Singing in the key of autopilot - Part Deux

Click here to read part one of this series. 


The church was a massive cathedral, constructed on a prime plat of rich farmland over 100 years ago in order to provide a house of worship for the German farmers who’d settled the area. Suburbia tried to swallow it whole, but didn’t seem to be able to digest the massive steeple, European stained glass windows and beams hewn from ancient trees that once clustered near the town’s cold, still lake.

Up in a loft is an ancient pipe organ, no doubt the pride of the folks who gave sacrificially to purchase and install it when the church was first built. This instrument serves as the worship leader for the church. At the proper moment in each scripted service, the organist pounds out an intro, readying the aging congregation to launch into every verse of each top-heavy hymn.

Well, in theory, anyway.

In actuality, the most of the congregation rises to its feet on cue, and then stands there. Few actually sing. Yes, the some of the songs are hard to sing, and others lumber on and on and on, a musical endurance test.

Is this worship?

I would contend that worship is taking place in this church…but it’s not happening during the church service.

If you keep watching the bored, tired congregation after the final note of the last hymn ends, you’ll se them come alive after the service ends. It appeared that most of them endured the service just as they had for decades in order to have those little social-glue conversations in the lobby after the service:

“How’s your granddaughter doing, Martha?”
“I heard there’s going to be snow again tomorrow afternoon.”
“It was a beautiful funeral.”

Those moments were the emotional marrow of the service – connection, communion and care happened in ways that they couldn’t during the service. The laughter and handshakes between ancient men wearing ancient blazers; a wheelchair-bound woman patting a visiting toddler on the head contained a palpable hunger for emotional connection with God and others in ways that the interminable service and that grim, soul-less music could never satisfy.

Visiting this church a few months ago got me to thinking about the role that music does (and doesn’t) play in worship. It was an extreme version of what I’ve experienced in lots of other church services.

Corporate, sung worship is our birthright as Christ-followers – song/psalm lyrics are ribboned throughout Scripture as a response to the work of God. Without exception, these songs are rooted in overflowing emotion whether their content is lament, thanksgiving, awe, joy or longing.

Though the creation of music is in part a cognitive, volitional act, if it originates solely in the domain of the brain alone, I believe it will fly like a lead balloon. When I was involved in planning chapel services at Trinity, some on campus voiced their concerns that service music might be used in some evil way to manipulate a congregation’s emotions, similar, perhaps, to the way that a movie soundtrack is meant to lead an audience to feel. Someone there once suggested to me that the ideal would be found if the congregation had a new bit of doctrine to think about in every sentence of a song.

This was in part a reaction against modern worship music, but I think it came from something more, too. I wonder if some of this was fear of tapping into the wellspring of emotion that lies beneath the surface of us all. I don’t see that fear of feeling emotion rewarded (or even expected!) anywhere in the Psalms - or anywhere else in Scripture, for that matter.

Sung worship must engage our messy, unmanageable emotions. If fear of a mess or an unhealthy commitment to nostalgia in our church services keeps us from feeling those emotions, worship becomes about us - which is the exact thing that those who default to these positions claim they're avoiding.

Do you agree or disagree with dragging our emotions into the conversation about worship music? Why? 

Does your congregation shy away from emotional engagement in music?

Singing in the key of autopilot

It’s a perfect summer afternoon. You’ve settled into your box seat, twenty-two rows behind the visiting baseball team’s dugout. You flag down the hot dog guy and fork over your four bucks. He slaps a steaming red hot into a soft bun in a single motion, passing it to you as the ballpark announcer finishes introducing your home team.

You open your mouth to take a bite. At that moment, the ballpark announcer pauses dramatically and then asks everyone to rise and join in the singing of the National Anthem. You shift your dog to your southpaw hand, slapping your right hand over your heart. You begin singing, “Oh say can you see…” the words bubbling up from an ancient, dusty memory file in a corner of your brain’s basement. You usually only have to go fishing in for those darn lyrics a couple of times a year at most – at ballgames.

You squeak through those painfully high notes (“…and the rockets’ red glare…”), watching the little boy three rows in front of you poking his little sister in the ribs, listening to the aging frat boys from marketing singing their own beer-soaked,R-rated version of the song.

As the stadium choir lurches to the last line of the song, suddenly, everyone seems to snap to. “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yeh-het way-haav…O’er the lah-hand of the freeehee….and the home…of the….brave! Play ball!”

The Star Spangled Banner was first sung at a baseball game during the 1918 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. It was the height of World War I. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. farm boys, ranch hands and city slickers were fighting (and dying) in the trenches of western Europe.

Public singing of The Star Spangled Banner at the height of the Great War was weighted with urgency. Bombs were literally bursting in air, directly over the heads of millions of the country’s sons, brothers and young fathers. Singing the song was a kind of a prayer, a celebration of everything people felt was good and right about the country.

By 1931, this impossible-to-sing song (which used the music of everyone’s favorite rockin’ 18th century hit, To Ancreon Of Heaven) had become the official national anthem of the United States. And shortly thereafter, most of the meaning had trickled away. Most of the time, anyway.

Once in a while, something will happen that brings the song’s meaning into sharp relief to modern audiences, like Jimi Hendrix’s searing performance of the song as a guitar solo at Woodstock, or the days following September 11, 2001, or when immigrants rallying for legal reforms sing the anthem in Spanish as an act of protest.

But most of the time, we stumble through the song at sporting events, a funny little patriotic social habit that warms the crowd up for the main event - the game!  The anthem is a ritual, part of the liturgy of a baseball game.

Many of us sleepwalk through the sung worship portion of the liturgy in our own congregations, whether it is in the form of a tired pipe organ or a kickin' band. We expect no more than either a warm, nostalgic feeling from singing the hymns of our youth (well, not my youth, but I digress…) or a rush of goosebumps from a strategically-placed powerchord in a Chris Tomlin-penned tune.

I believe we expect far too little when we sing to the Lord.

My next post will take a look at why this is, and offer a couple of practical thoughts about how to fight the gravity that threatens to anchor many of us to a dreary musical and spiritual rut. 

In the meantime, a question: What has been your experience with sung worship? Is it a warm up (or cool down) from the main event in your church – communion, sermon or both? Does the congregation seem engaged when they sing? What's the purpose of church music, anyway?

Why isn't our church like that conference?

"Why isn't this church like that conference?"

A friend recently reported that her teen daughter asked her this question after attending a teaching and worship event that drew thousands of people from across the U.S.  The young woman had experienced the sweet intensity that occurs when a large group of people is gathered for a single, focused purpose. She came home ready to change the world, and sat through a typical church service or two before she realized that though the conference speakers and her pastors were both using the same words for realities like discipleship, calling and mission, they ended up carrying completely different meanings. The conference was a call to a deeper and more courageous Christian life, complete with stirring testimonies from people who were living that life. Church services were...well, 4 songs, a collection, some announcements ("Ladies Bible study Thursday morning, Youth Group trip to Six Flags next month"), a sermon, communion. Same thing every week with the same people who were mostly content to leave the boat unrocked.

When I was on staff at a church, we spent time in our staff meetings discussing that very question. Some were very offended when members of the congregation returned from various conferences and asked the question as they were coming down (hard) from their mountaintop experience. These staffers almost always heard the question as an accusation. Because at least in some cases, it was. Some on the church staff worried about alienating those who were new to our faith community, or who didn't have the capacity to swim in the "deep end of the pool". Others took umbrage at a perceived challenge to their leadership decisions.

Silencing the question-askers by branding them as malcontents missed the importance of the question. Why, indeed, isn't the church stretching its members' faith and motivating them toward holy action? No one on staff was willing to reflect on this question (which came to us repeatedly, from a variety of different people), or to view it as an expression of divine discontent with the status quo.

We sure do love our status quo. It's relatively easy to program and staff. And you don't really need trained lifeguards if you keep everyone wearing floaties and splashing in the wading pool.

Conferences (which are also programmed, and feature various Varsity Teams of musicians and speakers) aren't meant to replace the sacramental context of life together of a local church, of babies being born, people getting sick, or married, or dying. Of being born again, then learning how to follow Jesus in their job at Jiffy Lube.

But they do call people to the deep end of the pool, and offer a look at what life together could be like if we had the chutzpah to hear the hunger for maturity embedded in that question.

What has your experience been in your church if you've been to a conference or two, and returned home asking that question? Did you have a difficult time integrating the "mountaintop" of your experience into the status quo of your home congregation?

How do you say "potpourri" in Japanese?

A Saturday afternoon grab bag:

If you like books and book reviews, you'll want to bookmark the Englewood Review of Books website. Every Tuesday and Friday, a thoughtful variety of book reviews are posted, along with an occasional poem or music review. Browse the site to give yourself a sense of the breadth of the sorts of books covered there. Both Bill and I began reviewing for the site earlier this year. (You can search for our reviews by typing our names in the search box.) One of my ERB reviews even got picked up by the Christianity Today her.meneutics blog. I love that ERB is an outworking of an Indy-area church that seems to have some very wise convictions about who they're called to be.

We have no shortage of ethnic groceries in Chicago, and whenever I shop at one, I've tried to make it a practice to buy something that I've never tasted before. (Sometimes, I don't know what I'm buying because I can't read Polish or Korean or Arabic.) This morning, I headed to Mitsuwa, and came home with this nearly-incomprehensible haul of sauces and seasonings. Dinner tonight should be interesting.

6 weeks from today is our son Ben's wedding. 6 weeks and one day from today, we'll be on a plane to Israel. Our plane will take off just as the Lost finale hits the airwaves. When the show first came on the air, I figured it was Gilligan's Island for the new millenium. A coworker at the Trinity Bookstore kept insisting I'd love the show, and I eventually watched the pilot episode. I was instantly hooked. The events taking place in 6 weeks - and 6 weeks and one day from now are the kinds of high points and fireworks full of celebration and joy. But as that plane is taxiing down the runway on May 23 at 7 PM, I will be clutching the armrest of my seat and/or my husband's arm (nervous flyer) and wondering just how it's all going to end on Lost.

I got a free copy of John Ortberg's newest release, The Me I Want To Be at a recent Catalyst/Christ Together event in conjunction with his monvee rollout. I've read and enjoyed a few Ortberg titles before, but this one is a home run. He makes the sometimes heady, other times contemplative topic of spiritual formation accessible, joyful and simple without being silly, pandering or simplistic. This is the mark of a truly great teacher - and one of the most freeing books I've read in the last several years.

Wouldja look at that? I just snuck in another book review.

The real deal

"When they arrive at the gates of death, God welcomes those who love him." - Ps. 116:15 MSG 

I remember where I was* in 1982 when I heard the news that Keith Green died. Though I'd never met him in person, his life message of radical discipleship shaped me more than the sermons I sat through in church most Sundays. He was the real deal.

I remember the "oh no..." roller-coaster drop I got in my gut in 1997 when someone told me that Rich Mullins had died in an accident near Bloomington, IL. His music flowed from his life of poverty, simplicity and service. He inspired me to remember what discipleship was supposed to look like. He, too, was the real deal.

And yesterday, I had another one of those moments when I learned that Michael Spencer had gone home after a brief, intense battle with cancer. Spencer's prodigious output of blog posts and podcasts under the internetmonk moniker have been touchstones in my spiritual life over the last several years. His intelligence, honesty, humor and willingness to ask lots of hard questions of God, of his fellow Christians, and occasionally, of the world at large have both comforted and confronted me. He poured out his soul and shared the mess of his journey all while doing his day job at a rural KY boarding school. His insistence on Jesus-shaped spirituality in all pointed me (and at times, provoked me) to think like a disciple. He was the real deal.

When I am tempted to discouragement at the puddle-shallow Christianity I see around me (and in the mirror!), I am grateful...very grateful indeed...that the real "narrow road" deal has been modeled for me by the likes of these unlikely disciples.



* Glad you asked. Sitting in the parking lot of a strip mall in Mt. Prospect, IL.

Review: 66 Love Letters

There has been a (welcome) shift in many corners of Evangelicalism in recent years toward story-shaped preaching and teaching. Many pastors and writers have discovered that three alliterative points have more to do with activating short-term memory than engaging spiritual imagination and motivating long-term growth.

Dr. Larry Crabb understands this shift. His rich teaching and counseling ministry have been all about helping people connect deeply with The Story, one that's bigger than any single individual. To that end, he walked through the sixty-six books of Scripture in his new book, 66 Love Letters: A Conversation With God That Invites You Into His Story (Nelson) - not as an academic or a theologian, but as a "mere Christian, a hungry follower of Jesus who desperately wants to hear whatever God is telling me, a man in misery who only wants one thing, not relief from misery (although that would be nice), but hope - hope of intimacy and meaning and joy forever, in relationship with God."

His journey through Scripture is a poetic quest to find the core of the message of each book of the Bible. He dialogues with God as He writes, exposing his soul in order to fully engage with what God is saying. Crabb understands that the Bible is meant to BE a dialogue, a living letter to the created, thirsting for recreation world. Here's a taste from the chapter about 1 Thessalonians:

"So the more frustrated I feel with myself and life, the more thirsty I'll become for you? And that's maturity?


"Your frustration with everything else, including yourself, makes it possible to turn in deeper dependence to Me. Your weariness requires the strength of supernatural love to continue serving Me. Your haunting sense of futility shuts you up to a kind of endurance that can be sustained only with hope in My Son's return." 

This 400-page hardcover makes a wonderful devotional companion for those who know the Bible well, and a joyful jolt of orientation to those new to Scripture.


Note: A copy of this book was provided me by the publisher.