Ponder Anew

Conversations in 21st Century Church Music

Jessica Nelson

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781640654457
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Rituels et pratiques chrétiens

A definitive look at how church music is changing in the 21st century.

There is no lack of resources for the church musician focusing on particular skills or repertoire. But this is the first collection of essays created specifically for musicians working in parish ministry that imagines how those vocations will change along with the evolving church.

Ponder Anew chronicles the rapid changes in the church music landscape in the last 20 years including the role of technology, education, relationships with clergy and choristers, and cultural presumptions. Contributors are parish musicians, professors, clergy, and bishops.

I

ESSAYS

1

How Can I Keep
from Singing?

On Music as Pastoral Care

The Rev. Jennifer M. Deaton

“I would rather preach a gospel sermon to an appreciative, receptive congregation than write a hymn,” insisted Robert Wadsworth Lowry, an American minister in the late nineteenth century.¹ But there was more melody and poetry in his proclamation than could be contained in a pulpit. Appreciative, receptive congregations today don’t remember Lowry’s gospel sermons, but they do still sing his gospel hymns, of which there are hundreds, including “Shall we gather at the river?,” “All the way my Savior leads me,” and this one:

My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentations.

I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.

No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.

Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?²

Lowry considered music an avocation, secondary to his preaching and pastoral ministry. Music, though, has a vocation all its own in the life of a worshipping congregation, providing pastoral care to those who are gathered, echoing the endless and ever-modulating song of creation, a song of life and death and life again, a song of praise and lament. Musicians, then, and all who participate in planning and leading a liturgy that includes music, have the opportunity to render pastoral care to individuals, families, congregations, and entire communities. How, then, can we keep from singing?

An Endless Song: Singing in Scripture

The story of our faith is filled with song, glorifying God who made all things and who makes all things new. In the first chapter of Genesis, creation itself comes into being through the sound of God’s voice: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). Over and over again, God says, “let there be,” and there is—light, dark, night, day, land, water, air, animals, and humankind. Reading the story, we learn its several refrains—“let there be,” “and there was,” “and it was good”—and we say them along with the text. Christian writer and theologian Clive Staples Lewis, in The Magician’s Nephew, transposed the language of God’s creation from speech into song, so that the land of Narnia, a magical copy of our own world, is created through music. “In the darkness,” Lewis wrote, “something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing.”³ It is the voice of the great lion, Aslan, the Christ-figure in Narnia. As the melody rises, light appears first as stars and then in a sunrise. The song rumbles low, and valleys form, filled with water and green grass. When the tune grows more animated, “it made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at people and either hug them or fight them.”⁴ Animals of every shape and size begin appearing, adding their voices to the song of creation.

In our Holy Scriptures, everything in creation is capable of making music. God invites those exiled in Babylon to repent and return to a life of abundance, promising them, “You shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isa. 55:12). The book of Psalms is filled with human voices and instruments; the sea and its creatures, the land and its beasts, and the sky and its sparrows and stars also make music and participate in praising God. A psalmist writes, “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy” (Ps. 65:12–13). Borrowing from King David’s celebration when the ark of God was brought into the tent (1 Chronicles 16), another psalmist writes, “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord” (Ps. 96:11–13). In yet another psalm, we read, “Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord” (98:8–9).

“Let heaven and nature sing,”⁵ declares a beloved Christmas hymn, and indeed in scripture we often hear the music of angels and of earth. It is humankind, though, who makes music most often in scripture—songs of victory, songs of thanksgiving, songs of mourning, songs of consolation, songs of praise, and songs of longing, expressing the fullness of human experience and emotion. “The motivation to express the depths of our feelings in song is basic to almost all human beings,”⁶ observes Raymond Glover, general editor of The Hymnal 1982, and we certainly witness it in the stories of our ancestors in faith. Moses and Miriam rejoice as the waters of the Red Sea rush back on the Egyptians and God’s people are finally free: “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed’ . . . Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing” (Exod. 15:1, 20). In the wilderness, the Hebrew people give thanks for God’s gift of water at “the well of which the Lord said to Moses, ‘Gather the people together, and I will give them water.’ Then Israel sang this song: ‘Spring up, O well!—Sing to it!” (Num. 21:16–17). In his final lament, Job grieves his misfortunes and says, “My lyre is tuned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep” (Job 30:31). When Saul begins to suffer a mental illness, his servants suggest music might help, so they bring young David to console him with song: “Whenever the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him” (1 Sam. 16:23). Solomon brings musicians and instruments to the temple to sound the people’s praise as the ark is brought inside: “It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised . . . ‘for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,’ the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud” (2 Chron. 5:13). The Song of Solomon collects fragments of poetry such as would have been sung of the love between a bridegroom and his bride, often understood as the relationship between God and God’s people.

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary cannot keep from singing as she and her cousin, Elizabeth, rejoice in the favor God has shown them, and the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps when Mary comes near. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary sings, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46–47). Her song is filled with wonder that so powerful a God would choose so lowly a servant, and with hope that the new work God is doing through the child in her womb will transform suffering into joy. Zechariah sings a similar song after his son, John, is born (Luke 1:68–79). With the Christ child in his arms, Simeon sings in wonder and relief, “Now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples” (Luke 2:29–31). In a prison cell at midnight, their bodies bruised and beaten, Paul and Silas pray and sing hymns to God as the other prisoners listen (Acts 16:25). Letters to early Christian communities urge congregations to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:19–20; see also Col. 3:15–17 and James 5:13).

These songs, along with many others, appear in the narratives of the story of salvation, sung by specific individuals or communities in their specific circumstances. The book of Psalms contains songs many people sang in worship in the temple—it is a hymnal of sorts, as well as a music textbook, inviting and instructing God’s people in praying and responding to God through song in such familiar keys as joy, sorrow, fear, gratitude, bitterness, grief, anger, hope, and praise. There are instructions to choirmasters, suggestions for accompaniment, and notes about composers. Nearly one-third of the psalms make reference to music, and many allude to other liturgical practices such as pilgrimage, entering the temple, approaching the altar, or offering a sacrifice. Fragments of psalms and other ancient hymns appear throughout the Old and New Testaments, familiar enough through repeated use that the faithful across many generations would recognize them from having sung them often in worship and prayer.

Through All the Tumult and the Strife: Liturgy as Pastoral Care

We still sing in worship and prayer—except, of course, at the early service on Sunday mornings. Our prayer book liturgy itself, though, is almost musical since we pray so much of it aloud together. Even what is spoken has rhythm and cadence as our voices rise and fall, tripping over certain syllables and sounds and lingering over others, and we move our bodies in unison as we pray—stand, sit, kneel, reach out our hands at the rail. When in any worship service some combination of hymns, canticles, service music, chanting, preludes, postludes, and anthems are included, we often sing more of our liturgy than we speak. We held a weekday service of Holy Eucharist at noon in the chapel at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Jackson, Mississippi, a brief spoken liturgy attended by only a handful of worshippers. One gentleman, every time we prayed the Lord’s Prayer, would say, “Thy kiiiiiiiingdom come, thy wiiiiiiiiill be done,” crescendoing and ascending the scale on “kingdom” and “will” before dropping back down to “come” and “be done.” There was no music in that service, but he certainly sang that phrase of the prayer.

The Pastoral Offices, liturgies that mark rites of passage or threshold moments in human lives (such as Confirmation, Marriage, Sickness, and Burial), form a small section toward the end of the Book of Common Prayer. Supplemental liturgical resources have introduced additional rites to help us respond to the changes and chances of life, trusting “the divine Love to embrace us through all the joys and pains of transition” and affirming that “we are so interconnected by the Holy Spirit that a transition in one member’s life affects the whole Christian community.”⁷ We bring to our regular Sunday morning celebrations of Holy Eucharist, however, the same anxieties, hopes, and hurts that these liturgies and rites address along with all the joys and sorrows of our daily lives, so that in our primary experience of corporate worship we are a congregation filled with every imaginable emotion from all that has happened to us during the week. All liturgy, then, has the potential to offer us pastoral care.

Liturgy is the ordering of our expressions of praise and thanksgiving to God. It is rightly directed toward God. Pastoral theologian Elaine Ramshaw explains that liturgy can also comfort the human heart.⁸ It provides order and familiarity in the midst of chaos. It reaffirms and re-engages our connection to a larger community and a larger story. Liturgy helps us acknowledge the ambivalence inherent in times of transition, when we might feel both fear and hope, grief and gratitude, pain and joy. The dissonance may not be resolved, but the presence of a praying congregation and the reminder through scripture and sacrament of God’s promise to remain steadfast adds a sustaining note that augments the chord. In liturgy we bear witness to God; who is both beyond us and within us; who is mystery, and who is found in such knowable acts as breaking bread, drinking wine, and in the laying on of hands.

The ministry of pastoral care is most often made up of hospital visits, home communion, sympathy cards, chicken spaghetti casseroles, and flower arrangements taken from the altar. There is talking and listening, and sometimes there is silence. There are smiles, tears, and tissues. Many definitions of pastoral care reference tending troubled souls and comforting emotional distress. But the practice of pastoral care is profoundly incarnate and personal, even sacramental. Delivering a plate of cookies, holding a hand in prayer, humming a beloved hymn by a hospice bedside—surely these are “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace,”⁹ means by which God’s loving and healing presence is made known within individuals, families, and entire congregations in need. We literally feed the bodies of those whose lives are unsettled. We offer to run errands or sit by a bedside so that a primary caregiver can rest. We anoint the forehead of a sick person with oil. We send, in the form of a notecard or a flower or a prayer shawl, a tangible reminder that a faith community is holding them in prayer, loving them as we have all been loved by God in Christ. Like good liturgy, and within good liturgy, good pastoral care provides a moment of order (now we pray, now we eat, now we rest). It reconnects us to and as a community of shared faith, and it makes space for conflicting thoughts and feelings to exist together in the presence of God. The second verse of Lowry’s hymn sings of this kind of care that does not necessarily diminish the darkness or still the storm, but that provides a source of strength within it, something to which we can both literally and spiritually cling.

Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.

It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?

No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging;

Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?

In the midst of all that threatens our peace, liturgy as pastoral care through scripture and sacraments, through prayer and community, and through song, fastens us to that Rock.

Within a worship service, music can reinforce the scripture readings or the liturgical or theological theme of the season or day. It provides an opportunity for choirs and church musicians to celebrate their God-given gifts of creativity and artistry by offering them back to God in the context of worship. Music can assist us in prayer as we sing service music, or chant a litany, or use a brief refrain with our intercessions. Music can be devotional, leading us in meditation following a scripture reading or sermon, and it can be purely functional, engaging the congregation while worship leaders are performing a necessary task. “One of the most important parts of planning and preparation for any service is the choice of hymns,” wrote the Rev. Dr. Marion Hatchett, for reasons such as those listed above, but also because we respond to music, in body, mind, and spirit, differently than we do to the spoken word alone: “People’s theology is probably influenced more by the hymns they sing than by the lessons and sermons they hear or the prayers they pray.”¹⁰

Music as Pastoral Care for the Body

Liturgical singing, even more than liturgical speaking, is a bodily, physical act. In addition to holding a book in our hands, reading a page with our eyes, and moving our mouth to form words, we must be more aware of and intentional abo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword The Rev. Dr. William Bradley Roberts
• Introduction - Jessica Nelson
• I ESSAYS
• II CONVERSATIONS IN VOCATION
• III SERMONS
• Contributors