Music

This is the second of three posts on the place of music in worship. Andrew Dionne, a member of the pastoral staff of Christ the Word and former intern at Church of the Good Shepherd, received his doctorate in music composition from Indiana University before attending Covenant Seminary where he received his M.Div.

Andrew's posts are adaptations of a series of sermons he preached at Christ the Word in the fall of 2004. The first in the series is available here.

If you would like to download PDF versions of the posts, Part 1 is available here and Part 2 here.

Tim and I encourage careful consideration of these posts by those who wish to see the music and worship of their church rise above cultural elitism without falling into the idolatry of pop-culture emulation.

1 Chronicles 25: The Foundation of All God-Pleasing Music?
Andrew Dionne

Music is a sensitive topic in the church--that is why the elders have asked me to preach on the topic. My intention in addressing this topic is not so much to change our worship--it is currently reverent and biblical. Rather, I hope to change our thinking on worship.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few changes that I hope to accomplish: we will be drawing from a wider range of musical styles in our worship: contemporary as well as ancient; we have seen and will continue to see the addition of a few other instruments in worship; we'll need to think about the use of instrumental music in the service.

Because music is so loved and passionately followed; and many of us have strong opinions and have had truly bad musical experiences in worship, we must make sure we are not sinfully holding to unbiblical ideas about worship music. Have our opinions been shaped by biblical principles or have our opinions been formed by personal preference and a desire for vindication?

Church of the Good Shepherd is led in worship by a group of musicians who are truly sons of Asaph. They push us to glorify God with exuberance, yet reverence suffers no violence at their hands.

The past few weeks, these men and women have been recording a CD and I can't wait to hear it. If' you're interested, here's the web site where you can leave your E-mail address so they can let you know when it's ready.

As a Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) pastor of a church in Bloomington that has many Indiana University School of Music grads and undergrads in our fellowship, it's always been a challenge to balance our congregation's disparate musical tastes. Our liturgy is quite straightforward, adhering closely to the practice of reformation Geneva, but our music is eclectic (not the words--they're always doctrinally solid and tending to the objective, with a healthy dose of Psalm 73 subjectivity). For leadership of our congregational singing, our normal practice is to accompany the singing with a band or to sing the hymns a capella. This means half the people are happy half the time (or not happy half the time). But we love each other and...

(by Tim) When I was about nineteen, I went over to a guy's house for what at the time was called a jam session. The guy lived with his parents in Wheaton, and they'd given him a room in their basement where he and his band practiced. I'd come with a friend who was also a guitarist and I hung out while the two of them traded licks for a while. It was a good time, in large part because no one there was sniffing glue or getting stoned or drunk. The times were drug-infested and jam sessions without drugs or too much alcohol were the exception to the rule.

Decades later, I found out that young man was now a famous Christian musician--and reformed, to boot. Then, I heard he was speaking out against the crass materialism of the contemporary Christian music scene as only a son of Wheaton could or would. His name is Steve Camp and my respect for him has deepened over the years.There's another CCM guitarist I respect a great deal...

(by Tim) Have you noticed how the hymns, songs, and spiritual songs being written for Christian worship today exclude words or concepts that are negative? And, performed on "Christian radio," how every piece of music ends in a triumphant crescendo?

Listen to your local Christian radio station and count the number of times Satan, Hell, the narrow path, old age, death, or false doctrine appear in songs' lyrics. Really, we ought to be coming up with new settings for Psalm 137. But hey, it wouldn't get air time. Go over to The Psalms of David from Kings Choir of Kings College, Cambridge, Vol. 1 for an old setting I love. (In fact, I'm very fond of all three volumes in this series and highly recommend them.)

Well here's a tonic for what ails us, from the same spiritual father who gave us, "And though this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us; The Prince of Darkness grim--we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, For lo, his doom is sure, One little Word shall fell him." Whether or not your church would sing the following words with gusto might be some indication of whether you've found a good church home...

(Tim) This from Jan Fisher's web page--a great guitarist with beautiful harmonics. Don't miss the end.

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) From the days of Cream, I've been quite partial to Eric Clapton. Check out this tender review of Eric Clapton's autobiography, Clapton: The Autobiography, written by John Powell for First Things. Powell does a great job, doesn't he?

A couple weeks ago, Good Shepherd Band did a concert with Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. Here are several new songs recorded then. Give a listen. My new favorites are "Son of God Goes Forth to War" and "Deep Is the Mystery." How I am strengthened by these men's leadership each Lord's Day!

If you're interested in a concert at your church or school, send me an E-mail and I'll pass it on. My E-mail is tbbayly at gmail dot com.

(Tim: from left, Philip Moyer, Mick Buschbacher, Andrew Henry, Jim Hogue, Jody Killingsworth) Church of the Good Shepherd is served by a wonderful group of modern-day sons of Asaph, church musicians who serve the Lord and their brothers and sisters in Christ faithfully each week, leading us in worship. They call themselves the Good Shepherd Band and on their MySpace page they've posted a statement of the musical principles we follow in our worship. To listen to their latest music, check out their web site. How our faith is strengthened through their hard work!

• We believe that music used for worship should arise from the context of the local church and should be essentially pastoral: it should rebuke as well as encourage, it should teach as well as emote. Consumer driven worship has its finger more on the pulse of the pocketbook than the worshipper’s true spiritual condition. Consumerism is driven by the mantra “The customer is always right! Whatever the customer wants, the customer gets!” Apply that principle to preaching and you lose preaching. Apply it to worship and you get CCM.

• We believe that music used for worship is obligated to declare the whole counsel of God. It should lead people to praise God both for His “Yes” and His “No”...

(Tim) From our Equal Time Department, with a few things changed to hide the identity of this dear sister who may not want to own me, publicly, particularly after my ignorant and stupid post on Shoenberg. By way of introduction, may I please say that I have listened to modern music until I'm stuffed to the gills? And it started, like Milne, "when we were very young." Mud and Dad always had our stereo tuned to WEFM or WFMT. I've put in countless hours, also, listening to this music at recitals, concerts, and children's practice sessions in our living room.

For instance, after spending six months in a funk brought on by son Joseph's perpetual practice of that dark turgidity known as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor, I finally came to love it. Maybe that's how thick my head is with this other stuff? Truly, I may simply have opened my mouth to parade my stupidity. I may well be that very person spoken of in the "Architect's Sketch, "Well yes, that's the sort of blinkard philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."

I'm sure this much-loved sister speaks for very many of my dearest friends and I only love her more for reaming me out thusly...

* * *

Wow Tim---the most recent blog (about Schoenberg, and new music) is the first blog of yours that I don't like!

While it is all rather lighthearted (yes, I can see how many see that video as funny---yet it is woefully ignorant at the same time, but I'm not going to get on my high horse---too much---about it), at the same time, I feel like enough of these kinds of statements really do work against new music, and people immediately throw off Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (and other "weird" pieces by other amazing composers)  because it's weird and sounds ugly and stupid, and WHY oh WHY would anyone like listening to that when they can listen to Mozart?????

(Tim) Tomorrow evening, Ray Boltz will be giving a concert in Indianapolis at the Indy church that exists to promote sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ. It's called Jesus Metropolitan Community Church and the concert is promoted on the church's web site as follows (emphases in the original)...

(Tim) Last week, Nat Hentoff was laid off at the (Greenwich) Village Voice. This brings an abrupt end to Hentoff's fifty year run there, appropriately and affectionately titled "Fifty Years of Pissing People Off" by fellow Voice columnist Allen Barra in his recent tribute to Hentoff.

Hentoff started as a staff writer for the Voice back in 1958. His dismissal fifty years later coincides, almost to the day, with Louis Menand's short history of the Voice that ran in the current New Yorker. Beyond the Voice, Hentoff has also published in the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, JazzTimes (his best-known work may be as a jazz critic and historian), and Atlantic Monthly.

I note the dismissal of Hentoff, as well as the profile of the Voice in the current New Yorker, because this past week I've been enjoying a Christmas gift received from a friend in New York City who knows me well. A former member of Church of the Good Shepherd while studying at IU's School of Music, Regina Scow sent me an autographed copy of The Nat Hentoff Reader which I've been relishing this past week.

So far, I've read a short piece on jazz clarinetist, George Lewis; a longish one on my longtime favorite, Merle Haggard; some superb essays on racism in America including a good profile of Ken Clark titled, "The Integrationist;" and a rare glimpse of the racial suffering of Louis Armstrong in "Louis Armstrong and Reconstruction." The book also reprints Hentoff's classic essay exposing the practice of infanticide in America today titled, "The Awful Privacy of Baby Doe." I'll never forget reading it when it first appeared back in 1985. When I finished the piece, I remember feeling deep gratitude for Hentoff's leadership and courage.

I've been a fan of Hentoff for years now, largely (but not exclusively) because of his heroic defense of the First Amendment, the newborn, and the unborn. Interesting trio, aren't they? Imagine someone who tenaciously defends the First Amendment against the depredations of p.c. nannies also tenaciously defending the unborn and newborn against oppression and murder. He'd have to be a Christian, wouldn't he?

Well, in this case not...

(by Andrew Dionne) Following the release by the Good Shepherd Band of "Wake Up Sleepers," Christ the Word's Everlasting Word Band is pleased to join the musical reformation by releasing a track from its first EP due later this year. 

Psalm 2 (hear and download here) from  Calvin's Genevan Psalter, modernized and arranged by Douglas Wilson, quickly became a congregational favorite when we introduced it several years ago. Instead of dispensing with instruments as Calvin would have preferred, we enfolded the text into music and instruments appropriate to its forceful declaration of the wrath of God--a force rendered all the more striking by its contrast with the softness of most church music today.

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) If you want to begin to understand our day--the switch of the central currency of cultural engagement from the Bible to moving pictures, the use of film clips in Gospel preaching, the building of congregations around virtual images of themselves on the movie screen each Lord's Day employed by men like Mark Driscoll and John Piper, and the gift our head of state and his wife gave the Queen, recently--only two things are necessary: first, read the Second Commandment; and second, read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

And while we're talking about the gifts the monarchs exchanged...

(Tim, w/thanks to James) Please listen to Wake Up Sleeper (the title cut) and Where Are the Persecuted? as you read this post.

At Church of the Good Shepherd, we work to raise our children and disciple new believers in expectation of growing persecution. Calvin says times of peace are not to be used getting fat, but to prepare for the next battle already on the horizon and closing on us quickly.

This is our goal at CGS and it informs our preaching, Bible study, childrearing, reading, and worship. It's these last two things I want to focus on in this post--worship and reading. First then, worship; and within worship, the themes and instrumentation of our music.

STEP NUMBER ONE: MUSIC

In our age of feminized discourse and cheap grace, Church of the Good Shepherd makes a conscious effort to restore the biblical themes of persecution, conflict, suffering, Satan, death, the coming Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

Have you noticed these themes are absent from reformed worship today? And beyond absent, they're anathema to woman deacon/Emergelical churches where everyone has an iPhone, evangelism happens in the art gallery, sermons are eloquent discourses on the many faces of narcissism, and women administer the Lord's Supper.

Living in such a decadent age, we're working to restore them--particularly to the music of our worship.

Next to one of the world's largest music schools, Church of the Good Shepherd is a congregation filled with musicians and composers, most of them classical...

(Tim) Two conferences to call your attention to:

First, online registration is now up and running for the Christ Church conference, Sexual Orthodoxy, to be held October 15-16 in Moscow, Idaho. Doug Wilson, Ben Merkle, and I will be addressing subjects such as: The Politics of Sodomy; Why Women Make Better Women Ministers than Men Do; The Politics of Fruitfulness; Family Government in the Church; Patriarchalism, Good and Bad; Sentimentalism and the Feminine Ethos; and Abortion: The Blood Sacrifice of Egalitarianism. Mary Lee and I hope we'll see you there!

Second, online registration is also available for another conference I'll be speaking at soon--July 10-12--here in Bloomington, Indiana. (Download the brochure.) Please make plans now to join us here in Bloomington for the ClearNote Fellowship conference, Standing in the Gap. Message titles include, Who Will Stand?; Fight or Flight--True or False Contextualization; Cheap Grace; and Worship Wars.

We plan a refreshing time of fellowship, teaching, food, and worship of our Triune God. The whole family is welcome--we'll be child-friendly as well as childcare being provided. I hope you'll register now and plan to be with us.

If you'd like more information, please feel free to e-mail (Mrs.) Ali Trout at churchoffice at shepherdchurch dot com. Or give her a call, Tuesday through Friday, at (812) 825-2684.

(Tim: Here's a post by our daughter, Mrs. Ben (Michal) Crum.) Yesterday, I listened to the same song seven times while my boys were napping. I didn't have the song on repeat. But every time it ended I thought, I want to listen to that again. And I went back to the iPod and pressed play.

I had heard the song before, but yesterday I listened to it and it took on a different meaning than the writer, John Hartford, intended. I was listening to Gillian Welch's live recording of "In Tall Buildings", and the meaning of the song morphs when sung by a woman. As I consider my occupation as a mother (for it does occupy me entirely--physically, spiritually, and emotionally) I realize how privileged I am. I am privileged to understand the meaning of that calling, and privileged also that my husband and family recognize its necessity and value. For this is the song that many a CEO mother secretly sings to her children in past tense, and I mourn for those mothers who mourn for their children and their lost motherhood.

Here are the lyrics. If you must, read them. But if you have one spare minute and $.99, please download the song and listen to it, instead. It's hauntingly mournful and beautiful...

(Tim) Reformed pastors and elders would do well to consider whether it isn't time to stop despising the musical vernacular in our leadership of the worship of God's people each Lord's Day.

There may be some congregations where the root of traditionalism goes so deep that it would be foolish--maybe even uncharitable--to turn forward the clock. But I'm betting using amplified instruments and modern arrangements of old hymns for the worship of God's people won't happen in most of our churches for the same reason preaching against the heresy of egalitarian feminism doesn't happen...

(Tim) By the way, yesterday Herr Professor Doctor Jürgen von Hagen brought us the Word of God at Church of the Good Shepherd. His text was the Rich Fool and it's context, Luke 12:16-34. Concerning the statements there, "he began reasoning to himself" and "I will say to my soul," Juergen made the point that Scripture does not commend a man talking to himself.

This occurred to me watching Derek. Eyes closed, all alone, singing. He appears to be completely entranced with his own music and himself.

* * *

By the way, the sermon is well worth your time. If you're within driving distance, we have a number of men who would be delighted to preach for you--including Pastor von Hagen. Just send me an e-mail with your location and proposed date.

(Tim Bayly: This post is written by a craftsman of musical instruments in our church named Andrew Henry. I asked him to write about his beautiful musical instruments and to include some pics. He's kindly done so and you'll see why I'm tickled pink to own his first guitar. The action is fantastic, the wood is drop-dead gorgeous, and I'm bragging so I'll stop. Read on and order a bass guitar for a loved one or yourself. You won't regret it!)

God has been very gracious in allowing me to make my living working with my hands. There have been woodworkers in my family for generations and, as a kid, I spent many hours with my dad in his wood shop. But it looked like I wouldn't be following in those footsteps until about two years ago when I was finishing up my Viola Performance degree at IU and considering what sorts of jobs to look for. I'd spent three years in the IU Violinmaking program, earned my Associate's Degree in Violinmaking and had fallen in love with woodworking again...

(Tim) Just a reminder to come to our Christmas Sing-a-Long this Friday evening--now just two nights away. Don't miss it and invite everyone you love! There will be lots of cookies and cocoa as we take joy in, and glorify, our Lord Jesus Christ. See you there!

(Tim, w/thanks to Ben Cr.) One of the more hidden members of Good Shepherd Band is Aaron Jones, an early music keyboardist who serves the Lord by "reaching down." What's the reference?

Check out his myspace Radio Friendly: American Pirates page--particularly his song, "Reach Down." (I also appreciated "I Shall Be Satisfied.")

Knowing many of our readers are forthrightly Reformed, I can anticipate objections to a Reformed man putting "the least of these" to song...

(Tim, w/thanks to Lucas and our CGS musicians) Every church should celebrate Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday--and particularly Good Friday--if they're to be allowed to celebrate Easter. And a corollary: no believer should be permitted into Easter morning worship unless he's first been in attendance at a Good Friday service. But of course, who's making any rules in Protestantism, today?

Anyhow, yesterday we held our noon Good Friday service and, on the spur of the moment, I decided to record some of our worship liturgy on my iPhone to share with you. First, from Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, "Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben:"

If the video above isn't working, try this link.

We speak of worship and music often, here and on the ClearNote blog, and many of our readers are uncomfortable with our commitment to musical worship that's in the vulgar tongue. So I thought I'd provide a taste of what it looks and sounds like, admittedly on a more unplugged day in our congregational life...

(Tim:This from ClearNote Blog, by Pastor Stephen Baker) There's a lot being said these days about the feminization of the Church. It’s an objective fact there are more women in churches than men. This cuts across all denominations, liberal and conservative, Protestant and Roman Catholic. Overwhelmingly, the Church has become the realm of women.

Some contemporary writers have noticed this trend and offered their remedies. Churches can attract men by using sports illustrations, preaching short sermons, showing clips from movies, perfecting the art of the man hug. All these solutions are shallow and superficial.

The key to getting men back to church is worship, but the evangelical Church has reduced worship to an emotional, feminine activity. Case in point: The Sacred Swoon. Here's another version. Go ahead, click on the links.

If you've been in an American Evangelical church for five seconds, you've seen this: eyes closed, head back, hands limply raised, body swaying… (to continue reading...)