How Did We Get Where We Are and Where Are We Going?

In the past several months I have been asked what I thought about the state of church music and where things are going. [I am in debt to Dr. Harry Eskew and his wonderful text, Sing with Understanding, for so much of my experience in the area. Much of what I would like to share come from that text and I would encourage those interested to make it a personal library “must have.”] In terms of where we are in music and worship in our churches today, the following outline might serve as a map much like you would find in a shopping mall that reads “you are here.”


The simplest way to see where we are is to start with imagining the “song of the church through the ages” as though it were a big river, birthed from the Old Testament Psalms, New Testament canticles surrounding the birth of Christ, and the pauline fragments. As the river continued to run, other smaller streams began to enter, such as the Greek hymnody of the Early Church. For several hundred years their hymnody centered on the transcendence and awesomeness of God. As the Christianity grew, so grew centers of liturgical tradition, predominately Greek, in Constantinople and Alexandria, and Latin, predominately in Rome.


During the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, the church became the repository for all knowledge and the arts. The Arian heresy arose in the 4th and 5th centuries, was based in claiming that Christ was not divine, but gained wide spread acceptance because their doctrinal principles were put to catchy melodies and became very popular. Ambrose of Milan  added another feeder stream by writing hymns to combat the heresies, until the Church fathers met to deal with the situation. The result was to prohibit all singing from the congregation and leave it solely to the priests. During the following centuries the song of the church was restricted to the few, not the masses.


The growth of church music centered around chant and related melodies until 1517 and Martin Luther began the new wave of thought: the allowing of the congregation to sing and sing in a language they understood. He encouraged the use of hymns as well as Scriptural texts for worship. The coldness of the liturgy was again challenged with the rise of pietism [17th-18th centuries] and the need for personal emotional expression in the hymns used in worship. Out of the developments came Bach and the contributions he made in church music. Each one of these added tributaries to the ever-widening river.


Meanwhile back in England, the influence of Calvin in Geneva was most dominate mostly likely due to the political ties of the monarchs involved. Unaccompanied unison psalm singing was the only music allowed in non-catholic services. Many of the tunes from the Genevan Psalter of 1563 were adapted and used in English Psalters for the next 100 years until a Baptist pastor named Benjamin Keach read where Jesus “sang a hymn” after the Lord’s Supper. Supported by scriptural direction, he wrote a hymn for his church that was to be sung after communion. This started a major controversy between the General Baptist [psalms only] and Particular Baptists [hymns allowed], even though the former believed in general atonement and the later were   Calvinistic. The controversy raged on until hymn singing eventually became part of both groups traditions.  Psalms and hymns joined the ranks of those streams adding themselves to the river of praise.


One person’s hymn texts that played an important role in the general acceptance of hymn singing was Isaac Watts. The genius and simplicity of expression help spread acceptance across the board with most groups.  Many other ministers followed his style of writing. Later the Wesleys added greater dimensions to hymnody through their over 6000 texts and the compilation of rousing Methodist’s tunes. [And Can It Be, etc.] The Welch added a rich heritage of hymnody through folk-like melodies and John Newton, William Cowper produced their “Olney Hymns” in England.


Two substreams came as an outgrowth of the above, each contributing to the whole: the Evangelical Tradition [i.e. Havergal, “Take my life and let it be,”] and the Churchly Stream and the rise of the Oxford movement, which was an attempt by the Anglican church to recapture the Greek and Latin hymns and a link to the past, since their abrupt birth after the King broke away from the Catholic church.


At first, the United States had very little contributions of their own to the larger river; William Billings, being the first American composer. The development of American hymnody was dependent on several influences: psalmody, German chorale tunes, and the rise of American folk tunes. These folk tunes basically came for two sources, the shaped note tradition that evolved out of the Great Revivals of the 1840's and the Spirituals that came from the slave songs.  Lowell Mason led the attempt to reform congregational song by following music that was “scientifically composed,” that is that followed the European model, not that of the singing schools of the South.


It was during this last half of the 19th Century that there was a rise of denominationalism, each with its own traditions and each with its own contributions to the main stream of worship and praise.  The rise of Gospel hymnody was due in large part to the birth of the Sunday School movement as well as the early revival teams, such as Moody-Sankey, who popularized the genre until it was common place. Though many of the songs were conceived for “revival use” and not for Sunday worship, they soon found their place in the larger stream. Gospel songs continued through the Stamps-Baxter quartets and more modern versions of music like the Gaithers.


In 1950, an Anglican minister attempting to reach the youth of his day set the music of the Anglican service to the current musical style, but began what we know today as the contemporary worship movement. This was fed in large part to the Jesus’ movement in the US in the 1970's, and continued to develop until the genre came into its on commercially in the 1980s and 1990's. Certainly an oversimplification, but this is only a tracing outline a best.


Throughout history, virtually in every case when an new stream entered the river, their was turmoil, confusion, and conflict, but eventually the new tributaries would leave their mark with only the more lasting contributions lasting in the larger stream. Conflict and controversy has been a part of the music and worship world from the beginning. It has never been easy and sometimes it has been very ugly.


So if we were to describe “where we are now,” I would have to say that we are obviously in a little stream that it trying to mix with the larger river.  To be able to navigate correctly we need to keep in mind some very important things:
        1. The tributary is not the main stream, only a part of it. Much conflict arises when a group confuses its contribution as the whole, instead of just part. The larger stream is the one that will be around for the longest. We must look for those things that are of true lasting quality, rather than follow the temptation of chasing passing fads. As long as we are standing in the tributary, what we see may not be the entire story, but only a part.
        2. People will misunderstand. The tendency is to gravitate to the style that we personally like the best, however, this is to focus on the part and not the whole. We must help them see the larger picture of how it fits together in the context of worship.
        We have failed to teach where we come from. And so we are like the Israelites coming out of exile whose children had failed to learn Hebrew, we have grown up generations who have not known Joseph.
        3. Many times the controversy surrounding a new stream that was entering was calmed when the quality of the new genre was raised to higher standards. [i.e. Watts’ hymns help lay to rest the psalms/hymns controversy] The Getty/Townend material has been a great help in this regard, with deep theological text, without resorting to useless repetitions.
        4. Biblical worship demands that we be inclusive, and not given to entitlement. Biblical worship demands that we center our focus on Christ and His work, not our preferences. Biblical worship is not entertainment driven.
        5. I think we need to keep anchored in the river, not the various streams that may arise and not confuse one for the other.