This question has become more prevalent as modern Christian music has developed. No doubt you have heard the phrase "7-11 songs," those songs that have seven words and we sing them eleven times. These seemed popular mostly as I was growing up near the turn of the millennium (at least, the music I was listening to was like that). These days that has developed into singing about a concept in as many ways as possible without developing the idea further. For example, a song could say how much we (the singers) love God, and yet never explain why. This kind of song has been coined the "Jesus is my girlfriend" song, where the lyrics sound like you could interchange Jesus' name with your significant other's.
4. Is the content of your church music biblically sound?
This question has become more prevalent as modern Christian music has developed. No doubt you have heard the phrase "7-11 songs," those songs that have seven words and we sing them eleven times. These seemed popular mostly as I was growing up near the turn of the millennium (at least, the music I was listening to was like that). These days that has developed into singing about a concept in as many ways as possible without developing the idea further. For example, a song could say how much we (the singers) love God, and yet never explain why. This kind of song has been coined the "Jesus is my girlfriend" song, where the lyrics sound like you could interchange Jesus' name with your significant other's.
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Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that I am a singer. I play other instruments as well, but I've spent more time training my voice than anything else. I've studied voice consistently for the past five years (four of those at The Master's College, a fine institution), and one of the things that I have learned over and over again is that you can't just do whatever and expect your voice to be fine. I've discovered certain vocal exercises that help warm my voice up so that I can really sing properly. (shout out to Dr. Jones, my college voice teacher, who displayed a ton of patience with me all four years at TMC!) After I had graduated from Master's and returned to the States after a choir tour in Israel and Switzerland, I stopped singing for a while. My voice, thankfully, never gave out during the tour, but there were times it felt pretty darn close. I decided to take some time to give it a rest as I re-acclimated to the California time zone. When I did start singing again, I realized that my range had shrunk. Some of the really high and low notes I had been able to hit were gone.
3. Is your church music orderly?
This question can be taken a couple different ways, and I want to address both of them. We ought to make sure our musical worship is orderly and not chaotic, and the music that we sing ought to follow a certain order. Over the summer I have been reading Eric Metaxas' biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Currently the book has dealt specifically with the state of the German Church in the early 1930s, as the Nazis were taking Germany by storm. Hitler's ultimate goal was for Christianity to ultimately raise him up in the place of Jesus Christ, and for the church to promote National Socialism. Many churches refused to do this, knowing that there was no way to reconcile the church and the swastika. However, Metaxas writes about a group of Christians who tried to bridge this irreconcilable gap. They referred to themselves as the German Christians, and they were some of the strongest opposition Bonhoeffer faced.
I was recently searching back through old class notes from my time at The Master's College, and I found my notes from a class I took on hymnology and the music of the church. At the end of my notes was this "Checklist for Church Music" that my professor (Dr. Plew, head of the Music Department) had given us. This list is meant as a litmus test for a church's musical worship, both for the layperson to better understand the music in which they are being led, as well as for leaders as they seek to remain faithful in their areas of ministry. I would like to take these checkpoints and elaborate on them, from what I learned from Dr. Plew and from my own experiences as a worship leader. There are 10 questions; I will discuss the first two today and will continue with the others later. I hope this series will be a benefit to you learning more about church music.
This weekend is Disability Sunday at my home church. We are celebrating the way the Lord has richly blessed our disabilities ministry over the years. He uses each of us who are His children, even those who the world would call "broken" or "disable." Paul reminds us that God's work through the Gospel is not meant to make sense to the world: "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ... For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is lowly and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (I Corinthians 1:18, 26-29, emphasis added). |
AuthorA simple servant of the Master. Archives
February 2016
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