the worst of it somewhere between merry-go-round ditty, the frontier cowboy song, and barbershop quartet sound) became more important because it was the hook to draw in the lost. Music was no longer accompaniment as an aid in taking the meaning of the poetry on the lips and in the heart and mind.

In Protestant Christian worship, music has always been in a subordinate role to aid the worshiper in taking to heart and mind the meaning and richness of the poetic lyric. Though Calvin knew and appreciated the incredible power of music to move hearts, he cautioned against getting music and the objective meaning of the words flipped around, "We must beware lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words.” But in Revivalism that’s precisely what happened, the words became less important. The new format of the hymnal reflects this shifting priority of revivalism. Charles Finney’s New Measures and Pelagian theology, flipped things around. The new format of the American hymnal, reducing the central importance of the poetry, was born. I would argue that this format does exactly what Calvin cautioned us against, our eye and ear “more intent on the music” (that’s the first thing we see in Revivalism-influenced hymnal format, musical score not poetic lines) “than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words.”

Ask English students to write a timed essay under exam conditions about hymn poetry or offer them hymn poetry in its original poetic format, poetry stripped and dissected to fit the musical format, and they will choose every time to have it in poetic form. But we might object and say that when we are singing in church we are not writing an essay; they are two entirely different activities. Though that is true, both activities require the ones reading and singing the poetry to understand the meaning of what they are reading and singing. Christians rightly place a high premium on the engagement of the mind and of the imagination in worship. I would argue that singing hymns from a hymnal inadvertently formatted to make it more difficult to observe the subtleties of the poetry being sung is actually working against its own purpose.

RESCUE THE HYMNAL FROM REVIVALISM

Maybe it’s time to take on a remaining reductionist influence of Revivalism on our hymnal and thus on our worship. Why not consider a cross page format, the poetry in lines and stanzas on the left and facing the poetry the musical score with poetry imbedded? For shorter hymns the poetry could appear on the top of the page and the musical score at the bottom. To reduce the obvious increase in page numbers,

My newest release on hymnody

more hymns that are not used could be retired. I realize the difficulties and potential added expense, but I don’t think any of us believe that cost should keep us from confronting an obstacle to the engagement of mind and heart in our sung worship as significant as this one is.

In this proposed format reconfiguration (not a new configuration, but a return to one that is consistent with how Reformed Christians have sung in worship since the Reformation itself—poetry and meaning first, music second) it will send a clear message to the worshiper that the meaning of the words, taken on the lips, in the heart, and understood in the mind, is of first importance in our worship. I guarantee that the majority of worshipers (especially our young children) will sing from the poetry (some studies indicate that only about 25-30% read music when singing in church anyway). They certainly will pray and meditate from the hymnal from the poetry where the progression of thought and rich poetic conventions are uninterrupted by the musical notation. I conclude with Calvin’s caution: "We must beware lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words.” I urge publishers of hymnals to consider rescuing hymn poetry from the influence of Revivalism so that our hymnal format reflects biblical priority in sung worship.

Douglas Bond is author of a number of books for young people and adults, including his Mr Pipes series on Hymn writers, Augustus Toplady (EP, 2012), and The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts (RT, 2013). Bond also writes hymns which you can read and sing at www.newreformationhymns.webs.com.

Was TOPLADY a theological monster or a saint? Find out in my new biography

New book with Evangelical Press (UK)

I was so blessed in writing this concise biography of Augustus Toplady. Visit my TOPLADY web page featuring other readings and more on my new book AUGUSTUS TOPLADY, Debtor to Mercy Alone, now available with Evangelical Press. After you read the Introduction posted there, listen to an audio excerpt from chapter 4. Read an excerpt below on this post from the chapter that picks up right after the audio. 

"I vividly recall the sweetness and joy of Toplady's diary when I first read it more than twenty years ago now. Douglas Bond has ably captured the man and his faith in this brief biography. Warmly recommended!" Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History, Southern Seminary. 

  

You can order a signed copy of the book at my webstore, www.bondbooks.net, or you can order a hard copy or Kindle edition at TOPLADY.

 5

A Praying Life

“My God, I want the inwrought prayer,” cried Toplady, “the prayer of the heart, wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost.” So much of the recorded praying of Toplady reflects just that, praying from the lips of a man who is filled with the Holy Spirit, whose prayers are being sanctified by the immediate presence of the God to whom he is praying. Thankfully for us, Toplady developed the habit of copying down his prayers probably as he prayed them. But there is nothing of the pompous Pharisee strutting in prayer to be seen or heard by men. His prayers are the kind of Psalm-like communing with God every Christian desires.

DISTRACTION AND WANDERING IN PRAYER

But let’s face it, communing with God, the activity that occupied so much of Toplady’s days and hours, is profoundly foreign to most of us. When we do get around to quieting our hearts and falling to our knees in prayer, one distraction after another begins its assault on our receiving consciousness. A text message warbles in our pocket. The telephone rings, and we strain to recognize the voice leaving a message. The computer intones the audio signal that a new email has just arrived. We wonder who it’s from. An aid vehicle roars by, siren blaring. A sleepy child crawls onto our back for a cuddle. The hotpot clicks off and we begin hastily rifling out our petitions so as to get the tea steeping while the water is at its hottest. Tea is always better when the water is at its hottest.

If me manage to negotiate the minefield of information technology and toddlers, and we actually get around to praying for real needs, we may find ourselves—often long minutes later—musing on how those parents could have let their son or daughter get involved with the wrong crowd in the first place. Clearly they messed up. If only they had raised their children the way we have raised ours. And when we finally shake our self free of those thoughts, and return shamefaced again to confession and asking for still more forgiveness, there’s the particular problem men have with praying. We men think we can take care of things, solve the problem. We don’t like stopping and asking for help. We can handle this. We’re men. It’s what we do.

When we attempt to get down to the serious business of praying, at best we are too hasty, and at worst we may actually be taking the Lord’s name in vain and compounding our sinning. It is for these reasons that Toplady’s praying is so valuable for distracted moderns. Though many of our 21^st century distractions would have been completely foreign to Toplady, we should not fool ourselves. He was a man subject to many of the same challenges we face with prayer. “Was afflicted with wandering in private prayer. Lord, melt down my icy heart, and grant me to wait upon thee.” How often would Toplady’s confession not be an accurate description of our praying life? And like you and me, this would not be the last time he would have reason to long for greater constancy in prayer. In a diary entry dated Monday, December 14, 1767, he reminds us that neglecting prayer has direct consequences:   

Before I came out of my chamber today, I was too hasty and short in private prayer. My conscience told me so at the time; and yet, such was my ingratitude and my folly, that I nevertheless restrained prayer before God. In the course of the day, I had great reason to repent of my first sin, by being permitted to fall into another.

It is just, O Lord, that thou shouldest withdraw thy presence from one who waited so carelessly on thee. May I never more, on any pretext whatever, rob thee (or rather, deprive my own soul) of thy due worship; but make all things else give way to communion with thee!

HONEST SELF-ABASEMENT

In a culture destroying itself with the cult of self-esteem, Toplady often prayed in a way that sounds foreign to our ears:

Who am I, O Lord? The weakest and vilest of all thy called ones: not only the least of saints, but the chiefest of sinners. But though a sinner, yet sanctified, in part, by the Holy Ghost given unto me. I should wrong the work of His grace upon my heart, were I to deny my regeneration: but, Lord, I wish for a nearer conformity to thy image.

So unaccustomed are we to hearing someone speak of himself as “the weakest and vilest of all thy called ones,” we might be tempted to dismiss Toplady’s self-deprecation as false humility, an elaborate charade...