Category Archives: church

Church Music

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My mother-in-law shared an article on Facebook that got me thinking about church music. What she shared was a blog post called “13 Solutions for a Church That Just Won’t Sing,” by Jonathan Aigner, the Director of Music in a United Methodist church. I’ve never heard of Jonathan before; all I know about him is what he wrote on his blog, www.theologyinworship.com, where he says he grew up Southern Baptist, has Bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees in music, as well as Master’s degrees in both theology and educational leadership. In other words, he seems to have some credentials backing what he wrote. And what he wrote was good, even if I don’t agree with some of his proposed solutions.

You really should read Jonathan’s article because I’m going to respond to some of his thoughts and there’s a good chance that something will get lost in translation going from him to me to you. I don’t want to misrepresent him; neither do I want to come across as disagreeing with everything he says. Rather, I want to use his article as a springboard for some of my own thoughts. Briefly, here are his thirteen solutions (all are direct quotes except where italicized):

  1. Teach—how, what, and why to sing.
  2. Dust off the organ console.
  3. Bring the choir back.
  4. Don’t perform.
  5. Get rid of the lead soloist.
  6. Don’t sing so much.
  7. Sing all the time.
  8. Build a resonant sanctuary.
  9. Encourage and support the arts in the community.
  10. Bring the kids back into corporate worship.
  11. Use hymnals.
  12. Make the music worth singing.
  13. Stop doing the same songs over and over and over.

For starters, I agree that churches can teach us how to sing, what to sing, and why to sing. That’s how learned: standing in church between my alto mother and my bass father, I learned to follow the little black dots as they floated up and down the clefs. Those lessons laid the foundation for my three years of clarinet, a year of high school chorus, and four years in a singing and drama club.

But learning to sing—even for the purpose of worshipping and praising God—is not what church is really about, so I’d go a step farther than Jonathan suggests and use music as a teaching tool. After all, many of the great hymns were written, at least in part, to teach about God, not only to praise him. Since music by its very nature tends to stick with us, the songs we sing on Sunday mornings have the potential to stick in our minds far longer than the words of my sermon. We need to tap into that potential.

As for choirs and organs, I agree with Jonathan’s reasoning even if I don’t think his solutions are necessarily the right or even best options. What he wants is instrumentation “able to support sustained, hearty congregational singing” and “a sizable, confident, prepared group” to lead that singing. Both of those goals can be achieved with options other than an organ and a choir, but it takes a skilled and intentional worship leader and team to do so…just as it would demand a skilled organist and choir. I’ve seen—or rather heard—the difference in singing when a well-trained and versatile person is on the piano instead of someone who simply plays the little black notes. No instrument in the world will make an average musician sound great; on the other hand, a truly exceptional musician can make an average instrument do wondrous things.

Having said that, I certainly agree with Jonathan that an organ is a uniquely adept instrument for supporting congregational singing. But that doesn’t apply to every organ; electronic organs can be little more than glamorous synthesizers. A pipe organ, though, is unbelievably versatile, especially at the hands and feet of a well-trained organist. [Full disclosure: I married into a pipe organ family; my father-in-law has been building them for longer than the half-century I have been alive, so I’m just a little biased. That said, if you are at all interested in church music—which you probably are if you have read this far—you owe it to yourself to get in on some good pipe organ concerts.]

Let me take on several of Jonathan’s points together—numbers 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, and 13—and boil them down to this: if you want the congregation to sing, then invite them and allow them to do so. Don’t drown out the congregation with amplified instruments (even a pipe organ) or worship team (even a choir). As Ed Stetzer has written, sing singable songs in singable ways. Follow these ideas and you will probably avoid having your up-front team being performers before an audience. Hymnals can help people sing…if they’re inclined to sing, know how to read music, and are familiar enough to find the song in the time they have to do that. In other words, hymnals might help church people sing. But if you’re trying to help non-church people encounter God, then projecting the words on a screen is a far better choice. (Just be sure your tech people are good enough to stay with the musicians and get the right words on the screen at the right time.)

I may write about worship again another time, but let me close with one more encouragement to read Jonathan’s blog for yourself, and not simply to either argue against or agree with, but to reflect on and impact your own thinking about corporate worship.

Dear Pastor

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Old BibleDear Pastor,

Last week I wrote to Youth Pastors asking them to encourage kids to bring their Bibles to church—and to use them there! Not because it makes them look holy, or just because it’s a good habit, but to help them learn to read, know, and understand God’s Word. I acknowledged the changing technologies (from scrolls to books to smart phones) and the changing cultures (from oral to visual and, some say, a return to oral).

Now, thanks to one of those Youth Pastors, it’s time to put in a request to you: encourage us to bring and use our Bibles at church; help us as adults also learn to read, use, know, and appreciate God’s Word. This idea isn’t mine; one of my former pastors put it in my mind when he stood in front of the church and announced that we would no longer be projecting the day’s Scripture reading, for just those purposes: to help train us. Here are some practical suggestions:

  • Don’t put the main Bible passage on the screen. Instead, ask people to use their own Bible, whether print or electronic. Make sure there is enough light for people to read by. Verses read during the message may be projected, but not the whole text.
  • Have Bibles available in the sanctuary. If you don’t have Bibles in the seats, be sure they are readily available at the entrance doors. For a while, you may even offer a Bible to each person entering, along with the bulletin or other printed materials. Well before you are ready to read the passage, ask if anyone needs a Bible, and have ushers ready to pass them out. Oh, and be sure they are all the same translation and format (see next point).
  • Announce the passage at least twice. Make sure the reference is in the bulletin and put it on the screen.
  • Help us find the passage. Tell us the page number in the available Bibles, but also give some hints on finding it in our own Bibles (e.g., table of contents, general location, major books before or after the passage, etc.). Give us time, too! You may even print a QR code in the bulletin, linking to the passage in an online Bible such as www.biblegateway.com. (QR codes are easy to generate and can be used to link to just about any website. But be sure to test it each week, or you might end up with some surprises.)
  • Give a Bible to anyone who wants one, no questions asked! This should be the first priority in your annual budget, or at least a non-negotiable. They don’t have to be high-quality leather Bibles; inexpensive paperbacks are fine. But be generous with God’s Word!

One last thought: Ask everyone to stand up when reading the main passage. In this we follow the example of the people of Israel, who stood in honor of God’s Word when Ezra opened the Book of the Law (see Nehemiah 8).

If God’s Word is worth proclaiming each Sunday, and worth teaching our kids, then it’s certainly worth these simple steps. And you just may convince me, too, Pastor, that knowing and listening to God is even more important than listening to you!

What I’m Reading: Under the Unpredictable Plant

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Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, by Eugene Peterson, is the third in a series of three books on the work of pastors in North America. (The other two titles are Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity and Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, which sit on my bookshelf waiting to be read.)

If I had to choose a pastor after whom to model my ministry, it would be Eugene Peterson. He seems so much more concerned about his congregation’s toward maturity in Christ than about its growth in size. His writing is theological, sometimes philosophical, often eminently practical. Best of all, he offers no programs to sell, no models to follow; only sound, Biblical counsel.

In Under the Unpredictable Plant, Peterson uses the story of Jonah to help clarify the pastoral vocation in the midst of a culture that calls (and tempts) pastors to “religious careerism.” He uses Tarshish, Jonah’s destination of choice, as representing an exotic and far-away city where Jonah dreamed of doing big things for God (just not in God’s presence). Pastors today are similarly tempted by the culture to run to the next big, exciting church where they might do great things for God…and then get invited to speak at a conference or two. Ninevah, on the other hand, represents the heart of what God calls pastors to do: faithfully proclaim His message of love and grace to messy people.

Throughout his books, Peterson weaves pieces of his own story: growing up in a home with a Pentecostal preacher mother and a butcher father; childhood encounters with rough-edged farmers; struggling to make the language of the Bible real for an adult Sunday School class (the genesis—no pun intended—of his contemporary-English Bible translation, The Message). These personal stories bring Peterson’s philosophy and theology to life.

I would love to meet Eugene Peterson. I am almost jealous of a pastor friend who, with his wife, got to spend several days in Peterson’s home as a gift from his church! In fact, when looking into seminaries several years ago, Regent University in British Columbia was high on my list, precisely because that’s where Peterson was serving at the time. For now, though, I am content to be mentored vicariously through his books.

The Faith of Community

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Directly across from me, leaning back against a tree, sat the family patriarch. He looked 75 but was likely 15-20 years younger. Around us sat his family – young children, teenagers, and a few perhaps in their early 20s. My hosts brought me a small stool on which to sit, and for the next 30 or 40 minutes we talked about my faith and theirs, the Bible and the Q’ran, about Jesus and Islam. Several times, the patriarch – I never got his name – told me, “What you say is good.” As we concluded our conversation he invited us to return the next day to talk more, but with regret I explained that this was our last day in the area. Repeating his affirmation, “what you say is good,” he added, “We will believe, me and my family. Not today, but probably in two or three days, we will believe.”

This encounter took place ten years ago this past week, in a village in southern Ethiopia. Two days later, the team I was with flew home, spending Easter morning on a layover at Frankfurt International Airport in Germany. My mind often returns to that village and the twice-translated conversation with the family. Did the life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ take place in their hearts? If I were to return to the village today, would it still be dominated by Islam, or would the patriarch—or one of the children sitting with us in the shade of the tree—be leading a ten-year-old church? For a decade I have longed to return and to meet this man and his family again. Maybe someday I will.

Across the barriers of language, I learned something under that tree that has shaped my life, my faith, and my ministry as a pastor: faith is not a do-it-yourself encounter. We do not come to faith, profess faith, walk in faith, grow in faith, or live in faith alone. Faith is a community affair. It is conceived, born, and nurtured in community. It grows and matures in community. It lives and thrives in community.

This challenges much of what I was taught growing up, which centered on making a personal decision for Christ, a personal confession of faith. This notion of individualized faith, while not theologically incorrect, is at best incomplete. Scripture is filled with stories of households and communities that believed in Jesus…apparently as one, at one time. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at a well and told her everything about her, she believed; then she went back to her village and told them about Him, and they believed. (Read the encounter in John 4.) When Peter and a Roman centurion named Cornelius each had a vision directing them to meet, Peter shared the good news of Jesus and “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” (Acts 10). Or read of the conversion of Lydia in Philippi (Acts 16) or Crispus in Corinth (Acts 18).

I don’t know all the implications of this community faith idea. It certainly doesn’t absolve any individual of confessing Jesus for himself or herself. Nor, I think, does it mean that children raised by Christian parents get a free pass into heaven. (These concepts of “fire insurance,” “ticket to heaven,” “get out of hell free” … they’re all really bad theology, anyway; they completely miss the point of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. But that’s a subject for another post.) Maybe this would be a good opportunity for you to share some thoughts. What implications do you see for yourself, your family, your church, your work, other people in your circles of influence?

Are Local Churches Truly Autonomous?

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Very seldom do I venture into the realm of church politics and leadership failures, especially when it involves naming names. I greatly prefer to write about what I’m learning and how theology applies to our everyday lives and I recognize that talking about specific individuals must be done with extreme care if it is to be helpful, hopeful, and grace-filled. Yet the reality is that church politics and leadership do apply to our everyday lives, and they are—or ought to be—rooted in sound theology. We also can and must learn from both the successes and the failures of specific individuals. So here goes….

On Tuesday, October 14, Mark Driscoll resigned as Senior Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. Much has been and will continue to be written about this; unfortunately far too much of that will be unhelpful, lacking grace, and downright caustic. And that’s just from those who call themselves Christians. But Aaron at Blogging Theologically had some good things to say that spurred my own thinking. (Please take some time to read his thoughts, then add to the discussion.) I want to take something Aaron said and (gracefully, I hope) disagree with it. Mars Hill church, Aaron said, needs to evaluate their [leadership] structure. (I agree.)

The model they’ve been running on—with an outside board of accountability—simply doesn’t work, nor is it biblical. If they’re serious about getting healthy, they need to put in place a model of governance where every leader really is one vote at the table, and are held to account. They need to become autonomous churches with elders who are biblically qualified and capable of preaching the Word.

I grew up basically Baptist, and almost exclusively in the Free Church tradition. In those worlds, local churches are viewed as autonomous; that is, they are self-governing, and although they may choose willingly and voluntarily to associate with other like-minded churches through conferences, conventions, or associations—i.e., denomination—they do not sit under the authority of those organizations or the other affiliated churches. The past fifty years has seen a growth in “non-denominational” churches; that is, churches that have taken autonomy one step further by choosing to not affiliate with a denominational organization…even one within the free church tradition. When a local church is substantially healthy, this autonomy can a good thing. The church can make its own decisions on leadership, vision, strategy, and activities without having to submit those to an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. When problems arise, however, autonomous churches are left to struggle on their own, often crumbling under the weight of leadership abuses, failed structures, financial mismanagement, or devastating moral failure.

Aaron’s post over at Blogging Theologically raised two questions for me. First, are outside boards of accountability unbiblical? Second, should churches be autonomous? Aaron’s post seems to suggest that the answer to both of these questions is yes. I would argue not.

Outside Boards of Accountability. Some local church structures rely on boards comprised primarily of men (or men and women) who are not connected to that church in any other way. It is a model learned from the private sector in which corporations are overseen by a board of outside directors. The Microsoft board, for example, includes a college president, the CFO of a food group, the CEO of a credit card company, and the former chairman of a German automaker. There are many advantages of such a structure, not the least of which is an outside perspective that can help a local church keep its eyes on God’s kingdom instead of its own. But is such an external board unbiblical? Certainly not. The apostle Paul was a church planter throughout the Mediterranean region. In each area where he started a church, he also planted a pastor or commissioned some other leader: Timothy, Titus, and Lydia, to name a few. He instructed them to appoint elders (also known as overseers) for those churches, which gives us a clear example to follow: churches need to have local leaders exercising authority. But does that discount the benefit of external authorities? Or, more significantly, does it render external overseers unbiblical? By no means! Paul himself exercised authority over the churches he planted, both by instructing the local leaders to appoint elders and by intervening in matters of practice (e.g., circumcision), doctrine (e.g., the resurrection), and sin (e.g., sexual impurity). Further, Paul and Barnabas, Peter, Silas, and Luke, among others, all seem to have exercised such external authority over the growing number of local churches. This leads to the next question: ought local churches to be autonomous?

Local Church Autonomy. One of many results of the Protestant Reformation was the growth of the Free Church tradition; that is, local churches coming out from under the overbearing authority of The Church (namely, the Roman Catholic Church headquartered in Rome). My roots in the Baptist world plant me firmly in this Free Church tradition. I believe it is good and right…but neither biblical nor unbiblical. There is great freedom in the structure; not only freedom of outside authority (which is what the name truly reflects), but also freedom of movement and vision and strategy. Local churches that are unencumbered hierarchical bureaucracies are far more able to adapt their ministries to the ever-changing needs and cultures in which they exist. When a local church is substantially healthy, autonomy can be a good thing. Yet good things can also have negative side effects. Antibiotics fight infections, but they also reduce the body’s natural infection-fighting abilities, so that a person who has had to take antibiotics for a long period of time actually becomes more susceptible to future infection. In the same way, autonomy can lead to disastrous consequences when a church faces a crisis such as a moral failure, an overbearing pastor, or a leadership power struggle. In these types of circumstances, the church is no longer the doctor but the patient; and the patient is rarely in the best position to either diagnose the problem or prescribe the treatment. This is when an otherwise-autonomous local church must submit itself to others: an external board, the denominational or association leadership, or some other external, biblical source of authority. This is what the Galatian church did when they appointed Paul and Barnabas to go to Jerusalem to settle the circumcision debate (Acts 15).

When we elevate the autonomy and independence over mutual submission—whether as individuals or as local churches—we have a recipe for arrogance and failure. We are giving Satan the foothold he needs to forestall the church’s attacks on his fortress. But when we humbly submit to the wisdom of those with a different and broader perspective, we demonstrate the grace and unity that Jesus prayed for and that will draw people into His kingdom.