Church music
In the most recent paper edition of our diocesan newspaper, Ross Cobb says, “We need to ask if our church music really is contemporary”. Ross is the music director at St Andrew's Cathedral here in Sydney, and is across any genre you care to throw at him, whether it's pipe organ or the credibility reducing Burt Bacharach. He says:
We have created a genre that doesn't exist anywhere else and called it Christian contemporary music. What contemporary band consists of a piano, clarinet, a guitar and three singers singing in unison?
However his real question is probably whether it works, rather than whether it's contemporary. Ross says about people who visit church:
They are just flummoxed by some of our contemporary Christian songs. They are tricky to pick up and the musical backing we are providing is quite thin.
and again:
There is barely a murmur during the contemporary songs. But when we play hymns the congregation almost blows the roof off ... The unchurched don't know our contemporary songs. Why would they? But they know our great hymns. Whether that's the legacy of singing at rugby games, I don't know, but there is a common cultural currency we need to tap into for the sake of the gospel.
If music is really about serving the people we love, Ross's observations raise two questions.
- Do unchurched people who walk into our buildings enjoy what they hear?
- Do musically untaught people in our meetings enjoy singing the music we serve up to them?
That second one is not a question, by the way, about whether they like standing there listening while the band and singers up front perform the song for them. Anyone can do that. But if we are going to ask them to sing loudly enough for the encouragement of others, then they should be able to do it without being educated past the stage where they can sing along with The Wiggles, which is just before the age when most kids learn that singing out loud is not really cool.
Any other random thoughts? Let's hear them, commenters, I'm up for a chat!
