On "Conservative" Worship

[T Howard]

Quote:

9. “They think that certain instruments are bad.” Those who make this charge point to drums, for instance, and claim that conservative insist that drums are always bad. Yes again, this charge is silly. Any conservative would agree right along with the progressive that it is how an instrument is used that matters. It is not that drums are used but how they are used. Plenty of conservative churches have orchestras with percussion instruments. What is even more silly with this straw man argument is when the one making it exclaims, “Don’t they know that the piano is a percussion instrument? Maybe they should get rid of that too!”

I’m sorry, this is not necessarily a straw man argument. I’ve personally seen how adding a drum set (not drums in general) or an electric guitar can immediately solicit objections because “those instruments don’t belong in the church.”

It is absolutely not a strawman argument. Bring in something like a cajon into a BJ-style church and watch what happens.

[T Howard]

Quote:

9. “They think that certain instruments are bad.” Those who make this charge point to drums, for instance, and claim that conservative insist that drums are always bad. Yes again, this charge is silly. Any conservative would agree right along with the progressive that it is how an instrument is used that matters. It is not that drums are used but how they are used. Plenty of conservative churches have orchestras with percussion instruments. What is even more silly with this straw man argument is when the one making it exclaims, “Don’t they know that the piano is a percussion instrument? Maybe they should get rid of that too!”

I’m sorry, this is not necessarily a straw man argument. I’ve personally seen how adding a drum set (not drums in general) or an electric guitar can immediately solicit objections because “those instruments don’t belong in the church.”

Yep, that one has long NOT been a straw man–it is longstanding standard fare among traditional-music onlyists. It’s only lately being acknowledged that the old “drums are categorically unacceptable in churches” (for example) trope has undergone revision. A recent Kevin Bauder article is an example:

[Excerpt]: “At the end of the day, the real question is not what instruments we can have in church. The real question is how we should expect them to be played. The answer to that question has to be gauged by what the particular way of playing—the musical form, style, idiom, or individual composition—is saying. For worship, meaning determines suitability.

Suggesting that Psalm 150 requires the regular use of all categories of instruments is probably an overstatement. Not many churches can put together a real orchestra. Most cannot field a band, or even a piano trio. Better to say that all instruments—including loud cymbals—are authorized for use in worship. Acknowledging that fact, however, does not answer the question of how they ought to be played.” - http://www.centralseminary.edu/resources/nick-of-time/loud-clanging-cymbals

Do read the entire article. It’s certainly indicative of a new mindset within Fundamentalism. He wouldn’t need to argue & conclude that “all instruments–including loud cymbals–are authorized for use in worship” if that was already an established, accepted fact. Nor would it be something requiring newfound acknowledgment.

We can debate how representative these arguments are of the conservative music movement as a whole, but count me with Greg and T. Howard in noting that there are people arguing against specific instruments (e.g. Wally), and there are people arguing against off-beat music (e.g. Bill Gothard, Andrew Pudewa), and the like. Not as much a straw man as it ought to be.

And as helpful as it is when people point out bad logic in the matter, it is simultaneously critical for both sides to try to define, from Scripture, what the purpose of music in the church might be. The application follows from the principle.

Since TylerR ate more than his share, and I’ve got another :37 seconds remaining on the microwave… :)

Straw Men Used Against a More Progressive Philosophy

1. “Contemporary Christian songs are written by theological novices.”
2. “The lyrics of contemporary Christian songs are shallow.”
3. “Contemporary Christian music is just entertainment-oriented.”
4. “They just want to impress the world or be like the world.”
5. “Contemporary Christian music always communicates sexuality and/or rebellion.”
6. “CCM artists are all worldly, ungodly, and often commit adultery.”
7. “Those who use pop music in church are just trying to attract unbelievers.”
8. “They’re just a bunch of 7-11 songs; 7 word repeated 11 times.”
9. “Contemporary churches are all about what happens on the stage.”

If most of the people involved in the interminable debates on ‘CCM’ (which is a term I am beginning despise) would just realize that it is entirely possible to be ‘pro-modern music’ and remain opposed to the things in the list that Dr. Aniol noted above, maybe we wouldn’t need to talk about this so much. Dr. Aniol rightly attacks such intellectual laziness in this article; I hope this article gets a wide audience and appreciated that it was shared here.

Joining the popular conception of ‘CCM concerts’ with what pro-moderns actually want to do may be fun and easy, but there are very, very few modern musicians out there that act and think about music on the levels that they are continually portrayed as operating at. I have found that they usually interact with it on a much deeper level than I ever had thought to go. Frankly, if the ‘anti-modern music’ people would read a little of the things that Bob Kauflin (for example) writes, they’d realize that Lucarini and Blanchard generally engage in polemics against straw-men - which is a big part of how I gradually went from a very strong anti-modern music position to a more moderate one, but that’s a long story.

I think we all agree that church is not entertainment. But there’s a huge difference between ‘we need three songs on sermon topic __________’ and ‘we need to intentionally prepare hearts for worship of who God is’.

The Aniol piece is valuable because it can help us avoid defending positions using arguments that can be instantly discredited. And sadly, many of the arguments have been used and are still being used in the pulpit as a substitute for biblical teaching and application.

The charge of worldliness in the church is a serious one, and must be articulated and advanced further. But I am convinced that ultimately, the deciding factor of worldliness cannot rest on our cultural sensibilities, for the reason that we have chosen them, and not God.

Props to Aniol and Snoeberger for more eloquently expressing this important point.

And I’ve got 2:12 to go, so…

6. “They elevate music standards to the level of Scripture.” Some conservative may view their music standards as pretty important, but is it really honest to say that they raise their standards to the level of Scripture? I would suggest that this is simply another straw man, ad hominem attack that is simply untrue. Again, we are all trying to correctly apply the Bible’s principles to our musical choices in worship.

The thing with this one is that I have continually noticed that while someone who is anti-modern music would say this is not true, it is when you push past it that it becomes clear that they believe that the use of modern music does put you in a level of disobedience to God (and therefore is a sin issue).

That’s why I made my very first remark on this thread - that once again, the ‘convergent’ issue really revolves around what music you use. That’s why the FBFI articles are serious issues - if the FBFI believes that convergents are in sin, then reframe the debate to make it clear and save everyone time.

When this discussion comes up, there is almost always an appeal to get back to the Scriptures, and then readers are pointed back to the Old Testament, the psalms in particular. But this sort of misses the point. We are talking here, in this debate, as to what the assembled church should do. When it comes to preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the selection of church officers, and other issues that relate to local church life, we go to the New Testament to see what instructions are there for the New Testament church. However, when we go to the NT to ask of it what the assembled church should do in regards to worship music, we find precious little. There are two parallel verses by Paul in Ephesians and Colossians that mention speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and Spiritual songs, and then singing and making melody in your hearts. Nowhere in the NT do you find a role defined for musical instruments in the life of the assembled church. Nowhere in the NT do you find a narrative that describes this going on in the life of the assembled church. Conversely, we do have descriptions of what did go on, and this included the teaching of doctrine, fellowship, breaking of break/communion, and prayer. Reading of Scripture also gets in there. When it comes to the leaders of which Christ gifted His church, we find Pastors/Teachers, Evangelists, etc., but no worship/music leaders.

I concluded from my study of this subject that churches would be much better served to keep the music time much shorter, and give the larger share of time to teaching/preaching, prayer, the reading of Scripture, and fellowship. The shorter music time should be dominated by human voices singing truth to one another, rather than an entertaining concert or show.

The common evangelical approach that puts on a huge concert for 30 minutes and then tacks on a 20 minute sermonette is totally foreign to the NT. Sure one can put up a huge building and draw hundreds of people that way, but it isn’t healthy NT church-life as prescribed and demonstrated in the NT.

Imagine if a typical mega-church of 2000+ people announced they were clearing the stage of instruments, and replacing the 30 minute show with three or four congregational vocals sung by the attendees, and they were going to fill the rest of the time with corporate prayer, the reading of Scripture, and increasing the length of the sermon. How many in the crowd would leave in a huff to attend the next big-box church down the street?

The tail of music is wagging the dog of assembled church life in America.

Much of the worship war melts away if the assembled church went back to the NT and started to model what is there in regards to what to do when the church assembles.

But I don’t expect it to change.

Darrell, while I’d agree with you that a lot of the emphasis on music is misplaced, and I’d welcome it as well if some of the emphasis were taken off instrumentation and put on lyrics and the preached Word, one question I’ve got regarding your comment is how we can dispense with the OT in this regard, especially since the NT, as you concede, repeatedly admonishes believers to speak to one another in psalms, and our Lord specifically chose to quote the psalms quite a bit in His earthly ministry. So even apart from the issue that the OT is also God’s Word to us (if a bit more difficult to apply and understand), the NT itself tells us not to ignore the old.

I’m good with understanding that Temple services are different from a church service, and I’m good with cutting back on the way things are usually argued. I’m even better with the notion of stopping the practice of assuming that a piece will be “more musical” if only more instrumental parts are added playing about the same notes.

I just don’t think the Scriptures support precisely what you say here. There is also the reality that, as the early church was (I’m told) largely comprised of slaves, instrumentation may not have been an issue simply because they couldn’t afford them, and even if they were, detection by Nero and his ilk would tend to put a bit of kibosh on boisterous music in the church.

(though that would suggest quiet a cappella arrangements may have been well known to early Christians for that reason)

Darrell, while I’d agree with you that a lot of the emphasis on music is misplaced, and I’d welcome it as well if some of the emphasis were taken off instrumentation and put on lyrics and the preached Word

I think that’s where we should start with an analysis of the kind of music that should be used for congregations. If we start with the lyrics and content of what people sing, a lot of music never even makes it to a stand for music practice. There have been several times where my wife and I have talked with the pastor or worship leader and we decided to tweak the lyrics so that they were more sound doctrinally.

I also think that there’s a special emphasis in the Bible on the content ​of the songs and barely any concern with how​ the song sounds, and that it’s written for a reason by the authors of Scripture.

Hi Bert, far be it from me to dispense with the OT. My point was to limit the discussion to the precise question of what the assembled church does when gathered together. When the local body of Christ assembles together, then something more is going on than just a bunch of individuals hanging out together. The church is Christ’s bride—His unique organization for this dispensation. So whenever a question arises about the function and practice of this unique relationship of believers, we must run to the NT for answers. Yes, the OT is there for our learning, but there was no NT church in the OT. So our learning about NT church belief and practice must be grounded firmly in the NT Scriptures. And when it comes to the question of music, the book of Acts, for instance, is absolutely silent in this regard except for Paul and Silas singing within the walls of the jail in Philippi. But the book does say what the assembled church did find important, and music didn’t make the list. We assume it happened, and Paul suggests there should be singing in the verses I mentioned. But clearly the thrust of the NT is that music is a tail, and the dog is the teaching/preaching, reading of Scripture, prayer, communion and fellowship. Hence my point that most of the so called “worship war” goes away if church music as a whole got put back into the middle of the back seat of the car where it belongs instead of in the drivers seat. But this will never happen, because impressive performances fill the pews. We need to get back to the idea of filling pews with the proclaimed truth from the pulpit.

Darrel, your comments are encouraging to me. I am a church planter who is not gifted musically (other than writing lyrics). Part of my challenge is that although I am not deaf, there are certain sounds that I cannot hear at all. Church planters usually do not have a lot of musical talent to draw from- even finding a piano player can be a challenge. Just accepting that we don’t need a piano is one of the benefits of some of the “modern” trends.

It could be that it’s the tail, or it could be something that was so pervasive, people didn’t feel the need to mention it. I’m not sure about ancient Greco-Roman society, but in other mostly illiterate societies like those of the Middle Ages, teaching was predominantly—bards and all—in lyric/poetic form. So when Paul tells people to “speak” to one another in “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”, he may be appealing to something that was quite pervasive in that culture.

Might be somewhat different today where we are at least theoretically mostly literate, but I think we neglect the lyric form of communication at our own risk even so. I don’t want to argue it along the lines of “drums are bad hymns are boring”, as the matter has largely become today, but there’s some thinking to be done.

The common evangelical approach that puts on a huge concert for 30 minutes and then tacks on a 20 minute sermonette is totally foreign to the NT. Sure one can put up a huge building and draw hundreds of people that way, but it isn’t healthy NT church-life as prescribed and demonstrated in the NT.

Imagine if a typical mega-church of 2000+ people announced they were clearing the stage of instruments, and replacing the 30 minute show with three or four congregational vocals sung by the attendees, and they were going to fill the rest of the time with corporate prayer, the reading of Scripture, and increasing the length of the sermon. How many in the crowd would leave in a huff to attend the next big-box church down the street?

The tail of music is wagging the dog of assembled church life in America.Much of the worship war melts away if the assembled church went back to the NT and started to model what is there in regards to what to do when the church assembles.

But I don’t expect it to change.

Of course you will get something like that at many evangelical megachurches. But there are many many conservative evangelical churches that do not follow that pattern. The gospel coalition church that I am part of spends about 40-45 minutes of its Sunday Morning worship with the preaching of the Word. We also read Scripture, celebrate communion, greet one another, take up an offering, and publicly pray. We also spend about 25 minutes singing praise songs, most of which are in the style of CCM and Black gospel. My vocation happens to be the director of an urban ministry so I get to speak in conservative evangelical and certain fundamentalist churches all over the Midwest on certain Sundays. Interestingly, the majority that I’ve spoken at are not the caricature of an entertaining concert where the tail wags the dog that you keep on projecting. In fact, only 2 churches out of about 50 that I can honestly say seemed like they were trying to copy a set from Hillsong, which was quite distracting and really took away from glorifying Jesus. By the way, from 1997-2004, I was a keyboardist of a Christian Rock band that traveled all over the Midwest doing concerts so I know the stark difference between a Rock Concert and a worship service utilizing CCM.

[Darrell Post]

Imagine if a typical mega-church of 2000+ people announced they were clearing the stage of instruments, and replacing the 30 minute show with three or four congregational vocals sung by the attendees, and they were going to fill the rest of the time with corporate prayer, the reading of Scripture, and increasing the length of the sermon. How many in the crowd would leave in a huff to attend the next big-box church down the street?

The church (Baptist) I belong to qualifies as a megachurch: we recently broke the 4,000 mark for attendance.

Our services generally include about 20 minutes of songs/singing (which might be 4 or 5 songs, depending on their length). The congregation’s singing is robust–my observation is that there are few passive observers, whether the singing is accompanied by our 50-member choir, organ, piano, string quartet, full orchestra (at times), or worship band. (We have 6 weekend services.)

In contrast, a quick calculation shows that the average length of my pastor’s 10 most recent sermons is 51 minutes. (Videos are online, so it’s easy to see their duration.)

We also have scripture readings, generally 4 prayers, an offering (simultaneous with one song), communion (not weekly though), and etc.

Announcements are not a standard component of our services. We have video announcements that run on two 14 foot screens prior to the services, and we figure that people should read their bulletins or look online for that sort of information.

I’d venture that very few of of our people (at most) value the music over the preaching.

I have visited a lot of churches over the years, and can really think of only one evangelical church where the music was elevated over preaching—and even there, the major problem was that nobody considered whether the music actually was conveying the Word of God to the People of God to prepare them to interact with the Creator. it was really the same problem that led to a lack of preaching.

I do see a lack of preaching in the mainline churches I visit from time to time (like when visiting my grandmother), but that’s really more an artifact of high church (Lord’s Supper as center of service instead of the sermon) rather than an overemphasis on music.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe Darrell and I would agree that there’s a huge problem with thinking it’s more musical to add more instruments or turn the volume up to 11, and that there’s not enough emphasis on sound preaching. I am just not quite convinced that the problem is an overemphasis on music as much as it is a distorted emphasis on music, and I am not yet convinced that music is “the tail”. I’d rather suggest that the relative quiet on music is because it was so expected (one would speak in song like the Welsh?), because getting too loud could be lethal to believers (Nero et al), and because it was one part of their church life that they weren’t getting wrong as much.

And I’d suggest that as we get a more Biblical view of music, it’ll help out both preaching and music.