The Problem with Praise Teams

I don’t find smileys beautiful, merely useful. And SI software seems to transform my traditional smileys into the contemporary ones regardless of my own preference. I call compromise and apostasy! XD

[DavidO]

“This Is Amazing Grace”

[Verse 1:]
Who breaks the power of sin and darkness
Whose love is mighty and so much stronger
The King of Glory, the King above all kings

Who shakes the whole earth with holy thunder
And leaves us breathless in awe and wonder
The King of Glory, the King above all kings

[Chorus:]
This is amazing grace
This is unfailing love
That You would take my place
That You would bear my cross
You lay down Your life
That I would be set free
Oh, Jesus, I sing for
All that You’ve done for me

[Verse 2:]
Who brings our chaos back into order
Who makes the orphan a son and daughter
The King of Glory, the King of Glory

Who rules the nations with truth and justice
Shines like the sun in all of its brilliance
The King of Glory, the King above all kings

[Chorus]

[Bridge:]
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Worthy is the King who conquered the grave
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Worthy is the King who conquered the grave
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Worthy is the King who conquered the grave
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Worthy, worthy, worthy
Oh

[Chorus]

That’s a great example of beautiful modern worship music.

It would be extremely helpful to me were someone to point out what exactly is beautiful about this expression (the words, not the music).

I’m glad you asked, David. It is beautiful, first, because it is theologically accurate, and expresses specific truths about God that fill my heart with joy. I would suspect that I am not alone in my joy. It is beautiful, second, because the melody rises in its upward intensity to match the meaning of the lyrics. The theology and the melody connect. The intellect and the emotions are pulled together. It’s beautiful. It’s not my favorite song or hymn, but it’s beautiful.

What is a good song or hymn example of lyrics and melody that edify you? What would you say connects the intellect and emotions? My favorite is Handel’s Messiah. Of course Handel cheated. He used scripture. :-)

It strikes me that we ought to define the beauty of a song, hymn, or spiritual song in three ways, to build off what I mentioned earlier. A song can be appropriate from its content, from its poetic structure, and from its musical structure. It can also be beautiful in the same ways. Now, granted, there is some subjectivity in poetic and musical forms, but the formation of a literary and musical “canons” (works deemed significant by most) indicates that there is some commonality.

To attempt it with the song in question, I hope that there is no question that Wickham’s lyrics are Biblical—he derives from Job, Revelation, Psalms,and elsewhere. Moreover, in simply repeating the words of Scripture for the most part, I would argue that Wickham achieves the “mood” that is prevalent in Psalms and elsewhere; it leads with God’s work historically and in our lives. A lot of CCM, as well as a fair number of hymns from the past 150 years or so, have an emotive value that is largely absent from Scripture IMO.

Poetically, he uses a moderately complex rhyme scheme and a fairly regular meter (pentameter for a lot of it, just like the Bard) that lends itself to the words being remembered, just like a lot of hymns. Musically, it’s usually sung in unison without parts (except the obvious; men sing an octave or two lower than the women). There are a couple of things that I don’t like as much. First of all, the poetic and musical structure seems to be designed for a singer who hasn’t learned to breathe properly—there is a built in pause every five or six syllables. Second, there is a degree of repetitiveness in the music/cadence that makes even modern hymnody look downright creative in comparison.

Overall a B, but keep in mind that by the same critieria, a large part of CCM gets a D or worse in my book. Just food for thought.

[M Leslie] I’m glad you asked, David. It is beautiful, first, because it is theologically accurate, and expresses specific truths about God that fill my heart with joy. I would suspect that I am not alone in my joy. It is beautiful, second, because the melody rises in its upward intensity to match the meaning of the lyrics.

Ok, so we have some further criteria. the beauty of an expression (intended for worship) is dependant on:

• the beauty of the subject
• the response of a given individual to it
• it contains or is consistent with Biblical truth
• it is conducive to being set to melody

The third one there is somewhat implicit in the first, but seems distinct enough to me to break it out into its own point. And I am hesitant to add the points Bert makes since I’m not certain they would be met with the consensus of the other folks in this discussion.

[M Leslie] What is a good song or hymn example of lyrics and melody that edify you?

Restricting myself to artistic expressions from within the last 50 or so years, here are three:

One by Arvo Pärt, the “lyrics” to which you will likely recognize.

One by Virgil Thompson, an adaptation of the 23rd Psalm.

And one by Michael Card, not the best performance, perhaps, but you get the idea. Lyrics below.

Did Abraham himself not say
God would provide a lamb
To take instead the punishment
That should belong to man?

And so to humble shepherds
Was His glory first revealed,
And with His birth a covenant
Made long ago was sealed.

Out of His dark obscurity
The Light of God has shone;
And through the meekness of the Lamb
God’s strength would be made known.

The just and gentle Promised One
Would triumph o’er the fall,
And conquer by His own defeat,
And win by losing all.

The thing about discussions like this that scare me is how they quickly move towards applying extra-biblical principles (rules) and making them doctrine. Should we hold ourselves to a high standard? Absolutely. However, there needs to be charity in understanding that some people couldn’t care less about the poetic structure while people like Bert Perry hold it in high regard. If Scripture laid out the poetic structure then it wouldn’t be a discussion. So whether it’s beauty, poetic structure, or praise teams, Scripture makes the rules and the rest is opinion/preference that demands charity.

DavidO—the trick with evaluating the poetry and music is that these are the criteria which tell you whether you can make a song out of a text, and whether the arrangement worked. I will concede that most Christians, including way too many “music ministers”, do not understand this, but it’s really, really crucial. Think of the bards of yore, who used poetic and musical devices to remember some really, really long songs and stories, like the Illiad and the Odyssey, Nibelungenlied, and for that matter, large portions of the Bible. Things like meter, rhyme, alliteration—all those torture devices we learned about in junior high school or high school English class—are crucial when we’re trying to use song in church because song depends on poetry.

Now we may not get total agreement on this point, but I hope that’s not a reason to drop it!

To draw a picture, I saw a “coffee shop CCM” band once live, and went home realizing that I hadn’t remembered a word they said—which is odd for me. I get tunes and lyrics stuck in my head all the time. So I looked up the lyrics on their website, and very quickly figured out why—there was no rhyme or consistent meter being used. It was badly written free verse sort of set to music. To make things worse, it was an attempt at a rock beat that did not have a competent bassist—the drummer was trying to fill in the bass line.

Kids liked it because it had a beat and an electric guitar, but musically it was really, really bad.

[JD Miller]

Mr Barnhart, with all due respect, if you have been on the internet since the 1980’s you ought to be techy enough to show me how to get those fancy smilys in about 3 keystrokes. LOL :) :( ;)

That’s fair! :) How’s this:

:-) :-( :-D

However, I guess I’m still stuck in the text era. (BTW, I’m not sure how the SI site decides how and when to parse those characters, though it appears to have something to do with the number of spaces surrounding it. :) :) ) Note that the previous two smileys are the same, just a colon and a close-paren, but the first one has just one space preceding it, and the 2nd has two spaces preceding it.

[DavidO]

One by Arvo Pärt, the “lyrics” to which you will likely recognize.

One by Virgil Thompson, an adaptation of the 23rd Psalm.

And one by Michael Card, not the best performance, perhaps, but you get the idea. Lyrics below.

David, thank you. Those are all excellent examples of beautiful music. I like them. I wish our church building could have similar acoustics. :-)

[RickyHorton]

The thing about discussions like this that scare me is how they quickly move towards applying extra-biblical principles (rules) and making them doctrine. Should we hold ourselves to a high standard? Absolutely. However, there needs to be charity in understanding that some people couldn’t care less about the poetic structure while people like Bert Perry hold it in high regard. If Scripture laid out the poetic structure then it wouldn’t be a discussion. So whether it’s beauty, poetic structure, or praise teams, Scripture makes the rules and the rest is opinion/preference that demands charity.

Ricky, no extraBiblical theology here at all. We start with a basic premise from Scripture; that we are to sing to one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. Add another; that we are to hide His Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him. So we would conclude that Christian music ought to be (a) pleasant and (b) memorable, as passages like Psalm 119 make clear. We are to make a joyful noise, no?

The question, then, is how we determine whether a song will be memorable or pleasant, and that’s where poetic and musical devices come in. To draw a picture, Hebrew scholars will use the same poetic devices to analyze the Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets, most of which are originally written in poetic form. So it’s not extra-Biblical, but rather a basic tool of exegesis. Some scholars are even working to decipher the musical cues found at the beginning of many Psalms.

And whether or not a person understands the poetic and musical devices, he will tend to figure out if the music works or not. To draw a picture, about a fifth of the population claims evangelical or fundamental Christian faith. So if Christians were persuaded that CCM and other Christian musical genre were worth buying, sales of Christian music ought to rival the secular alternatives. Since that’s obviously not the case, shouldn’t we ask why “our” music isn’t compelling to the markets? Along the same lines, it’s worth noting that secular people line up to buy renditions of the old hymns when performed by bluegrass groups and Elvis.

It’s worth thinking about, no?

[Bert Perry]

Ricky, no extraBiblical theology here at all. We start with a basic premise from Scripture; that we are to sing to one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. Add another; that we are to hide His Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him. So we would conclude that Christian music ought to be (a) pleasant and (b) memorable, as passages like Psalm 119 make clear.

Kevin; if we are commanded to hide His Word in our hearts, does that not imply memorization? Now we could be somewhat sadistic and say “suck it up” to those trying to put God’s word in their hearts, but somehow that seems contrary to “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”, no?

And regarding pleasurable, read Psalm 119 and tell me that we should not find great pleasure in the lyrical expression of God’s Word—and keep in mind that the Torah of which David speaks contains a lot of rebukes for Israel and David himself. Now this does not mean that Christian music ought to always tickle the senses a la pop singers, but I do think it’s fair to say that music ought not give needless offense by its structure, performance, and the like.

I do not want to sound sarcastic with my next question. I am definitely curious as to others thoughts on this. As we discuss the quality of music, I got to thinking about the differences in our spoken language. Is the English language as spoken by someone from England of a higher quality than the English language spoken by someone from Alabama? If it is, should the person from Alabama work on changing their accent so that each time they speak they are better able to glorify God? I understand that these are not apples to apples, but it just got me to thinking.

[JD Miller]

I do not want to sound sarcastic with my next question. I am definitely curious as to others thoughts on this. As we discuss the quality of music, I got to thinking about the differences in our spoken language. Is the English language as spoken by someone from England of a higher quality than the English language spoken by someone from Alabama? If it is, should the person from Alabama work on changing their accent so that each time they speak they are better able to glorify God? I understand that these are not apples to apples, but it just got me to thinking.

That goes in the same direction I was thinking, JD. The culturally conservative I’ve talked with have made it clear that western society’s classical music forms are the pinnacle of all that is good in music. I’ve been wondering if that is the same direction Bert is ultimately going. Maybe not. In my friends circles, Bach is good, and Folk is questionable. For my friends, classical sets the standard by which every church should conform.

Ultimately the Bible gives us support for one music claim. It has to be true.

[Bert Perry]

Kevin; if we are commanded to hide His Word in our hearts, does that not imply memorization? Now we could be somewhat sadistic and say “suck it up” to those trying to put God’s word in their hearts, but somehow that seems contrary to “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”, no?