The “Worship Song” as Sacrament/A Response from S. M. Hutchens

A reader answers S. M. Hutchens’ One Foundational Observation and Six Rules:

As a trained church musician (finishing a Ph.D. in historical musicology), I served as the “worship leader” in a mid-sized suburban Evangelical church for a number of years. As I told the senior pastor of that church, the problem with modern Evangelical worship is that Evangelicals seem to recognize only one sacrament these days: The Worship Song.

Many (most?) of these churches teach that Baptism is nothing more than one’s symbolic “personal statement of faith” announced to those gathered; they deny that it is a means of grace. Without a belief in the Real Presence in some form—whether Calvin’s or Luther’s (not to mention an RC or Orthodox understanding of the Supper)—Sunday morning becomes just another Bible study that is special because it is led by the senior pastor. In this setting, the Eucharist functions as a reminder of the cross and a time of individual reflection that interrupts the “normal flow of worship” once per quarter. In this sense, there are no traditional sacraments left to speak of. Oh, they do believe that Christ comes to us in the Word proclaimed, but the revised liturgical formula is now entrenched, I fear: “Songs + Word,” not “Word + Table.”

Seizing on the idea that “He inhabits the praise of His people,” those who advocate this style of worship attempt to compensate for the loss of the catholic center of worship by emphasizing above all else an experience of the Real Presence of the Third Person of the Trinity (in each worshipper, individually, I might add) IN SUNG PRAISES. The man or woman in the pew is supposed to “get into the mood” and let the songs “carry them away, into a personal experience of the Spirit.” The simple, repetitious words of the “worship chorus” take on the function of a mantra that can carry one into an altered state; charismatic writers have gone so far as to actually say that this is their aim, though I doubt many Evangelicals are aware of this aspect of the “Praise and Worship” tradition. In any event, this obviously goes against the traditional focal point of Sunday worship: receiving the Second Person of the Trinity (communally) IN THE EUCHARIST.

Apart from the problem of historical continuity, this approach asks far too much of mere musical selections. Add to this the lack of training that most of the laity (and clergy) have regarding the aesthetic value and relative quality of various musical compositions, and you have a situation in which we are asked to worship our Lord and Savior and meet Him by way of a novel means of grace that many of us find distracting, annoying, trite, and often (speaking for myself) downright embarrassing.

This leads me to a second point. I strongly disagree with Dr. Hutchens’ first, third, and fifth “Rules.” I was the “worship leader.” It was my job to run everything by the senior pastor and the elders for approval—and also to include the music that they requested. That was the problem. It was the senior pastor and a few very vocal baby boomers in the congregation who were pushing for these innovations in an effort to “grow the church” and remain “vital, alive, and relevant.” The implication was that any church that fails to use PowerPoint is “dead.”

Professionally-trained worship leaders (not random volunteers from the congregation!) who (1) understand the historical forms and orders of Christian worship, (2) have a good grasp of basic Christian doctrine and are not innocent of theology, and (3) have a developed ear for musical quality are probably the best hope for the future of Evangelical worship. It is certainly not the pastors and elders (aging hippies in many cases) who are pushing for a return to traditional expressions of Christian worship; the counterculture now controls large segments of church culture. Given what we all know about the shortcomings and the experimentation that passed for faith formation and seminary training in the ‘60s and ‘70s, do we really expect that an Evangelical pastor who came into the ministry during that era would know how to tell the qualitative difference between a Palestrina motet, a C. V. Stanford anthem, or a chorale setting of a beloved, thousand-year-old devotional poem on the one hand, and, on the other, an “earnest” song that some guy cranked out on a guitar last week in five minutes flat?

Finally, I should point out that I am not some aged traditionalist who despises whatever the young people of today enjoy. I am 33 years old, and I listen to plenty of rock-and-roll music in my spare time. Yet I will reiterate what others have said in this conversation: I have grown weary of being told by 50- and 60-year-old hipsters that this “contemporary” stuff is “what the young people want” when they enter the Lord’s House to corporately worship the Creator of the Universe. I certainly don’t want it, and I know many, many people my age and younger who long for something that won’t change every five minutes in a vain effort to remain “relevant.”

Best,
Timothy Striplin
UNC Chapel Hill

S. M. Hutchens responds:

I am in deep sympathy with Mr. Striplin, but would urge him to reconsider my “rules” for two reasons.

The first is that his level of sophistication—approaching a Ph.D in historical musicology, forsooth—makes him a glaring exception among worship leaders. One may expect someone with his training to have a firm grasp of the history of church music and its place in the liturgy, and thus to know and appreciate the richness of the larger field relative to the poverty of the one in which he has been working. He also has a clear and practical understanding of the theological problem that needs to be corrected before things will be better. If the generality of worship leaders were like this, they would not be a significant part of the problem, an the necessity to keep them subordinate to the teaching authority of the church (as every organized church’s worship manual I have seen commands) would be understood and unnecessary to emphasize.

The second is that the worship leader, however right he may be, and however superior his understanding, does not bear the office or the spiritual authority to make the changes that need to be made. These are at base theological, so must arise from and be promulgated and supported by the authority of the teaching presbyterate of the church—in particular by the pastor. And even this (yes, even in Catholic churches) can only go as far as the congregations allow. What is needed in the Evangelical churches, in the first instance, is pastors who, in their own study of the Bible, come under conviction that their tradition has gone wrong, has somewhere in its heretofore uncritically examined past moved off the rails and left the Christian tradition, particularly in its degradation of the Lord’s Supper, for something that is rootless, uncontrolled, and increasingly strange. Without a movement of spiritual conviction among pastors, on this and egalitarian issues, nothing significant can happen, and Evangelicalism will continue its quick descent into the maelstrom.

There is one other thing I would like this young man to understand. There are a number of us of the baby boomer generation who have been fighting these things all our lives. You won’t hear much from us for the same reason you don’t hear much from orthodox Christians in the national media: we don’t control the major institutions or media outlets which are mostly (not by any means all, but mostly) in the hands of people who are doing the damage or who won’t make waves about it. They only let the likes of us in when we promise to be polite—which means not identifying their ideas and practices with the appropriate terminology, or warning people away from them with suitable monitory force. So we are generally found in out-of-the-way places. I’m glad when I find younger people reading Touchstone and looking at this blogsite, where you can hear our voices.

Let me tell them clearly, though, that if they are truly interested in doing something about the problem, they will have to be willing to work outside the major channels, with the salaries and recognitions they offer. These are for the most part controlled by people with a strong interest in keeping things the way they are, and who score points in the system by making them moreso. The chap with a Ph.D. in historical musicology may have to make his living teaching junior high orchestra, and lead the music in whatever church will let him do it. Don’t surrender your principles, my friend, and learn to be happy with the life the Lord gives you in return.

S. M. Hutchens