Two years at PCC compelled me to renounce all use of "special music."

For similiar effect, watch Rejoice three or four times a week, every week, for two years. "GOD MADE BIRDS!"

I'd like to say that I was glad to be out of PCC, but then churches generally use "special music" to be the time when the old lady with the shrill voice gets to squawk for five minutes or the teenager that taught himself guitar gets to sing a toned-down version of a CCM tune.

For a short time, I attended a church that actually had more special music than they had congregational singing. During the "worship service" I felt remarkably like a man that drank too much cheap bear the night before.

I know a place where they still know how to do it. Otherwise I'd say heave it out. Too many are too keen on the sound of their own voice. Why aren't our more musical brethren more self-conscious?

As a musician yourself, do you participate at all in the special music at your church? If so, what pieces have you selected?

Ryan:

Ouch!

PCC? That must have really smarted.

Sorry, I’ve seen a fair amount of Rejoice; you lost me with the reference to “God made birds”. I have heard their orchestra and might be able to piece it together if you’d said “God made cattle drives”.

Yes, D.A. Carson also comments on this congregational music versus special music. He maintains that British practice had little place for special music and therefore never created the market demand for it, preferring instead to direct its energy toward making better congregational music.

There is no doubt in my mind, the market created for performance music has ruined worship. By the time they amp the stage performers, you couldn’t appreciate congregational singing if you had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the pew behind you.

Unk:

I think the serious answer is: most church musicians don’t have a profound appreciation for the power or purpose of music. If they had been guided at all by the music of serious musicians, they would have a standard of measure for judging their own work. I really do think church people don’t know what music is for. What could it be for, other than entertainment?

mamba:

At my current church? No.

I am in a bind. I attend a church of well-to-do philistines. The philistine part keeps the standards low. The well-to-do part ensures a sort of music program that is generously endowed, which naturally draws people who want to participate. For example: the church has two Steinway pianos (maybe more), a harpsichord, a good organ, a high-end bell choir, enviable practice facilities, a fairly elaborate sound board—so far as I understand sound equipment—and quality equipment. The church has performed the Brahms Requiem and the Messiah, not to good effect I suspect, but I was not there for that. It has money budgeted to hire a professional orchestra.

Of those who want to participate there seems to be a fairly wretched mix, but it includes a few that at least have some technical skill and some formal sensibilities. Between them and the obvious commands of Psalm 150, I auditioned with the hope I might find a place. I was asked to join, whereupon I asked the music director if the music program could respect my conscience. A very short discussion made it clear that the church was committed to its “many styles” and that participants were expected to “support the program”.

I was somewhat disappointed and greatly relieved.

This same music man was (perhaps even at the time) engaged in the sort of sexual recreation frowned upon by the Apostles. He is now gone. There is the slenderest hope that things might change.

I know of a church that has eliminated "special music" altogether. They only suffer from a lack of ambition in the parishoners...

Although I have been a part of "special music" for more than 30 years (starting as a youth), I tend to agree with you on this for several reasons, including: (1) Special music, even when done properly by well-trained musicians, has tended to overshadow and even replace corporate worship. (2) Competent musicians who have not been taught properly often approach worship as a performance opportunity to show off their skill rather than a sacrifice of praise to God. Sometimes they are even encouraged in this by leadership who want to "show off what we've got" for visitors. (3) In that wonderful, American spirit of "fairness," and "equal opportunity," we all too often relegate well-trained musicians to the sidelines so that Grandma Moses and youthful learners alike get their chance to feel useful, as if the whole nature of worship revolves around everyone getting "stage time" rather than the worship of Jehovah God.

Here's a relevant quote from one of my favorite authors:

"Each time a mediocre singer performs he is saying, in effect, 'This is good enough for you.' The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing that something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattantion, rudeness and noise.
The human spirit craves excellence. It is the performer's gift to his public that paves a two-way street: an excellent performance says, in effect, 'I respect you enough to justify your respect for me.' Being in the presence of excellence brings out the best in people; looking up is better moral exercise than looking level or down, but with mediocrity riding shotgun on the stagecoach of national life, American popular entertainment offers little in the way of spiritual aerobics.
Having too many celebrities and not enough excellence makes it impossible to tell who deserves respect and who does not..."

Not only are we the victims of the confusion between worship and entertainment, we are confused about the difference between BAD entertainment and worship.

Yep; as I say, I would not want to be pressed to defend the view that special music has no place, but until we get our appetites out of the gutter and begin distinguishing worship from entertainment, it might be a show of good faith. If we cannot take ourselves seriously, maybe God will stoop to bless our intention.

If we cannot do worship right, we are not going to resign ourselves to the fact and continue the sacrilege for the sake of our program.

Obviously the weakness of my thinking is this: the very people who cannot properly worship think they can, and whatever artificial virtues they embrace confirm them in their error.

hungry:

I tend to agree with your sentiment in #1, except that special music is very much corporate worship. And #2, clearly churches believe their shows are a drawing card.

But again, I think we have had our thinking perverted. I do not object to “performance”. I have no doubt that what the seraphim do is, by angelic standard, performance of the highest order.

We hear Barenboim or Hewitt perform, but the objective is not obscured. Bach does not disappear on us. Why is this? Why would God disappear when we do excellently in worship?

For you music ministers: Why is it generally the case that the fear of excellence in performance encourages us to resort to incompetence?

Can bad music be good worship? Must good music mean bad worship?

I don't have any objections to the special music at my current church, but I would gladly trade it away for one more congregationally sung hymn. In addition, I'd be willing to trade away chucks of the sermon time for more hymns and some scripture reading (real scripture reading -- not just the two verses that the sermon will be loosly based upon).

A pet peeve of mine is that we can't sing The Doxology because it's too formal or stuffy (I guess - I don't know what's wrong with it, really), but we CAN sing the same whiny chorus every single Sunday.

My dream is to replace the hand-shaking part of the service with The Doxology. After all, we did replace The Doxology with hand-shaking, didn't we?

Would a liturgy be incomplete that consists of prayer, scripture reading, The Doxology, hymns, and Communion?

DanofSteel--you mention Communion in your proposed liturgical list. Is this something that you would like to see celebrated every Sunday?

The church I grew up in celebrated it once a quarter, and when they did, it was an "add-on" to the regular service (i.e. after the normal service that lasted from 10:45-12noon, we would then observe the Lord's Supper). In a church of 800-1000 people (at the time), it usually added about 25-30 minutes to the morning service. Most people stayed, but some usually left.

My current church celebrates it once a quarter as well, but does it as part of the am service (after the responsive Scripture reading), and the pastor will generally break from any series that he's in to preach on something dealing with Christ's sacrifice. IMO, celebrating the LS during the service is much preferable to doing it after the service, although there were almost certainly some legistical problems involved for a church of 800 that a church of 80 (my current church's size) does not have.

The most meaningful way I've ever participated in the Lord's Supper was at a small brethren assembly that I attended for 4 years. They observed the Lord's Supper every sunday evening in its own service from 5:30-6:30 (and then had an evening service from 6:45-7:30). When you entered, the sanctuary was quiet, with everyone reading their Bibles and praying (except for the ocassional child with a coloring book). There was no precise structure to the service, but various members would stand and request to sing a song from the pslater (we would sing all the verses acapella; each verse generally got slower and lower!), read a passage of Scripture (sometimes with comments, sometimes without), offer a prayer, etc. At about 6:15, one of the men would go to the front, be joined by 2-3 others, break the bread, and distribute it to the congregation. Likewise with the cup (cups, actually--for the obvious hygenic reasons).

Observing the Lord's supper weekly at this little assembly was one of the best things for my Christian growth. It definitely kept me from sin at various times (I remember being tempted to do something I knew was wrong, and thinking about the communion service that I would be in that Sunday. Maybe it seems like a trivial reason to not sin, but I just didn't want to hassle with the guilt and having to confess during the silent moments at the chapel).

Personally, I would definitely like to observe the Lord's Supper more frequently. There's no NT command to do it weekly, (although the pattern seems to be there), but it's an inarguble way (if done reverently) to honor our Lord and the reason we gather in His name.

Dissidens, you say that "special music is very much corporate worship." Isn't that the case only if the congregation is taught to focus on the special music as worship to God, rather than sitting dumbly in their seats being mindlessly entertained? Or am I missing something? I'm not at all objecting to excellent performance focused on worship--I'm objecting to a way of thinking that places "worship stars" on the platform for the mindless entertainment of the congregation. I am objecting to the mindset that the congregation has a "pass" that allows them to be mere spectators, rather than participants, in worship.

Your conversation with your music director reminds me of a conversation awhile back with mine, the drift of which was that I should trust his leadership on what was appropriate, and if I sinned, it would be his fault, not mine.

blackmambaprof:

When I was a boy, communion was the first Sunday morning of every month.

In my college days, I attended a church that had it every Sunday morning near the end of the service.

After college, the various churches I attended (with one exception) in Raleigh, NC, did it once a quarter on Sunday night. And you never would know that unless you were there on the right Sunday night. It was never mentioned or announced.

The church I'm in now (IFB) does it once a month, ostensibly the first Sunday night of the month. But it is rescheduled if something else comes up. Once a year, it is on Sunday morning.

Of the four practices, I greatly prefer having it every Sunday morning as part of the normal service. If the sermon has be shortened to accomodate it, so be it. This one had the greatest positive effect on my spiritual life.

I have no objection to once per month as part of the regular Sunday morning service, provided it is not rescheduled willy-nilly for something that is deemed more important.

The attitude at my current church is that only those who are there EVERY Sunday morning, EVERY Sunday night, EVERY Wednesday night, and EVERY night during "revivals" is worthy of the Lord's Table. If you meet their standards of godliness, you will always be there no matter when they have communion, so there can be no legitimate objection to the cup and wafer shuffle. They have other excuses like protecting unsaved folks from taking it, etc., but I don't buy them. Just another example of designing church for "the unchurched" (those who don't want to go to church).

So, the short answer is I prefer every Sunday. I at least think it should be viewed with sufficient reverance to warrant a fixed schedule.

danofsteel:

Well, yes; I would argue that for anyone who makes the teaching of the NT and the practice of the early church his guide, he has a certain essential liturgy:

corporate prayer
corporate singing
public scripture reading
exposition of scripture
breaking of bread

Edmund Clowney includes some others which are valuable if not essential, such as alms-giving and the saying of “Amen”. Baptism is an ordinance of the church but needn’t be a liturgical event.

But your list is fine. I think there is value to special music if it is understood properly; I just don’t think we understand it anymore. My point with this post was to introduce a distinction in our minds. If we are not doing what the Lutheran or Moravian churches were doing, and if we simply replaced devotion in music with entertainment, we are not helping anything by pretending one is a justification for the other. A theoretical virtue has become a practical vice.

If it were up to me to decide, there would be nothing up front. All musicians would be in the back. Special music (or performance music) would be of the best possible quality and would be performed before the service as an aid to quiet reflection (which might even be imposed on the talkative by means of a cattle prod). The service would be as simple as possible, and depending on the means for taking an offering, perhaps a musical number to keep the movement and activity from being a necessary distraction.

I think it is profoundly beautiful to sit quietly for twenty minutes listening to good music and then rise together to sing a good doxology. You can’t make people worship, but you might try to make it as hard as possible for them not to.

People are easily distracted, especially modern people. It seems to me that whatever assistance can be offered through music should be aimed at focusing minds on their reason for being there.


hungry:

All of the liturgy is corporately exercised, and any part is wasted if the worshiper is not engaged by it. I agree with your sentiments, I just wanted to be careful of making an artificial distinction. I’m not saying you made it, your comment just poked my memories. “Special music”, as well as preaching, should not be any less active than congregational singing.

People tend to equate corporate worship with active participation and hearing someone croon to Jesus encourages them to sit back and enjoy the show.

Frankly though—and this is what irritates me most—we can discuss the how and why of what we do (and that is a good thing), but we can know pretty much all we need to know about a worship service by the behavior of the people before it begins.

If your sanctuary sounds like the main floor full of exhibit booths at a convention, nothing you can do will commend worship. I get weary of people whining about the inaccessibility of traditional worship when they treat the pre-service as the do.

These people are not serious about anything.

Charles Swindoll loves to, and this is his phrase, “work the crowd”, by which he means mingling with the mob, talking in a loud voice and laughing. I’m sure he feels that he’s giving off good vibes and putting everyone at ease.

He’s a Texan, what can I say?

He walked up next to us and started to chat us up; I told him we were listening to the good music (which this morning was a wind quintet). He wandered off to share his celebrity with some other lucky person.

Worship can’t always be a riot.

I appreciate this discussion immensely. We did something like Dissidens discussed, basically cutting out everything except the absolutely essential, hoping it would have a cleansing effect on our ability to discern what is proper in church. The huge amount of work left to do to bring our congregational singing up to standard means that we can't even think about "special music" any time soon. Wednesday and Sunday night has simply faded out of our consciousness; offerings means us giving to each other in time of need or pooling together after meeting to help buy notebooks for all the old hymns we're discovering. Meanwhile, we grow more and more hungry to experience the Lord's Table again, but fear of wrong-doing (we have no ordained elder yet) or of desecrating what we haven't yet come to understand in a new way (we are learning to suspect literally everything we ever learned in church) keeps us from doing that yet.

It was helpful that a few of you mentioned scripture reading as a proper part of liturgy. Would any one care to mention the relevant scripture passages as we seem to have missed this?

One of our largest concerns is that the spiritual disatisfaction that drove us adults out of the churches did not extend to the youth among us. As a result they seem to have changed not at all in their ideas about how to act during meeting (or before or after meeting) or to have any feelings about it whatsoever. I alternately worry about the state of their hearts or consider venues of direct teaching about this. Because of our format (meeting in a private home, small group, not at all formal) there's always busy-ness right up till the moment of starting. I don't feel a good enough organist to justify monopolizing the air for five minutes preceeding the start, the way I did at our former churches. But should we be formal? Would it be appropriate to use recordings of good music? Or to start with a time of silence? Is it our fault that the kids are not receiving a sense of what this means, or is their attitude just a hold-over from our old experience? If any of you were experimenting the way we are, what would you do about this? What is proper to be done?

My blessed wife and I are looking forward to her being able to share some of our favorites from the Lutheran Hymnal with our new church. I wish I had a guy who loved chant and could sing a capella well, I'd put him to work with a few special requests.

dissidens:

I think that the PCC student body, as a whole, sings out of the heart. The congregational singing really was at times moving and worshipful. Despite the college's best efforts to make it otherwise.

The "God made birds" comment is a reference to a particular song they sang while I was there. Like so many songs, it became laughingstock. And I found it to be a very irreverent use of God's name.

Of course, one could say that my quoting it was also irreverent. I nearly didn't post it for that reason. But I figured it was a prime example of what's wrong down there.

Francis Schaeffer seemed to be very popular at PCC. He was well spoken of. They genuinely think that they're fulfilling his goal of glorifying God through art and music.

The moment I burned my bridges to that place was the moment I came back on campus to see friends graduate and saw the Crowne Centre in all its glory. Now my childhood was spent in a muddy hollow in central West Virginia, in a home which did not have indoor plumbing when my parents bought it and was heated by wood. I don't claim to be an authority on high culture. But I what I am an authority on is poor people who try to act rich by throwing around money recklessly.

Alana: 1 Tim 4.13, Col 4.16

Col 4:15-16
1 Thes 5:27
2 Thes 3:14
1 Tim 4:13
2 Tim 3:15-16
2 Pet 3:15

These passages are intended to put the writings of the Apostles on a par with the scriptures that were traditionally part of the readings of the early church.

And your comment about Song 19 illustrates the fact that the church once used Scripture itself for its model, and very transparently so. After all the whining about Tersteegen and Faber and Rossetti, remember that very few of the Psalms make a bad example of worship.

Under your circumstances it would be silly to try to reproduce the sort of program I describe, and I don’t mean to make it more difficult than it has to be. I think if you put into practice any usable format that instills in people a right attitude toward worship, you may even have the advantage of not being compelled to implement our thoughtless habits.

Should you be formal?

Yes, but not in the sense that most people mean. Most think of formality as off-putting, of distance and rigidity. They put up with formality only when it suits their vanity, like weddings and graduations. Think of form as shape; everything has a proper and a useful shape, and the proper shape is one that best satisfies the demands of function.

I wouldn’t be paralyzed by fear of doing something gauche so much as just being careful about the consequences of how you do what you do. If playing the organ is awkward, much the same effect might be achieved by the teacher’s posing hypothetical questions or thought problems for people to quietly discuss beforehand.

Take a devotional text and do like Tozer. Make an example of the sort of thing your people ought to do when they do sit for twenty minutes before a church service starts. Silence is good if people are told how to use it.

If it were me, I would eagerly play selected recordings and share my appreciation with the group.

In general I would say: keep it simple, keep it modest and most of all, keep it genuine. You may look back on these days as the tenderest religious experiences of your life.

I definitly agree that special music has become problematic.

But, I'd like to highlight another item from your list that is missing from the modern worship experience:

corporate prayer
corporate singing
public scripture reading
exposition of scripture
breaking of bread

Few preachers do it anymore. The focus of the service seems to be the hour in which the preacher shows how skillfully he can use any passage to make any unrelated point. I think it's sad (based on what I've heard and read) that John MacArthur is considered a highly respected Bible preacher. I think this ties in to what I said a while back in another thread about discernment.

Is this just another symptom of the same general problem, or is this a distinct problem in itself? I find myself wondering what goes on in bible colleges and seminaries. Of course, since I didn't go to either I couldn't know what I'm talking about.

If you had gone to bible school or seminary you might have learned that expository preaching is a technique for organizing and presenting the stuff you get from commentaries.

Or anywhere, really.

Oh, I don’t think there is any doubt about it. I think preaching is in the trash as well.

If my critique (or rather if others’ critique which I believe) is correct, it stands to reason that we have not apostatized only with respect to hymnody—or even all of aesthetics. If we have abandoned the good, true and beautiful, it figures that whatever ad hoc virtues we concoct as substitutes will be similarly debased.

The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

I think that there are places here and there in America where expositiion of the scriptures happens faithfully. Our church is woefully lacking in some areas, but that is one where we put our efforts. It has made us draw some startling conclusions about our life as a congregation. Based on Hebrews 3:12, 13 for example we would fain add to our liturgy exhortation, and are attempting such.

We include these:
Scripture Reading 1 Tim 4:13
Sermon Acts 20:7
Singing Col 3:16
Prayers James 5:16, 1 Tim 2:1-2
Congregational Amens 1 Cor 14:16
Confessions of faith 1Tim 6:12
Collections 1 Cor 16:1-2
Physical responses 1 Tim 2:8 1 COR 16:20
Greetings and benedictions 1 Cor 1:3 2 Cor 13:13

“Places here and there”, individuals now and again, exceptions thither and yon...

I agree to a point. As with the top-forty songs of the evangelical church, there are selected examples we might wish to put forward in our defense, but that doesn’t change the overall truth of danofsteel’s observation. There are always exceptions to the rule, but the rule still applies.

I think it is fair to say that the preaching of our generation is far below the minimum daily requirements, as it were. Some men are more gifted at speaking, some men have a knack for identifying the appetites of their audiences, some men have a celebrity reputation that tends to place them higher in our estimation as preachers, some men tend to be icons of a movement; but having said all that, preaching really has become pretty slovenly.

If we were to compare the names of our day with the names from the past, how would Bill Hybels, Chuck Swindoll, Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Rod Bell, Douglas McLachlan, Mark Minnick compare? (And do the same with the preachers of yesteryear: Sunday, Norris, Shields, etc.)

I know, I know, each one of these men will have his fierce supporters and loyal champions, but I suggest that if you were to take their printed sermons over a period of time so as to be a fair judge of their entire ministry (so that Payday Someday doesn’t tip the scale), compare them with the great preachers of the past, it would become clear I think, that most of our big name preachers are there because of their political prominence or effective marketing or broadcast technology or some other secondary reason.

I think this is the fairer way to form our opinions. A week ago I heard an excellent sermon by Stan Toussaint, I regularly hear good sermons by Mark Young, another DTS guy—and I think we all know I have no great love for DTS and its brood.

But my criticism is not of each and every person, I think the question danofsteel raises (and which is consistent with Remonstrans’ general critique of contemporary Christianity) is one of general health.

We used to refer to the two general functions of the church as pulpit and altar, our instruction in Scripture and our offering of worship.

Remonstrans’ point has been that worship (the altar) is in dire straits, and we have focused on that because worship is so central to our purpose. But I think in connection with that, it is fair to observe that our pulpit is no great success story either.

I don’t consider myself a good preacher, so I don’t offer my skill as any sort of standard. Tozer didn’t consider himself a good preacher, and in the sense he intended that admission, I would agree with him.

I went to college and seminary and got some sense of what constituted good preaching. My best prof was teaching what he called the Kohler-Campbell method which had its foundation in classical rhetoric. I was persuaded that his was the way to go. Everybody and his brother was in the pulpit thrashing out his pet doctrines, and it was clear that it produced little growth or maturity. Tightening up sermonic structure was not going to hurt anything, I agreed.

But when I compare the method to the effectiveness of guys like Alan Redpath, A. W. Tozer or Edmund Clowney, I began to be a bit irritated that so little of what they did well could be taught—or at least it was not being taught. And I would get frustrated, even with myself, at the wooden application of a homiletical system at the expense of what is undoubtedly good preaching.

Later it just got worse. Now I hear sermons that are nothing more than alliterated opinions with some Greek vocabulary thrown in to impress the rubes. Alliteration has become the proof that one is a good preacher, esp. among fundamentalists: it has become a sad effort at “preachers’ virtuosity”. Imposing a goofball alliteration on a text is no better than imposing a pet theological system on it.

All of which is to say I think our standard for good sermons has been long corrupted, and I do agree with danofsteel that preaching warrants the same scrutiny our liturgy does.

Again, “here and there in America” there are good preachers, I take that to be a given. But the health of the modern church does not ride on the “here and there”.

I agree. Wholeheartedly. I regularly get sermons or hear men speak in the vein of those you mentioned, not Toussaint and Young, but the others, and they are all where they are due to the fators you mentioned. They are not expositors. I am not a good one, but by God's grace hope to be an expositor in a faithful sense. The alliteration and storytelling and regurgitation of stories like Horatio Spafford's are worthless in my estimation. My hope is to learn from Owen, Edwards, Simeon, and others. Their examples are worthy.

One of the best assignments I ever had in my entire education was to read, at my own discretion, a variety of sermons from the entire ecclesiastical spectrum over the course of centuries of Christian preaching.

I recommend it to everyone.