New songs for modern missional worship, rich in Christian teaching and contextualized in modern culture. Contemporary hymns, psalms, songs of lament and praise written by members of the Louisville, KY-based Sojourn Community.
Challenges And Dangers For Worship Ministries, by Sojourn Pastor Mike Cosper
Worship arts pastor Mike Cosper writes about recent trends in worship ministry and the challenges ahead for the universal church, touching on music education, culture, pastoral responsibilities and more in this continuation of yesterday’s post:
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With him, he carries the knowledge he’s gained from this traditioning process - a totally different set of skills. The rock set at the local venue is governed by some of the basic principles of show business: songs need to be catchy, have a great hook, and be fun to sing. The set as a whole needs to have some kind of emotional and dynamic arc, and as Steve Martin says regarding performing, “Always look better than they do.” Here, a great song is about melody, pop sensibility, and the response of the crowd. Leadership is about showmanship and “looking the part.” These laws now govern the worship of our churches.
This happens as music education disappears more and more from our schools and homes as a value. Where previous generations studied music for years, learning skills that would apply to a variety of styles and genres, today we start with Guitar Hero and jump from the Xbox to the stage. Skill as a musical virtue has been steadily derided since punk burst onto the rock scene in the seventies, and took a real beating in the early ‘90’s when artists like Nirvana and Green Day (bands filled with skilled musicians and songwriters) gave the false impression that music only meant knowing three chords on a guitar.
This is the landscape others see from the outside looking in - musicians who almost barely know how to play their instruments, music without roots or traditions, songs without dynamics, services with rock star worship leaders wearing faux-hawks and designer jeans. They look great, they sound okay, but don’t ask them to change keys. Contrast this with the classical traditions of the church, where musicians spend 15-20 years, starting in early childhood, studying music, studying musical performance, working with choirs, orchestras, and various ensembles throughout their educations, and then often continuing through a seminary “church music” education.
Of course, much of this is a caricature. I know many worship leaders and pastors in churches like this who have a deep knowledge of and love for music. I know many worship leaders whose humility guards them from the excesses of rock culture. I know many leaders who have a love of theology, hymnody, and scripture, and whose services reflect that love. But I also believe that this is the unfortunate exception and not the rule.
And the warning cries abound. It’s both redundant and fashionable to sit around and lament how devoid and barren our worship music is today. But what’s the way forward? Pastors have this dual responsibility in North America to be faithful and to be attractional (two forces that are often at odds with one another). And what attracts people to churches today more than the poppy music of contemporary worship?
As with so many places in our culture, we’ve severed the connections with traditions that can help inform, correct, and guard us from mistakes from great to small. While certainly, in the light of God’s sovereignty, we have to say that there is something good afoot in the radical shifts in worship culture in the US, there is also a road ahead so fraught with dangers that without some kind of roots, some kind of theological grounding, some kind of historical connectedness, we will SURELY lose our way.
What I want to ask is who will guide us? What will the reformation of church music education give birth to in twenty years? Will it look different, or will we simply look back in twenty years and laugh at our young foolishness? Worship leaders aren’t the only ones asking these kinds of questions. (To be continued…)
(Tomorrow here on sojournmusic.com Pastor Mike talks about technology from web distribution to pitch correction recording tools, whether we can or should “go back” away from this new landscape, and more.)
The guitar photo above comes courtesty of Dan Canales.
August 4, 2008 at 12:05
Wow. These two articles were really quite fantastic and I think dead on for what is happening right now. Thanks for this - it was a reminder and perspective I needed to confirm what I had been thinking. I really appreciate these words.