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Preaching That Involves the Congregation

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Preachers can prepare their sermons with respect to the needs of their people by engaging a representative group of people in conversation on Sunday’s text. Guidelines for group preparation and feedback are outlined below.

Method. A number of churches are offering Bible study on the texts their pastors intend to use in future sermons. Beginning ten days prior to the preaching of the sermon, the group meets to study the text. The preacher either leads the study or participates in the group, asking a layperson to lead. He or she listens closely to the questions and issues that emerge from the group’s discussion of the text. The minister listens for ideas and attitudes that will influence the development of the passage into a sermon. The preacher avoids explaining to the group the way he or she intends to treat the passage. The preacher is there to learn from the group, not to hint at a plan he or she has already developed for preparing the sermon.

In addition to the congregational study of selected texts prior to the sermon’s preparation, a sermon response group may also prove helpful. Members of this group should be chosen from a broad spectrum of the congregation and should meet at regular intervals—whether monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly—usually for about thirty minutes after the church service.

The pastor does not attend the sermon feedback discussion but instead asks that it be taped for him or her. A lay leader can enable the group to move through the process in the time allotted. Michael Williams, in his helpful book Preaching Peers (Discipleship Resources, 1987), suggests the following questions for the listening group to discuss: (1) What words, images, or ideas in the sermon had meaning to you? (2) Was there a clear relationship between the Scripture text and the sermon? (3) Did the sermon and the rest of the worship service tie together? (4) Was the sermon consistent with the person you have experienced the preacher to be? (5) Did the sermon’s delivery support or detract from its content? (6) What was the word of God for you in the sermon?

Using the Lectionary. The study groups and listening groups are especially fitting for lectionary preaching since the lectionary leads the congregation through the church year. For example, the study of Advent texts prepares the group both for the sermon and for the general celebration of Advent. If study group members use material based on the lectionary in their church school classes, this enriches their teaching as well as their listening to the sermon.

When the preacher and congregation follow the lectionary, they move together through the seasons of the church year, preparing for and celebrating the central events of the Christian faith. This is a learning opportunity for all ages as the congregation reflects on the two great cycles of salvation: Advent—Christmas—Epiphany and Lent—Easter—Pentecost. The congregation may want to learn more about the origin of these celebrations, and about ways to make them more meaningful today. Developed by Hoyt Hickman and other leaders in the contemporary liturgical movement, the Handbook of the Christian Year (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986) is a comprehensive guide to an ecumenical series of services for the renewal and deepening of worship. The book offers background, services for Sundays and special days, and texts and pastoral commentary. It can help each congregation develop its own traditions and unique ways of celebrating the various seasons of the Christian year.

The lectionary gives a focus and discipline both to preaching and to the church’s life. Unchanneled energy is easily dissipated, but energy channeled through the lectionary can enable Christians to relate their faith to the world in which they live, to relate preaching, worship, and the seasons of the church year, and more effectively to anticipate and celebrate the festivals of the Christian year.

Philosophy of Music in Reformed Worship

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Although the Reformed tradition has been more restrictive about the use of music in worship than the Lutheran tradition, it nevertheless highly values the role of music in worship. This article describes emphases importance in the Reformed tradition, largely in terms of the writings of Reformer John Calvin.

The comparison is unavoidable: two great reformers of the sixteenth century with two vastly different approaches to reforming public worship. For Luther, it was the reform of the Mass. For Calvin, whatever his debt to the Mass, it was a new service. For Luther, it was the retention of the full musical resources of the church. For Calvin, it was only the voice of the congregation. For Luther, it was whatever texts were theologically correct. For Calvin, it was only the words of Scripture.

Both Luther’s Formula of Mass (1523) and his German Mass (1526), Latin and German Reformation forms of the Roman Catholic Mass, were the stimuli for the writing of numerous musical works for the congregation, solo voices, choir, organ, and instruments, not only achieving a culmination in the great works of Johann Sebastian Bach but also continuing to provide inspiration for composers into the present.

In contrast, Calvin’s The Form of Church Prayers inspired an elegant collection of metrical Psalm texts and melodies, a few canticles, and some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphonic vocal settings of these texts and melodies for use outside the church service. These range from simple, familiar-style settings to monumental multi-movement Psalm motets. In spite of this early flowering of polyphonic Psalm settings, the development of a significant body of art music that was distinctively Reformed was frozen in the sixteenth century.

This comparison of the musical results of these two Reformation branches is not intended to diminish the value of the numerous Genevan and non-Genevan metrical settings of the Psalms and other passages of Scripture for congregational singing that has come out of the Reformed tradition of worship. Nor is it intended to diminish the significance of the organ and choral works based on Genevan and other Psalm melodies and metrical texts. Nevertheless, a Psalter is a closed volume once the 150 Psalms and a few canticles are prepared. In contrast, the Lutheran hymnal was an open-ended book, inviting continuing contributions from poets and musicians and providing composers with new texts and melodies as the basis for new compositions.

And the limitation of musical resources for public worship in the Reformed tradition to the voice of the congregation discouraged the writing of works for the full musical resources available to Lutheran composers. In the Reformed churches, there was no need to write a cantata for the third Sunday after Pentecost or an anthem for the second Sunday in Epiphany.

The result of this relatively small body of distinctively Reformed music is that not much attention is given to John Calvin or the Reformed tradition when discussing church music. The Psalms and the Reformed services attracted but a few significant composers in the history of music, and most of those were concentrated in a short span of time.

From a musician’s point of view, Calvin’s reform is, therefore, usually judged negatively. It was he, it is said, who silenced choirs and tore out organs as being unnecessary and even detrimental to the newly reformed way of worship. And his limitation of worship music to the unaccompanied singing of metrical Psalms and some canticles by the congregation produced rather few polyphonic vocal settings of the Psalms (though by composers of note) and (when organs were restored) some organ settings of those same Psalm melodies.

As a result of the differences in approach to reforming the abuses of the medieval church, the Lutheran churches received the fruits of a long line of distinguished composers from Walter to Distler. Though the Calvinist tradition in its four-hundred-year history has produced significant music for voices and for organ based on the melodies of the metrical Psalter of 1562, the shadow cast by the vast and distinguished repertory of Lutheran church music places the Calvinist contribution to church music in a near-total eclipse for many music historians. And that eclipse of the music inspired by the Genevan Psalter by Lutheran art music has also, unfortunately, placed Calvin’s careful and logical thought for the music of the church in eclipse.

The error is that music historians leave their evaluations of Calvin with complimentary words for the Psalter melodies and for the sixteenth-century polyphonic settings of them. However, as musically valuable as the Genevan Psalter melodies and their polyphonic settings are, Calvin’s contribution to the music of public worship is not primarily the 150 Psalms and a few canticles in metrical versions and their settings for voices and for an organ that follows, but rather a well-thought-out theology of church music.

While Calvin’s theological foundations were born out of sixteenth-century thought, their applicability is not limited to a single time. His principles are timeless, clearly based on Holy Scripture and the thought of the early church. They balance sixteenth-century humanism, with its concern for human interests, and Renaissance rebirth of interest in ancient learning: a balance of the tension between the present and the past, between tradition and experience. The keeping of these two foci in creative tension is significant for finding direction for the music of the church at all times and places.

Calvin understood worship to be the most important of all relationships: the relationship between the all-holy God and sinful humans. It is, therefore, not a casual relationship. Neither the texts of worship nor the music that carries them can be casual. Theologically, it is a spiritual relationship between a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God with his chosen people. At its best, Calvinist worship aims at restoring the ideal of communion with God enjoyed by Adam and Eve before their disobedience, a restoration not to be perfected until the coming of the kingdom.

Given the significance of this relationship of communion with God, worship and its music are approached with care, done only according to God’s commands and carried out under the laws of order and decorum of the church, laws based on the Holy Scriptures. Calvin recognizes, however, that worship needs also to be done with concern for human frailty. He understands the reality of sin in human life and its role as an impediment to fellowship with God. Therefore there is in Calvin a pastoral concern for the worshiper. External aids, rites, and ceremonies with valid purpose and not for spectacle, are necessary. Their purpose is to inspire reverence for the holy mysteries of sacrament and service, arouse piety in the exercise of worship, encourage modesty so the worshiper comes into the presence of God without presumption, foster gravity in order to worship only with the seriousness of purpose, and above all lead the worshiper directly to Christ. In Calvin’s thought, music is an important aid for the worshiper.

Given the accumulated quantity and the questionable quality of such aids in the church before the Reformation, Calvin insisted that these aids are to be simple, few in number, of clear value in assisting weakness, and understood by the worshiper. Displays of praying hands, the use of choirs, bands, and banners were not part of Calvin’s plan. The question always is “what is necessary and what obscures Christ?” What encourages communion with our actually present Lord in the Holy Supper and what impedes it? For Calvin, it was less music rather than more; simpler music rather than more complex.

Calvin’s liturgy, then, is a reformed service rather than a reformed Mass with its tradition of music. Worship needed to be returned to the people in language, in ritual, in clarity of thought, in accuracy of biblical meaning, and in the simplicity of music so there could be meaningful physical, intellectual, and spiritual participation. The result is a liturgy reduced to its essentials with that which was judged extraneous and distracting removed. All aspects of the liturgy, including the music, are to serve the central functions of the word read and preached and the sacrament appropriately administered. Visual and aural effects were diminished, so magnificent altar and reredos were replaced by a simple table; elaborate priestly vestments were replaced by the academic gown; images, candles, incense, and bells were replaced by a simple sanctuary and service. Organs and choirs were replaced by an unaccompanied singing congregation.

Evaluation of Calvin’s liturgical and musical reform is, therefore, usually concerned with what Calvin “got rid of”; what needs to be considered is what he brought to the service. Priority is given to the Word read and preached over the sacrament (though Calvin preferred weekly Communion). Attention is no longer directed primarily to the altar but to the pulpit from which God speaks through his Scripture. Music is used to enhance Scripture. The Psalms, extolled for their value in the Christian life by all who take time and effort to know them, are put in a form that ensures their assimilation into the thought and life of the singer.

That the Psalms, all 150 of them, should have been given to the people in an easily singable and easily remembered form was an enormously significant contribution to church worship and the Christian life. Testimony to their value in the Christian life can be found in writings from St. Basil and St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis and W. Stewart McCullough in The Interpreter’s Bible. But perhaps Calvin says it best in his introduction to his Commentary on the Psalms.

There is no other book in which there is to be found more express and magnificent commendations, both of the unparalleled liberality of God towards his Church, and of all his works; there is no other book in which there is recorded so many deliverances, nor one in which the evidences and experiences of the fatherly providence and solicitude which God exercises toward us are celebrated with such splendor of diction, and yet with the strictest adherence to truth; in short, there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise.

In one word, not only will we here find general commendations of the goodness of God, which may teach men to repose themselves in him alone, and to seek all their happiness solely in him; and which are intended to teach true believers with their whole hearts confidently to look to him for help in all their necessities; but we will also find that the free remission of sins, which alone reconciles God towards us, and procures for us settled peace with him, is so set forth and magnified, as that here there is nothing wanting which relates to the knowledge of eternal salvation.

Can there be any question as to why Calvin gave the Psalms to the people in song?

Calvin finds his foundation and nourishment for reforming the worship of the church in the tradition of the church, of which the Bible is the most significant part, over present experience. Therefore, two principles undergird Calvin’s reform: the absolute sovereignty of God over against his human creatures, and the absolute authority of God’s Word found in the Bible over human thoughts and experience. Yet, sixteenth-century humanism influences Calvin to make worship the people’s offering to God. His respect for Scripture and his knowledge of God keep God and his revelation central in Calvin’s reform. But the reform is to make public worship the people’s worship.

The result was a service that focused the people’s attention on the exalted, enthroned, ruling Christ seated at the right hand of God. The worshiper’s heart is to be lifted up “on high where Jesus Christ is in the glory of His Father.” Public worship puts one in the presence of God and his angels, raises the worshiper to heavenly places. How logical that in the awe-inspiring presence of God the worshiper sings only words received from God himself in his Scriptures.

In keeping with Calvin’s high regard for what worship is, the relationship of sinful humans to their all-holy God, the service expresses clearly the posture of adoration for the absolutely sovereign God and the need for purification when entering into the very presence of God. This adoration is possible only when the worshiper is restored to holiness and is acting in obedience to God. The opening invocation from Psalm 124, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” immediately identifies who the worshiper is in relation to God. That realization prompts the worshiper immediately to confess sin as a beginning of the return to the holiness of life as essential preparation for fellowship with God. The worshiping sinner confesses before God’s holy majesty “that we are poor sinners … incapable of any good,” but also ask God to “magnify and increase in us day by day the grace of thy Holy Spirit … producing in us the fruits of righteousness and innocence which are pleasing unto thee.… ” Then follows the absolution in which God, through the minister, says “To all those that repent … and look to Jesus … for their salvation, I declare that the absolution of sins is effected.… ” Those who have thus been restored to sanctity are fit to commune with God in the Holy Supper, to be raised to heavenly places, to sing his praises.

This lofty understanding of what public worship is leads Calvin to great care in crafting the service and choosing the words to be used. The liturgy is a fixed liturgy. Freedom and spontaneity are restricted, for after learning from Scripture, there is little room for improvisation and certainly none for caprice. Free prayer, so cherished in later Reformed churches, is given little room in Calvin’s liturgy, and those prayers that are left for the minister to the phrase are prescribed as to content. And when prayer is sung (Calvin regarded church song as a form of prayer), only the words of God, those from the Bible, are permitted.

It is this liturgy that is the context for the music of public worship and which prescribes its role. The essential ingredients of that liturgical context for music are preaching, communion, and prayer. It is important to note here that these are not items merely to be listed. The very nature of worship for Calvin requires that these three essential ingredients be present and that they demonstrate the authority of God’s Word, be done corporately by the holy people of God (and not be done for them), and that in each the Holy Spirit is present and active. Without that presence, worship is a purely human and earthbound activity.

Of particular interest in regard to the music of public worship is prayer. Prayer is done according to the rules for right prayer from Scripture, and, whether sung or spoken, prayer in public is a corporate act made effective by the Holy Spirit, who intercedes for us. It is impossible to understand Calvin’s seemingly limited church music without the theological foundation and liturgical context for it. The music appointed for the liturgy follows logically from them.

Calvin first insists that music for worship has a clear purpose. He does not begin with the assumption that music must be present in public worship. He begins with a theological justification for it. It is essential for Calvin that there be a well-thought-out reason for its presence in the public worship of God. That reason must be based on Holy Scripture and the thought and practice of the early church, as well as contemporary experience based on a thorough knowledge of the faith. That is, the question must be asked, “What can and should music do to assist the worshiper?” Without a clear definition of purpose, there is no demonstrated need for its existence in the public worship of God, and there is very little possibility of its doing what it can do and best ought to do for the worshiper.

For Calvin, music in public worship ought to aid concentration by exercising “the mind in thinking of God and keeping it attentive.” It should also inspire reverence, lending “dignity, and grace to sacred actions.” Further, it should create unity by joining “the faithful in one common act of prayer.” It should also rouse zeal, kindling “our hearts to a true zeal and eagerness to pray.” And it should provide edification “as each from the other receives the confession of faith” in song. Well, might the contemporary churchgoer and the modern church’s leadership ask whether prayer and concentration on the thing prayed, reverence in speaking with God, unity in prayer, zeal and eagerness in prayer, and spiritual growth are being served by our church song?

So that the purpose for the music of the church may be realized, Calvin recognized that it is necessary for music to be regulated. This is necessary because music has the power “to turn or bend … the morals of men.… We find by experience that it has … incredible power to move our hearts in one way or another.” And music is a gift of God “we must be the more careful not to abuse it … converting it to our condemnation when it has been dedicated to our profit and welfare.” This power of music, particularly with text, has been recognized by all who have reflected on the role of music in human life. Plato, Basil, Luther, and Confucius all knew the power of music. And so does the contemporary church. But Plato and Calvin and others knew that for salutary results in the use of music careful regulation was essential.

This regulation is accomplished, first of all, by the rules for right prayer, since song in the service is a form of prayer. One must sing with reverence, sincerity, penitence, humility, and faith. But congregational song is also regulated by the scriptural rules for decorum. It is to be simple, it is to be understood, and it is to be adapted to the age in which it is used.

The purposes and the proper use of music require appropriateness of text and music to the human response of worship, for only then will its purposes be realized and proper use be respected. As sung prayer, music is not decoration, entertainment, or filler, but it is one of the three essential ingredients of public worship. Calvin, therefore, understands that it must have weight or significance, and majesty, that is dignity. And the texts associated with the music are to be preeminent and are to represent true doctrine.

In Calvin’s own words appropriateness is expressed this way: When we have looked thoroughly, and searched here and there, we shall not find better songs nor more fitting for the purpose, than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him. And moreover, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts in our mouths these, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory.… Touching the melody, it has seemed best that it be moderated in the manner we have adopted to carry the weight and majesty appropriate to the subject, and even to be proper for singing in the Church, according to that which has been said.

As is so often true in the realm of the spiritual, the truth of a matter is represented by an ellipse, having two foci. Purposes, proper use, and appropriateness are to be balanced with pastoral concern. It is a matter of respecting the divine while recognizing the human. That is, the music that results from respect for these three (purpose, proper use, and appropriateness) must be useful to the worshiper. It must serve the worshiper in serving God. It must be usable. Though addressed to God, it is a congregational prayer which, while offering to God, also edifies the worshiper and gives witness to the faith.

In bringing purpose, regulation, and appropriateness to the people, the church’s song must be useful and useable so as to be of benefit to them. This results in the music of a particular character. This music is first of all biblical. Only if it is true to Scripture can it be the right worship of God and of true benefit to the worshiper. For in praying in accord with Scripture one comes to know and do God’s will in prayer. For Calvin, this means sung prayer is by means of the very words God gives us. To be appropriate, the church’s song must be biblical. “We shall not find better songs … than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him.”

This music must also be decorous, that is, it must have dignity and aptness. It serves an elevated purpose as prayer to God and is, therefore, to be noble in character as one addresses the song to God. It is to be proper to the subject, the text, so as to be suited to singing in the church “before God and his angels” and in so doing to bring attention to the texts, the thing prayed, and not merely delight the ears. “There is a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at the table and in their houses, and the Psalms, which are sung in the church in the presence of God and his angels.” And “such songs as having been composed only for sweetness and delight of the ear are unbecoming to the majesty of the church and cannot but displease God in the highest degree.”

In addition, this music is to be sacred for it needs to be distinctive music if it is intended for distinctive people engaged in a distinctive activity. It is for the holy people of God engaged in intimate fellowship with their all-holy Creator. It is not music for aesthetic enjoyment nor for entertainment. It is music for the dialogue of worship. In the text of the song, the Psalms, God speaks to the worshiper and the worshiper speaks to God in prayer.

This being music for the people, it must also be popular. That is, it must be easy to sing, it must be understandable, and it must be attractive. Without those qualities, it would not likely be used. Note that this popularity is not in the contemporary sense of music purveyed in enormous quantity so that it becomes popular by hype. It is music that is simply useful and usable.

That Calvin succeeded in a useful and useable body of church music is attested to by the over 60 known editions of the Psalter that were published within three years of its first publication in 1562. The rhymed texts in two simple classic poetic meters, with an entirely original melody type as to rhythm (with its longer notes at the beginning and end and in only two note values), gave them durability and wide dissemination.

These four characteristics properly understood are not merely descriptions of Calvin’s music in the sixteenth century but represent a significant contribution to thinking on the music of the church for all ages. These characteristics, biblical, sacred, decorous, and popular, all at the same time, are principles that are also useful in our own age. Music, then, is to be of assistance in the true and spiritual worship of God. This makes Calvin’s concerns for a defined purpose, regulation, appropriateness, and usefulness the concerns for worshipers of all ages. Only then will music aid concentration, increase reverence, provide unity, rouse zeal, provide edification, and in the offering of our worship refresh us in God’s grace.

The results of Calvin’s careful scriptural thought regarding the worship and worship music of the church resulted in a closed “hymnal.” The texts of Calvin’s completed “hymnal” of 1562 are limited to the 150 biblical Psalms plus the Decalogue and the Song of Simeon. The completed version of the Psalter consisted of 152 texts and 125 melodies. The authors of the texts were Clement Marot, court poet to Francis I of France. His death in 1544 left the versification of the remaining Psalms to Theodore de Beza, a Reformed theologian. The texts are metrical, rhymed, strophic, in classic poetic meter (mostly iambic), and set syllabically to the music. They are, therefore, accessible to a singing congregation. They are popular in the most elevated meaning of that word.

The first of the composers is presumed to be Guillaume Franck, a musician at St. Peter’s church in Geneva, Calvin’s church. Louis Bourgeois followed Franck at St. Peters and is the musician of the Psalter. His style is stamped on the Psalter since he not only added melodies but edited those already in the collection. His work dates from the 1551 edition. Pierre Dague, Bourgeois’s successor at St. Peter’s, is thought to have finished the music of the Psalter. As Beza had Marot’s work to emulate, so Dague had the work of Bourgeois to emulate. It is generally conceded that the original texts and the Genevan melodies are of superior literary and musical quality.

The melodies are often assumed to be edited from secular sources. However, Bourgeois, in the preface to the Pseaumes Octant Trois of 1551 says the source of his work is pre-Reformation melodies, which some commentators take to be Gregorian chant. Whether the source is secular or sacred for any given melody, the style is radically changed, particularly by the schematized rhythm.

The melodies are characterized by structural simplicity. The settings of the texts are syllabic, the music is strophic, the phrases are arche-shape, melodic movement is mostly stepwise, and the range of a melody rarely exceeds an octave. And while the melodies are modal, they are, for the most part rather major- or minor-like. Only two basic note values are used and these in a schematic design with phrases normally beginning and ending with longer notes with the shorter notes clustered in one or two groupings in the middle of a phrase of the melody. The aesthetic character of the melodies develops from the combination of stepwise movement and the schematic rhythm along with the lack of a regularly recurring strong accent. The melodies possess a graceful, rhythmic flow.

By every standard, these melodies are accessible to a singing congregation. However, Enlightenment regularity and symmetry have accustomed us to a consistency of meter and design not possessed by the original Genevan Psalter melodies. The considerable variety of metrical schemes for the music and the absence of classic regularity make these melodies less easy for us to sing than for their sixteenth-century users, though the rewards of learning and using them are enormous.

It should be noted that the melodies of the Genevan Psalter are in a style that was familiar to the sixteenth-century worshiper in France. They are not, however, in the style of folk music or music of the pub, but in the style of cultivated music of the day. The schematized rhythm sets them apart from even that music, making this truly distinctive music for a distinctive people engaged in a distinctive activity, the public worship of God.

In summary, Calvin’s contribution to the music of the Christian church lies in his carefully reasoned thought regarding the church at worship and the use of music in that worship. In preparing suitable music for the church’s worship, he expresses four concerns: for the purposes that music can and should serve in the worship of God, for its regulation so as to ensure the realization of those purposes, for its appropriateness to the subject of the text and the object of our worship, and for its usefulness in serving the worshiper in serving God. These concerns resulted in music that was biblical, decorous, sacred, and popular.

When thinking about church music, admiration is most likely to appear in the presence of a significant repertory of art music for choir, instruments, and organ—artistic value offered to God in the presence of his people. One stands in much less awe in the presence of music intended for common worship. Even less consideration is given to music that is not even intended for the enjoyment of community singing but only as a corporate offering of words by means of music in response to God’s words to the worshiper.

However, this seeming tension between art music and congregational music need not be settled on the side either of music beyond the average congregation or music beneath a suitable level of artistic integrity. And Calvin would not settle the matter of music for use by the congregation on the side of distinctly secular music. He writes in the Psalter preface that “care must always be taken that the song is neither light nor frivolous: but that it has weight and majesty, as St. Augustine says, and also, there is a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at the table and in their houses and the Psalms which are sung in the Church in the presence of God and his angels.” Calvin achieved this ideal.

Churches in the Reformed tradition were affected by the same cultural influences as every other Christian tradition, but particularly by pietism, the Enlightenment, and post-Enlightenment thought. The results have been principally in two directions. On the one hand, there has been an increasing openness to new ideas, growing confidence in human gifts, and the desire for a pleasing human experience in public worship. By and large, such openness has meant the abandoning of Calvin’s principles for worship reform and for worship music. On the other hand, some Reformed communions have resisted cultural influences and retained Psalm singing to the exclusion of hymns, some even without accompaniment. While the former abandoned Calvin’s principles, the latter failed to apply those principles to the present, overlooking Calvin’s injunction that “rites and ceremonies,” including music, need to be adapted to the age.

Calvin recognized that his application of principles to the practice of the church was conditioned by his time. His practice was adapted to his age. His, however, was a time of a fortuitous combination of humanistic interest in the person and Renaissance interest in the tradition. It put the reformers in a posture of relying on the truth of the past, particularly the Holy Scriptures, and bringing it to the benefit of the people. It is at this point that our own time needs again to examine Calvin, the other sixteenth-century reformers, and the church fathers for balance between the human and the divine, between personal experience and the tradition, between theocratic and democratic forces in church music.

The Difference Between Concert Music and Music for Worship

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONCERT MUSIC AND MUSIC FOR WORSHIP

Although the technical aspects of music are the same for concert and worship music, the function and purpose of music in these settings are different. Understanding these differences is important for church musicians, ultimately changing the criteria by which music is selected and influencing the way in which music is rehearsed and presented.

In choir lofts and parochial offices, an argument as old as the church goes on today. It focuses on the choice of music to be used in the church. On one side are those who assume that church music is to be judged in the same manner as all “good” music, namely, the music of the conservatory and concert hall. On the other side are those who assume that the criterion should be whether the music moves the people in the pews. In the heat of battle, these two sides are often pitted against one another and caricatured. In reality, both arguments involve false assumptions that obscure the real source of tension.

The Church and the Concert Hall

Although I understand the need to establish aesthetic values in the church, I disagree with some of the basic premises of those who uncritically apply the norms of the concert hall to church music. This practice undermines the integrity of the profession by obscuring the relationship between music and the people of the church and between music and worship.

I can explain my point by making a comparison. The members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are musicians whose social responsibilities are narrow and well defined: they are part of a cultural institution that performs music drawn largely from the so-called “classical” repertory of western Europe. They are curators of this tradition. Their responsibility—to perform the music of that repertory with integrity—extends to the tradition itself and, beyond that, to those who pay money to hear them. They keep that tradition alive and support its transmission from one generation to another.

Members of the church music profession share some of the same responsibilities as orchestra members. We are committed to performing good music well. But our relationship to the people who walk in the door of the church is very different from the relationship of the orchestra players to the people who pay to hear them. There are at least four major differences between what happens in the church and at a concert.

  1. For an important and extensive segment of our repertory, i.e., hymns, psalms, and other liturgical music, the assembled congregation assumes the role of the orchestra. The people to whom we are responsible are not an audience but a congregation.
  2. The music performed in church is part of a liturgy, not a concert program, and liturgy is already a very complex art form, in which the music often follows a spoken text rather than other music.
  3. The primary purpose of liturgical music is to be a vehicle through which people praise God. As part of worship, music is doxological.
  4. Musicians occupy an important place in a community, and explicit ethical commitments underlie their vocations. Albert Camus wrote, “There is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I would like never to be unfaithful to one or the other.” (Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody, trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy [New York: Knopf, 1968], 169f.)

This article will explore the implications of each of these four differences between liturgical music and concert music.

The Congregation as Orchestra

Hymns, psalms, and settings of the mass ordinary form the core repertory of church music. In her book Worship, Evelyn Underhill defines worship as “the response of the creature to the Eternal” (Evelyn Underhill, Worship, reprint [Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979]). Throughout the ages, various art media, especially music, have been used to deepen that response. Thus it is the responsibility of the church musician to train the congregation to express its praise in song.

Church musicians are music educators. To carry out their educational mission, they must understand why people sing and what will promote that activity. They must learn the musical vocabulary of the congregation they serve and use it as the starting point. In some large urban churches, the musical vocabulary may be that of the concert hall, but such is not the case in most local churches. A church musician cannot assume that the music program of the large urban church is a model for the music programs of all churches.

In worship everyone is on stage—everyone performs in the orchestra. If an audience is created by separating the performers from the nonperformers, worship does not take place. The quality of the participation and the status of the participants distinguish ritual from events with distinct audiences.

Worship does not exist apart from the need of the community to engage in it; therefore, there is no such thing as an observer of worship. The more a congregation chooses or is forced to play the role of an audience, the less integrity its worship has. If people sense that the choir and organist are performing a concert series on Sunday mornings, they will settle back and become an audience. When they relinquish the responsibility to raise their voices in song to God and hand this task over to the professionals who do it better, they cease to be worshipers.

The Context of Liturgical Music

To listen to a motet when its text may be included in a subsequent sermon, and to listen to that same motet in the midst of several others in a concert are two distinct experiences. It is a characteristic of our musical culture that the latter is the norm for establishing the musical value of the motet. Church musicians work within the liturgical context, yet for their musical judgment, they often revert unconsciously to the experience of the concert.

Working with music in liturgy entails working with a musical form set within a verbal art form of great complexity. Within the context of this art form music takes on the power and meaning of its surroundings. What happens when a motet originally composed for liturgical use is extracted from that context and put into a concert hall program? The absence of its liturgical surroundings, from which it derived its unique power and meaning, causes the wrong kind of pressure to be put on the music. In the concert hall the music is forced to mean something on its own, and to absorb the liturgical context into itself. Thus a motet about Christ as the bread of life has to impart its meaning in an abstract and ethereal way, apart from its original context as a musical accompaniment to the Eucharist. Performed among others of its kind, the feature that attracts attention and is sought after is not the power of the liturgy but its “differentness”—that which distinguishes it from the similar pieces that precede and follow it.

In a liturgical context, on the other hand, the value of the music immediately before the sermon derives from congruence with its surroundings, clarity of text, and expression. The liturgy may be better served by a simple, unison hymn tune that everyone knows by heart than by a complex Renaissance motet. In the concert hall, technique and novelty are often the predominant musical values; in the midst of the Eucharist, they may be of secondary concern.

Listening to a musical idea preceded by another musical idea differs from hearing it after the reading of a text, and a musical idea that accompanies an action is heard in yet another way. The dominance of the paradigm of the concert hall with its audience quietly listening to one musical idea after another obscures the variety of uses to which music can be put in worship.

A concert performance of music that originally was scattered through the various liturgical occasions can have alarming results. The current interest in early organs and the music written for them is a case in point. An entire evening of organ music written for liturgical occasions—processionals and hymn improvisations used in alternative congregational singing—can be very tedious, even at the hands of great interpreters. The musical invention in a series of three-minute pieces never becomes complex or varied, or at least not enough to sustain an hour and a half of continuous listening. Consequently, the performer does things to the music to make it more interesting, often negating the very authenticity that motivated the retrieval of the music in the first place.

This caution can be carried too far. The play of the musical imagination is behind every musical endeavor, whether the music is designed for the symphony hall or for eucharistic prayer. The point is that church musicians work within certain limitations that do not constrain other musicians. The drama of liturgy also provides unique opportunities to develop music that enhances its theological and aesthetic power. By approaching the work of the church through the lens of the concert hall, church musicians obscure the nature of their task.

The People’s Praise

The primary purpose of music in the church is to enable the people to praise God, but this goal does not fundamentally alter the procedures of the musicians, who must employ the same skills and the same deliberate care, no matter how their music will be used. They must always strive to call forth the highest levels of ability, though their attitudes to learning and evaluation may be affected by the purpose of their music.

In his book Ministry and Music, Robert Mitchell speaks of the shift in values that takes place when one works with a musical organization in the church. He is referring specifically to the volunteer church choir, but his words pertain to many situations.

A kind of conflict of values or priorities is intrinsic to the volunteer church choir situation. The reason for the choir’s existence as commonly understood is to create a product—music—which will be used to enhance the worship experience. Very good—until one attempts to evaluate this task in the light of scriptural teaching. The Bible does not directly address itself to matters of music or art or aesthetics.

Viewed, however, from another perspective, from the nature of the process that goes on as the choir works at its task, there is a great deal of Scripture teaching that is relevant. Intrinsic to this process are matters of relationship … and matters of attitude. (Robert Mitchell, Ministry and Music [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978], 55)

Mitchell goes on to describe how different work becomes when concern for people is the highest value. He decries the tendency on the part of musicians to focus on the final outcome and in the process exploit and harass the people who are trying to provide it.

If church music-makers allowed relationships and attitudes toward people to be their highest values, the choir repertory and its relative importance vis-à-vis the musical life of the congregation would shift. Instead of trying to jam a rocky, hesitant volunteer choir into a practice schedule that would produce an anthem a week or duplicate in dreary mediocrity the repertory of a paid choir, it is better to work on music that is easier to sing and to do less frequent performances. While one should never compromise on the quality of the music undertaken, neither should one use the standards of repertory and performance of an a cappella motet choir of singers from the local conservatory. Good music has vitality at many levels of competence, as anyone who has sat through student recitals knows. Moreover, what constitutes good music varies according to the aesthetic standards of varying repertories: a good motet and a good hymn tune are similar in some qualities, different in others.

Accepting Cultural Pluralism

Shifting the emphasis from product to process in a church music program is an ethical act. It is not, however, the total ethical commitment of the church musician. We do a great disservice to the musical and religious lives of a congregation when we employ only the values of the concert hall to evaluate the music of worship because this approach so often leads to the elimination of other viable musical cultures from the life of the church.

Disguised in the various battles about music in the church—old hymns versus new hymns, Bach versus rock, organ versus guitar, gospel songs versus anthems—is a conflict between the “high” culture of the elite and the cultures of the rest of the population. The university and the conservatory, the training ground for so many church musicians, are centers of this elite culture; its precepts and music standards are talked about, written about, explained, and transmitted along with an unfortunate disdain for other musical cultures. Often no attempt is made in these institutions to judge other musical cultures on their own terms, for they are considered devoid of aesthetic worth.

The profound ignorance of the purposes and values of a musical culture other than high culture pervades the educational institutions that train professional church musicians. This ignorance supports the view that the music of other cultures lacks aesthetic worth. Indeed, ignorance prevents an aesthetic judgment from taking place, since that would entail a prior belief that one is the presence of a work of art (Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981], 98f). In the same way, musicians who categorically reject all nineteenth-century hymnody will not undertake the acts of mind and heart requisite to establishing its aesthetic value.

When the attitudes and standards spawned in conservatories are transported without question into the musical life of local churches, they become the norm by which all various and sundry musical cultures are judged as inferior and inadequate vehicles of the holy. Under the guise of such standards, musicians impose their musical tastes on the congregation and risk suppressing the voice that wells up from the hearts of the assembled faithful. Further, they make certain assumptions about the relative importance of their own opinions compared with those of the congregation. If the people’s musical vocabularies—their taste and training—are not as elevated as the musician’s, the assumption is that they must adjust or conform to his or her superior taste and training.

In Popular Culture and High Culture, Herbert Gans tries to provide alternatives to an “either/or” approach to the problem of aesthetic value in art. He argues for cultural pluralism and for the promotion of cultures that do not now find expression in the elite media of the country. He states that “if people seek aesthetic gratification and … if their cultural choices express their own values and taste standards, they are equally valid and desirable whether the culture is high or low” (Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture [New York: Basic Books, 1974], 127). One evaluates an aesthetic choice by what it adds to the people’s experience, rather than solely by its content. He continues,

The evaluation of people’s choices cannot depend only on the content they choose but must compare what might be called the incremental aesthetic reward that results from their choices: the extent to which each person’s choice adds something to his or her previous experience and his or her effort toward self-realization. (Ibid.)

By calling for cultural pluralism in the church, I am by no means proposing to eliminate the music of high culture from the church’s repertory, nor to discontinue the use of critical standards in choosing music for worship. Mediocre music can never serve any lasting purpose in worship. To paraphrase Underhill, the responsibility of the church musician is to evoke the congregation’s response to their creator. Musicians have long understood that bad music inhibits this response. They are just beginning to understand the extent to which ignoring the musical culture of the congregation also makes it impossible. If the musician’s task is to educate and train the voice of the congregation, then one begins this process by taking seriously the people whose voice it is. Condemning their musical taste out of hand is very poor pedagogical practice, and it ensures that one’s efforts will meet resentment and resistance. Ideally, church musicians should approach any music, regardless of style or occasion, with understanding and the willingness to judge it on its own terms.

Music That Works

The attitude that any music that moves people is valuable for worship reverses the problem discussed above. Here, liturgical and pastoral norms appear to have a primary place, while aesthetic norms are disregarded. Advocates argue that church music is strictly utilitarian; it is fine to use “throwaway” music that dies once its immediate purpose has been fulfilled. Whereas those who subscribe uncritically to concert-hall standards ignore the people who come to church and what they do there, these people ignore the fact that bad art actually suppresses the religious spirit and therefore will never “work” in any correct sense of the term. The continual use of music with no aesthetic worth corrupts the church. In Feeling and Form, Susanne Langer writes:

Art does not affect the viability of life so much as its quality; that, however, it affects profoundly. In this way, it is akin to religion, which also … defines and develops human feelings. When religious imagination is the dominant force in society, art is scarcely separable from it; for a great wealth of actual emotion attends religious experience, and unspoiled, unjaded minds wrestle joyfully for its objective expression, and are carried beyond the occasion that launches their efforts to pursue the furthest possibilities of the expressions they have found. In an age when art is said to serve religion, religion is really feeling art. Whatever is holy inspires artistic conception. (Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953], 402)

Langer’s ideas undergird one of the points that Nathan Mitchell makes in his article, “The Changing Role of the Pastoral Musician” (Reformed Liturgy and Music 13 [1979]: 17f.). He argues that a pastoral musician is

a theologian who confronts us with the immediate raw intensity of the human search for vision, the human search for God.… Our task is to hear what the human search for God sounds like and to shape that sound into music that will challenge, provoke, affirm, annoy, encourage, and delight believers.”

The attitude that any music will do as long as it works betrays a basic misunderstanding of the aim of art and its use in worship. Art’s primary aim is not to be effective, but to allow for insight. The artist creates a form—a symbol—as an embodiment of the life of feeling. To this symbol, we react with recognition or clarified experience. This is what Langer means when she says that music, like religion, defines and develops human feelings. If the artist creates a musical form with the idea that it will move people to tears, or that tears are the only appropriate response to it, he or she is working in a closed process and not allowing listeners the freedom to bring their own experience to the symbol.

When the artist assigns meaning and prearranges a response, the artwork is destroyed. As an example, take the scene of Jesus’ trial in The Passion According to Saint John by Bach. Bach manages to bring us into the room to witness and participate in the scene. But he does not dictate our reaction to the experience. We may have many possible reactions; some are portrayed in the various characters, but many are not. Since Bach relies on us to complete the symbol, we can return to that room over and over again, bringing ourselves each time. And each time we are different. If tears were the only option, the experience would be the same and we would soon tire of it. If the response were so programmed by Bach, we might never make it to the room at all. We return to the scene of the trial in St. John’s Passion because its excess of meaning draws us.

The Musician’s Call

Music in the church should show forth what it means to live faithfully at the end of the twentieth century. Music that is derivative or distorted, or that coats over real suffering and pain and joy with sentimentality and cliché, will never really “work.” Not all music in the church needs to be contemporary, but all of it should pertain to the life of the faithful. Despite their age, Bach’s B Minor Mass, the black spirituals, the motets of Gibbons, and the hymns of Watts and Wesley still carry profound insight into the human search for God.

The task of the church musician who works with many kinds of music is to learn the categories of judgment appropriate to each, so as to judge them from the inside out. Setting criteria for good music involves deciding whether or not the symbol adequately portrays what it intends to portray. A Good Friday hymn need not say everything about the crucifixion, but what it does say should be true to that experience and relevant to the people who must use it to express their faith.

We are in a period of great change in our worship styles. Even well-trained and sincere music ministers often feel unsure in their judgments when confronted with new types of music or new ways of using music in worship. It is part of the risk of our calling that sometimes we will find, after several weeks of rehearsal, that music that originally seemed fresh and meaningful is actually flat and lifeless. Yet we cannot evade the responsibility to apply standards of judgment to the music we use. Mistakes are permitted; indolence is not.