Friday, April 16, 2010

Church music wars?

For the past few months, I've had the privilege of leading most singing at my little church--aided of course by a bucket to help me carry the tune--and one thing that I've noticed as I try to search out special music is that a lot of hymnals.....kinda tend to emphasize certain areas of the Christian life. The one my Baptist church uses emphasizes the joys of life in Christ--one inherited from my Methodist ancestors emphasizes more of the fatherhood of God.

And so I wonder what a truly mature hymnody ought to look like. I once had the privilege to have a pastor tell the congregation to come in time for the singing, because there is often as much theology in the songs as there is in the sermon--never mind the little fact that it's often more easily remembered. And so I wonder, well, whether it's consistently a very good sermon.

Time to look into the Psalms a little more, I think.

6 comments:

pentamom said...

"Come in for the singing?" Does that mean that people regularly showed up 30 minutes late? Or that you did all the singing in the beginning and got it over with (phew!) ;-)

Bike Bubba said...

The service would start with three hymns, and so many would come up about 15 minutes late. So, in a word, yes--which is why the pastor put it in his message.

pentamom said...

But no hymns after the beginning?

pentamom said...

Sorry, I'm rudely badgering you about it. It just surprises me, that's all. I thought isolating the singing like that was a strictly "contemporary," charismatic-influenced practice.

Bike Bubba said...

Don't worry; it wasn't taken as badgering.

The immediate answer; most hymns were put in the beginning. The broader answer; even if hymns are spread around the service (with a nice big chuck of time for sermon of course), do we want to encourage congregants to miss that time of fellowship and teaching? Apart from the issue of what good worship should look like (a worthy topic), is it OK to miss one hymn, but not two or three?

pentamom said...

Oh, no, not at all. I'm coming from a place where thinking it's "okay" to walk in late for church (as a matter of course, rather than a mistake or minor occasional slip up or providential hindrance or what have you) is pretty alien to begin with. So I'm not at all complaining about what the pastor said, encouraging people to show up on time, I was just thrown by the idea of what I'm assuming was a pretty traditional Baptist service shoving all the hymns up front. Maybe I was wrongly assuming that traditional Baptists follow the same traditional model for a worship service I've seen elsewhere. I'm sure this was not intended, but it gives me a feeling of saying the hymns aren't part of the rest of the service, or something.