The thing that I’m questioning is how noble a cause it is for a church merely to bring in the unchurched and convert them so that they can stand about swaying in order to convert more unchurched people and we can all stand around, sway, drink coffee, feel good, swap tales about our lawns, vote for who Pastor tells us to vote for, and do no good in this world while we wait for the next. This is a pernicious cycle, and I suspect that it’s not unique to my parents’ church.

I am thus fully in accord with complaints about contemporary worship. I defy any of you to find an enjoyable and singable bass line in “Our God is an Awesome God.” My father now works as the 60’s-and-over pastor at a hideous suburban McChurch, where worship isn’t about affect OR doctrine, but mainly about conformity, standing and swaying, raised hands optional, to listless treacly lyrics projected on an overhead and sung to Creed-esque power chords.

This is invariably followed by a sermon which addresses the congregation as “you guys,” makes the gospel more accessible by relating it to our white bourgeois anxieties, and makes strident use of powerpoint and film clips from, say, Finding Nemo.

My dad claims that the point of all this is to make the “unchurched” (My dad uses words like that. Still, it’s better than calling all non-christians “pagans” as he did in the 80s.) feel welcome. What this strategy seems to me to do is advertise Christianity as a sop for unthinking submorons who can’t escape upper-middle-class pop culture long enough to apply critical thought to their faith or their commission in the world. In Overland Park, Kansas, at least, the faith of Wycliff and Luther and C.S. Lewis has become just another brand name, existing merely to propagate itself. We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. Now let’s praise Him! Woo! I suspect that more of the “unchurched” than dad would like to admit respond with the sentiment that Christianity is best left to the morons, and bugger off to read something and fire a few synapses.

Now I’m not suggesting that a return to SATB and Bach would solve these problems. I suspect our Left Behind-reading world might leave little room for that. But if I’m a pagan who can’t tell the difference between church and Avril-Lavigne-sings-the-USA-Today-Life-Section, I ain’t going to church.

As far as the content of contemporary hymns, the Missouri Synod has a good detailing of the problems in the asinine With One Voice hymnal.

(Unsurprisingly,) I have more to say on this matter; stay tuned.

How about a word from the poor suffering man in the pew? I’m always astonished at how freely women will allow their emotions to take over — and, frankly, if I see five women singing up front at church, I’m looking at four primadonnas and three flats and two sharps, in all kinds of combinations.

The hymnals are full of songs from all kinds of traditions, easily sung in unison by any congregation — UNLESS the congregation is led by a showboating soprano, which means that about 80 percent of the time you’ve got somebody leading you who is doing lilts and melismas all over the place, one (if you are a tenor) or two (if you are me, a bass or baritone) octaves above your note. Uh, THAT won’t work ….

I’ve seen a couple of more recent hymns that are very good. Most, however, are banal, stupid, heretical (but many ladies like the heretical hymns, with their gender flattening language, and their thinking that we are smarter than Jesus, who instructed us to refer to God as Father), and unsingable by a congregation. They are not folk tunes, most of them, but Broadway show tunes, written for soloist tenors or sopranos.

To Hell with those. I am not speaking figuratively.

However, not the sole problematic line I’ve encountered in all SORTS of hymnody.

Further, I wanted to point out that singing and learning songs from a leader rather than from a printed page has a strong folk tradition in the United States that should NOT be discounted. The call and response tradition in the African-American church, etc. Many newcomers to churches find that they don’t read music. We should and do teach them if they desire (particularly in choir and worship arts contexts). However, I think I’ve learned some hymns better by hearing them than reading them, particularly on the ones with odd fourths and intervals of the like. So, learning is always learning, and there is an awkward bit where no one “knows” the song, whether “sight reading” or “humming along.” No biggie–we learn, and its a good thing to “sing a new song to the Lord” that we haven’t known before, whether that be a Caribbean praise tune with local instruments or a Bach, etc.

And WIll, despite the “accessibility” of German chorales and early American hymnody, I’d have to say that what you’ve referred to is not what my students would consider accessible. :)

Consider, rather, this recent song:

Sing to the King who is coming to Reign
Lion of Judah, the Lamb that what slain
Life and salvation his empire will bring
Joy to the nations when Jesus is King

Chorus:
Come Let us sing a song
A song declaring we belong to Jesus
And he is all we need
Lift up a heart of praise
Sing now with voices raised to Jesus
Sing to the King

There are 2 other verses, but you get the idea. The song is Jesus’ kingdom, with a declaration of allegience to it, the beat is up up up, and its been popular on Christian radio as part of the “worship revolution” etc.

One way that this has been modified in a worship setting I’ve experienced is that after the chorus (Come let us sing a song), the team breaks into a stepped-up version of “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” I feel like that gets us the best of both worlds. Add to that a reading of scripture that helps people understand what’s going on, or a puritan prayer (as we often do), or some quotation, or responsive reading, and people are ready to put their minds where they belong, on Jesus.

It’s all in how you use it, I think.

I’d like to point out that this all was led by a man. One who plays softball and throws back a beer with his buddies.

Regarding contemporary worship music, I’m much less sophisticated than you musically but also more familiar with the oeuvre. Most of it is, frankly, bad. There are several songs written in this idiom, however, which I think are excellent. It wouldn’t do 80% of the people any good to have the notes written out on the overhead because they can’t read music. They learn the tune by listening to someone else sing it and then singing it themselves, which is how gospel songs were always learned in the black evangelical tradition. (When more robust, this tradition taught the congregation three- or four-part harmony SAT or SATB, which I’ve never seen in a “CCM” setting.)

Of course orthodoxy and pietism can be brought together (Bach), and I would argue they must be or become dead scholasticism and fuzzy postdoctrinal syrup. While many evangelical churches need to be careful about the latter, it’s not the case in my view that they’re already there.

A lot of the things you say have much validity, but I still see it as more of a balance.

Keep in mind that, despite its frequent ridiculousness, this culture is where I belong and this is how I normally worship. I usually find it quite edifying, thank you.

Regarding going steady with Jesus, I think the key thing is that the Church is the bride of Christ, not the individual believer. The latter is what leads into all this weird crap.

Also, as you know, I have no problem with Bach, Bernard, etc. (In fact, one might argue — from Arndt and other figures — that gnesio-pitbull style orthodoxy fits quite well with pietism!) One question is this: at what point does “affective” become “sentimental?” I would posit that there is a substantial difference (not merely one of degree) between “Herzliebster Jesu” or “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” and most praise-oriented C-rock. There is an analogous soritical argument between bridal mysticism and between the phenomenon you describe. (Or, as I put it when discussing this with Andrea this AM, there is an essential difference between “the Church is the bride of Christ” and “Goin’ steady with Jesus”)

I haven’t read the Hutchens since it first came out, but if Peter’s points 2. and 3. above accurately summarize, he is totally off base. The affective emphasis goes back to 17th-century Pietism and if he can connect German Pietists to modern feminism (and/or Skull and Bones and the Trilaterial Commission), I’ll be very impressed.

There’s also an element here that’s simply elitist. It’s easy for us aesthetically refined people to understand that Bach is artistically superior to a melody with two verses, but many evangelicals are thinking about accessibility, and I think that’s a legitimate concern. Can this go too far and become lowest-common-denominator pandering? Clearly. But there is a real tension here in which there is real value in making your worship understandable and accessible to normal people. (Re: this, everyone should read Nathan Hatch’s _Democratization of American Christianity_, on evangelical populism / mass appeal and the dangers that go with it, focuses mainly on c. 1800-1830 but explains a lot about evangelicalism tout court since then.)

Re: the “stage,” “show,” worship-leader-as-star concerns Hutchens alludes to, this can be a problem but I think usually isn’t. It’s definitely not more of a problem then pastor-as-star.

While I find Hutchens’s tone here very off-putting for some of the reasons touched on my Tiffany and Andrea, he is on to something. The more thoughtful evangelicals I know, especially males, love to joke about this phenomenon, which I find deeply weird and pathological; the technical term is “bridal mysticism,” but I more commonly refer to them as “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs. Now, what is the explanation for this? Historically, it’s not entirely new–there’s a little bit of it in Bernard of Clairvaux and I see it sometimes in 17th-, 18th-, 19th-c. stuff. Sociologically, it’s got to be connected to the gender imbalance in the subculture. Almost without exception, at any evangelical function or ministry I’ve ever seen there is a 2:1 ratio. It must somehow be related to this surprlus of single and divorced evangelical women. But it’s pretty awkward for any normal guy to sing these songs about “sit on the couch and make out with Jesus,” and I don’t think it’s healthy for women either.