Congregational Singing Is Cool Again

Here is another excerpt from the P&D article

While I’m thankful that congregational music has become cool again, I would encourage church leaders to exercise discernment and caution in order to receive the counsel of Mark Dever and John Piper with wisdom. Let me explain.

This is what I wrote on the P&D comment board:

What I am disappointed in is the incessant fortress-mentality from some men, the compulsion to “warn” people against everything - especially conservative evangelicals. Phelps frames the article at the outset by warning us to “exercise discernment and caution” before we accept and counsel from Dever and Piper on music. He closes by warning against “pendulum swings.” This compulsion detracts from the point of the article, and is unnecessary.

At the beginning and end of the article, Phelps framed this as a warning against heeding any advice from Dever and Piper on music. “Ya’ll might like what ya hear from them fellas, but I’m ‘a tellin’ ya - watch out fer ‘em!” It is more wagon-circling, “the grass isn’t greener over there” rhetoric.

Phelps has good points to make. He could have made them without more tired references to evangelicals. For too many men, their banjo has but one string - and it’s labeled “evangelicals are bad.”

This is why, instead of being helpful, his article reads as pitiful and cheap.

This could be good material. But, instead, it’s been poisoned by the bitter swill of “pious” disapproval. Certain strands of fundamentalism cannot help but produce this slop; in some circles it’s endemic and as ineradicable as Ebola, and no less deadly. It’s a sickness; an unhealthy compulsion to castigate everyone who isn’t like you; a mad desire to tear down, not build up. The kind of fundamentalism that routinely produces this kind of slanted and unhealthy rhetoric needs to die.

Every time I read something infected with this kind of bias, I feel profound sadness and disgust. I pray I don’t become like this.

Chuck, you used to be a Bible College president - can’t we do better than this?

I don’t there was evil intent. It’s just a symptom of a mentality that needs to go away.

This comment caught my attention (in addition to Tyler’s observations on warnings about those evangelicals:

“But watch out for those who fail to understand that when pendulums swing, things like choirs, ensembles, quartets, and solos can get broken if we neglect to understand that special numbers are simply an element of congregational singing and should therefore be viewed as an integral part of the worship service.”

Maybe you better watch out for me! I’m not a fan of most special music. It’s not wrong. Quartets, ensembles, etc. are a tradition/practice in many churches and it works for them. But I don’t see special music as an “integral part of the worship serivece.” We don’t have a choir or special music - maybe we had special music once or twice when someone was visiting with us. Maybe we would if we were a larger church or had inherited a church with special music. My experience is that special music isn’t always that special and I don’t see the point of having the choir up front looking at the congregation (or the pastor(s) sitting on the platform). Our congregation really is the choir and I find it more special than special music. I do agree that there are churches with “worship teams” so loud and dominant that they drown out the congregation or provide the music/entertainment for others to listen to. That’s not “cool.”

This is what we look like to conservative outsiders. I stand by my response:

Younger men, let’s resolve together to not be like this.

Chuck Phelps could teach Mark Dever a thing or two about Biblical Church discipline! Just saying

Proclaim and defend WHAT?!

Explain to me again why the FBFI is shrinking into insignificance. This snide, hyper-critical, nit-picking attitude is why the FBFI has gone from annual meetings in large venues to local churches. Keep this up and I may live to see a meeting in the back room at Golden Corral.

“Now get off my lawn!”

I don’t know but some of these comments seem like vast overreaction. What is so wrong with Phelps noticing a trend he disagrees with (i.e., eliminating choirs, solos, specials from the worship service) and highlighting where he thinks this trend is coming from (i.e., the Dever’s, Piper’s, and Getty’s of the world). You don’t think these groups are influencing our churches in that way? I don’t see what’s wrong with trying to identify where you think this trend is coming from. Maybe he’s wrong about the source. Maybe you disagree with what he is concerned about. But is the right response to say, for example, that the “one thing” our older generation of Fundamentalist leaders are good at is hating people? The one thing? Seriously? I think maybe a more gracious reading of this article might be in order.

To Phelps’s point, I agree with the priority of congregational singing but I also agree that eliminating choirs, special music, et al, diminishes the overall worship service and the ability of those with gifts to minister musically to others. Some songs don’t work congregationally but can be performed effectively in choirs, or groups, or solos to teach biblical truth to the soul.

As I wrote above, I think Phelps had good points to make. I just think he ruined them all by his unnecessary framing against Dever and Piper. It’s the one-string banjo all over again - “evangelicals are bad.” That is my protest. That has always been my issue with the FBFI. If they don’t fix this or come to grips with it, it’ll die. They don’t seem to see it. There are too many articles where the authors sound like grumpy and/or bitter men. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. It seems to be a unconscious compulsion.

They can do better than this. If they couldn’t do better, then I wouldn’t be upset when I see things like this.

Regarding the “one thing” comment, I stand by that. Some fundamentalist leaders are good expositors, but not many. Others are good pastors. Others are great teachers. But, the one universal thing fundamentalists have generally all been good at is hating other people. Have you been reading Bauder’s mini-series on the CBA, NTAIBC and the FBFI? Let me sum it up for you - they all hated each other. That series is the most depressing stuff I’ve read in a long time. That is our heritage. Pardon me while I retch.

Perhaps there will be a season in my life when I am proud of Baptist fundamentalism. That season is not now. We can and must do better. I don’t think warning folks against Dever, who wrote 9 Marks of a Healthy Church and The Deliberate Church and Baptist Foundations, is a particularly helpful step forward.

[Jim]

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https://www.hopeingod.org/worship