Worship: The Beauty and Tension

There is a beauty and tension (in my opinion) when it comes to the use of music in worship within the congregational setting.  For every instance of music being an integral part of a revival setting, it has also been part of some of the most heated debates in the church.  Let me explain.

Have you heard this phrase about a worship song?

That song is unfit for church services because of its lack of musical taste and “total absence of the spirit of religion.”

So did believers in the 1800’s.  This was said about the beloved “O Holy Night”, not a song written by a modern worship song writer from 2011.

What worship song writer was accused sounding too much like secular music?

That’s right…you guessed it!  Fanny Crosby, writer of hymns such as “Blessed assurance” or “To God be the Glory”. One biography of Fanny Crosby (ISBN 1-55748-731-6) adds this tidbit:

“By the early 1870s, she was well on her way to becoming the queen of hymn writers. Fanny often matched her poems to familiar tunes. An example is “We Thank Thee, Our Father,” written to the melody of the famous “Adeste Fidelis.” She set poems to Scottish and Welsh airs and used tunes by Stephen Foster.”

In the biography, “William and Catherine Booth: Founders of the Salvation Army,” by Helen K. Hosier, it states the following:

“Satan would have to be battled within his own strongholds, and any means was justifiable, William decided, if it would attract sinners to listen to the message of salvation … Thus it was that as the work grew, the music and street parades attracted increasing crowds of people who scorned the regular churches. ‘Why should the devil have all the best tunes?’ William replied when chided for appropriating music of popular tunes for his hymns … “

And so the history of music in the church as one that not only been a tool that God has used to inspire and encourage worship in the church but has also been at the center of many of it’s discords.

• From the battles of Gregorian chant to polyphonic congregational songs of worship….

• From the divide between metrical psalms and hymns which caused so much controversy in the Anglican church in the 18th and 19th Centuries…

• From the vernacular hymns to the Weslyan hymns which both John and Charles insisted that hymns (both words and music) should be written to stir the congregation, re-inforce its religious emotions and play on the “feel good” factor. (In fact, many were attracted away from the established church into Methodism because the connection they felt to this new form of worship.)…

• And even dating back to the Council of Trent in the 1500’s the use of music in church was debated! Even today, as I came out of worship services I found that 2 people of similar demographic in age and maturity in their faith had totally different opinions about how they perceived the use of music in church.

So what am I writing all this for?  A few nights ago I listened to a podcast message about the difference between “problems to solve” and “tensions to embrace” as it relates to church ministry.  What I am finding is that worship always will seem like a tension to embrace and never a problem that can be solved.  We are all so different. There are so many different styles and paradigms by which someone comes to God in worship. It almost seems that the beauty of worship music within the congregational setting is the tension of it.

For the longest time it would bother me when I couldn’t make everyone happy.  That’s because I thought that it was a problem to resolve.  I’m starting to believe that the subject of music in worship will never really be resolved.  In fact, if I am in a place where it is “resolved” I’m probably at a place that has placed “uniformity” as it’s creed instead of unity.  That is a place I never hope to be.

What say you?

How do you handle the diversity of our preferences when it comes to worship?

Or do you really believe there is only one way, or one style, or a certain set of songs only worthy of worship to God?