Guidelines for Reading Scripture Effectively

The public reading of Scripture is a skill that can be developed with experience and practice. Becoming sensitive to the nature of the scriptural text and the way in which listeners hear public reading is also an important aspect of this skill development. This chapter prescribes a series of helpful approaches to Scripture reading and gives several examples for how a given passage may be brought to life through public reading.

Stress Verb Action

To sense the movement in the reading, underline all the verbs: “May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! Through it, the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. It means nothing whether one is circumcised or not. All that matters is that one is created anew. Peace and mercy on all who follow this rule of life, and on the Israel of God. Henceforth, let no man trouble me, for I bear the brand marks of Jesus in my body. Brothers, may the favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.”

Reread the entire passage aloud. As you do, push out the verbs which give a correct picture of what is going on. Sense the action and movement. Notice how the nouns, pronouns, and other words take their rightful secondary positions. Prepositions, which are the least important words (of, through, to, on, with, etc.), fall into the correct place as you catch the flow and movement in the reading.

Once you sense the movement, you are ready to interpret the emotions in the passage.

Express Emotions

Sunday worship becomes a shared belief when liturgical ministers openly express their feelings and emotions. But emotions scare some people who are still embarrassed by feelings displayed in a community setting.

The two writers of this handbook are convinced that Roman Catholics and other mainline Christian denominations are in no immediate danger of becoming overemotional in worship. If anything, we need to begin to express our honest feelings as a sign of our full relationships with God and with the community.

There is a legitimate variety of interpretations among lectors. What impresses one lector may not impress another. Taking that difference into consideration, how can lectors capture and express the emotions contained in the Scriptures? How do we proclaim with the intense feeling of a Jewish prophet? How do we convey the tenderness, anger, and worry often expressed in Paul’s letters?

In the previous section of this chapter, you learned how to emphasize verbs in order to convey the movement in Galatians 6:14–17. As you did, you may have also noticed Paul’s emotions, and, at the same time, how your own emotions were stirred.

Listen to what your feelings are telling you. Are you touched in some way? If so, stop and circle the emotion-filled words and phrases. Your task as a proclaimer is to unlock and express these emotions. Paul’s letters are quite a challenge for proclaimers who wish to capture his tenderness and concern for early Christian communities. Proclaim Paul’s letters as though it is as important for you to get the message across as it was for him to express it.

When you practice reading aloud, try to express the various emotions you feel. That is the way the Lord works through us. The way you are touched by a reading is the way you can proclaim it—if you give yourself permission to do so! Through you, the risen Jesus will touch others in the assembly.

During your proclamation, pause long enough to make certain you can shift gears emotionally. The proclaimer who takes the time to unlock the emotions in proclamation will do much to encourage the assembly to look up from their participation booklets and begin listening to God’s Word. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?

Become Sensitive to Hebrew Poetry

Read through Isaiah 66:10–14, the first reading for the fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.

What difference do you detect in the way emotions are expressed by Paul and by Isaiah? Jesus, Isaiah, and all Jewish prophets expressed their emotions in a unique style found throughout the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. The style is called Hebrew poetry.

The lines of Hebrew poetry are balanced. The same idea, mood, or emotion is repeated over and over again in concrete images.

Jewish poetry is probably different from the poetry familiar to you. The key to understanding this poetry is an appreciation of the parallel, balanced structure. Dom Celestin Charlier gives an excellent description:

Parallelism is the natural mold for an idea that can only be evoked by repetition and suggestion. Its purpose is not only to enrich the primary statement by giving it precision but also to create a gradual and insistent rhythm. The result can be compared to a succession of waves, ebbing and flowing over a rock, or to a series of concentric circles rising in a spiral around an axis. (The Christian Approach to the Bible [New York: Paulist Press, 1967], 138)

Look again at the reading from Isaiah. How many different moods are expressed in parallel fashion? Basically, one emotion is expressed, that of jubilant rejoicing. In the five verses of the reading, that emotion is expressed several times. How many parallel expressions do you find? We find at least twelve.

If you proclaim the Isaiah reading as prose or narrative, you will completely lose its meaning. To proclaim biblical poetry effectively, first recognize and study the parallel lines. Sense the main feeling in the passage. Experience the emotion rhythmically, like ocean waves hitting a beach. In your proclamation, convey this same feeling in a deliberate, unhurried manner. Your timing is essential. Pause briefly between parallel images. As you proclaim the rhythmic lines, paint concrete images.

Another example of Hebrew poetry is the responsorial psalm for each Sunday. The main emotion is expressed in the refrain. The refrain for Psalm 66, the psalm for the Fourteenth Sunday, Cycle C, is “Let all the earth cry out to God with Joy!” This sentiment is repeated in all 15 or 16 parallel lines.

Let all the earth cry out to God with joy
Shout joyfully to God, all you on earth
Sing praise to the glory of his name
Say to God, ‘How tremendous are your deeds!’

And so forth throughout the psalm.

This rhythmic, balanced style is found in the Psalms, the prophets, and the Old Testament wisdom literature, such as Proverbs, Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom. Soon you will easily recognize and enjoy proclaiming the poetic structure of Hebrew poetry.

Nervousness—Friend or Foe?

Getting rid of nervousness is uppermost in the minds of most lectors, especially those who are beginners in the ministry. Only two lectors out of more than 2,000 that we have worked with even claimed they do not feel nervous. It is normal to experience the jitters before doing something in public, whether acting in a play, giving a talk, or proclaiming the Word. Professionals who earn their livings in the public eye tell us nervousness actually aids in their effectiveness.

In our proclamation workshops, we have heard many successful remedies for the proclaimer’s Sunday morning case of nerves. Here are some suggestions that have worked for others:

First of all, admit to being nervous. That admission will begin to take the edge off your nervousness. At least you are no longer in the denial stage.

It may also help you to know that your nervousness is largely undetected by the assembly. (By the way, it is sound advice not to make eye contact with your children when you are proclaiming.)

Thorough preparation is the best deterrent to run-away jitters. The better your preparation, the less nervous you become.

Arrive early. Coming to church just on time is unsettling for you and the other liturgical ministers.

Do you worry about difficult-to-pronounce proper names? During your preparation sessions, telephone someone who can help you with the correct pronunciation. You may prefer to check a Sunday Lectionary Pronunciation Guide. It is best not to wait until Sunday morning to settle on the pronunciation you will use.

Take some deep breaths before starting the proclamation—not through the microphone, of course!

Offer your proclamation as a gift of love to your assembled sisters and brothers. This prayer said silently right before the moment of proclamation has helped control the nervousness of several lectors: “Father, I proclaim your Word because I love you and I love your people.”

Another way to control the shakes is to hold the lectionary in your hands during the proclamation. As you hold the book, nervous energy is released without the notice of the assembly. When the lectionary lies flat on the stand, or when your hands are tightly gripping the side railing, you have no chance to relieve your nervous feeling. Try holding the lectionary. It will relax you.

Nervousness often indicates a preoccupation with self. What will happen if you make a mistake? Chances are you will survive, and so will the assembly.

What should you do when you make a mistake? If your mistake has not changed the meaning of the passage, relax. Continue the proclamation. If your mistake does change the meaning, relax. Without words of apology, simply go back and repeat the phrase or sentence.

No assembly has a right to expect perfection in the proclamation. In fact, a faith-filled proclaimer who occasionally makes mistakes is preferred over a perfect but lifeless lector.

Do you still feel nervous? That’s normal. Properly channeled, your nervousness will help you become a better proclaimer.

Your Body Speaks

Dress appropriately for the occasion. Your Sunday best will do. Choir robes or clerical vestments seem out of place for this ministry. The Word you proclaim is a Word that has become flesh in our world. Lay garb makes a statement to that effect.

In many parishes, the lector carries the lectionary in procession. Hold the book high enough to be seen, but not so high that you feel awkward. Be dignified. Walk with a purpose. Don’t rush. When carrying God’s Word, there is no need to bow or genuflect.

Proclaim from the large dignified lectionary, not from a flimsy paperback.

When you are at the podium, act natural. Be yourself. Stand with your two feet firmly planted on the floor or platform. Your parish liturgy committee may wish to provide a small stool at the podium so that shorter lectors can be easily seen.

Your body also speaks through eye contact and gestures, which will be treated later in this chapter.

Effective Breathing

Though our lungs have been taking in air all our lives, many of us do not know how to breathe deeply and correctly. The following exercises will help you breathe effectively.

Stand up. Place your hands on your sides, above your hips, just at the base of your rib cage. Breathe through your nostrils. Inhale deeply. As you inhale, your diaphragm expands, and you feel your hands being pushed away from your sides.

Exhale slowly and let the air completely out of your lungs. As your diaphragm contracts, you feel your hands sink into your sides.

Repeat several times, with your hands on your sides. Inhale deeply. Exhale deeply.

When you first attempt this deep breathing exercise, there is a good chance you may feel dizzy. If this happens, sit down and relax. The dizziness will pass. Through correct breathing, you have merely taken in more oxygen than you are accustomed to.

Continue the exercise. Inhale. Your diaphragm expands and your hands are pushed away from your sides. Exhale. Your diaphragm contracts and your hands sink into your sides. Inhale. Exhale.

In deep breathing, there is no reason why the sound of your breathing should be much louder than your normal breathing. When you are breathing correctly, you can take in a great deal of air without a whooshing sound picked up by the mike system.

When you breathe, your shoulders should remain level. Movement of the shoulders actually constricts breathing. In deep breathing, there is a great expansion of the diaphragm and some expansion of your chest.

Practice the breathing exercise until you have mastered it well enough to feel your diaphragm expand and contract without having your hands on your sides. Correct breathing will help you in volume and voice projection.

Volume and Voice Projection

Most new lectors have to learn to project their voices. Even the most excellent microphone system does not compensate for a lack of voice projection and poor volume.

Get familiar with the mike system in your church. Arrange to have a practice session with another lector. Turn off the microphone. Have one lector stand in the back of the church. That person asks the lector at the podium to repeat each line with greater voice projection until the lector can be easily heard by the person standing in the rear of the church. That is probably the level of projection needed with a live microphone when the church is full for Sunday liturgy.

Every word is important. Attack the first word: “A READING FROM.… ” When you project your voice adequately, the volume takes care of itself.

Voice projection is not the same as shouting. Projection is a skill everyone can learn, even people who are soft-spoken in normal conversation.

Be sure to ask someone for feedback after the liturgy. You will soon become aware of the progress you are making, and you will feel better about yourself as a proclaimer.

Clear Enunciation

Exaggeration is the key to good enunciation. Use your lips, your teeth, and the tip of your tongue. Guard against lazy lips and a lazy tongue. Your diction for ordinary conversation probably falls short of what is needed in your proclamation.

A tape recorder used during a practice session will reveal which sounds you tend to slur. Do you say “Peter and Paul,” or “Peter ’n’ Paul”? Do you habitually swallow final syllables? Try to distinguish between final “t” and final “d.” Is the word “lend” or “lent?”

Every lector needs to improve his or her diction to some degree. One lector who had had speech therapy received the following exercise to achieve clearer diction: Say “B D F L M P T V” as quickly and distinctly as possible.

Another diction exercise is to say quickly: “Use the lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.”

One lector recommended that as you drive to church make the “BBBRRR” sound that children use when they play with toy cars. That sound will get the blood flowing in your lips, thereby improving your diction.

Finally, we should mention that good diction is attainable only if you open your mouth sufficiently.

Try all these suggestions. Find out what works best for you.

Pace, Pauses and Eye Contact

Most lectors, regardless of experience in the ministry, are rapid public readers. Nervousness only compounds the speed problem. If your pace is too rapid, you will be unable to use pauses and eye contact effectively.

A tape recorder in a practice session will reveal your pace as rapid or slow. The best way to counteract rapid pace is to slow down deliberately, right from the first words of your proclamation: “A READING FROM.… ” Pauses and successful eye contact go hand in hand. Plan them during your practice session. Use a pause and eye contact at the conclusion of a thought so that your listeners have time to grasp the thought. You are familiar with the thought. The assembly has one chance to catch it.

Eye contact is also appropriate when a strong emotion is delivered. A few well-planned eye contracts are usually sufficient.

Some lectors avoid eye contact because they fear losing their place on the page. To keep your place, have one hand always on the lectionary page. Don’t run your finger back and forth across the page, but let your hand slide down the page as you go through the reading. Place your finger at the exact place where you will resume after making eye contact.

New lectors are generally at one of two extremes with regard to eye contact. Some try to use too much eye contact, which lessens its effectiveness. Others are wary of eye contact. All lectors can safely make deliberate eye contact in at least two places in each reading: Right after announcing the reading, “A Reading from the Prophet Isaiah,” and just before concluding with, “This is the Word of the Lord!”

Beware of too much eye contact. Some lectors look up too frequently and without reason. What results is the bobber effect? Meaningless eye contact distracts the assembly and causes the flow of thought to be lost. Pause briefly, with your head bowed, after each reading. No explanation is necessary for the assembly to understand the gesture. Your bowed head gently invites the assembly to reflect on the Word just proclaimed.

Any Other Gestures?

Occasionally, we hear of someone who argues in favor of free and extensive gestures for the lector. Only three gestures are appropriate: carrying the lectionary in procession; holding the lectionary during proclamation; and occasional well-planned eye contact.

Keep your eyes primarily on the lectionary page. You are proclaiming the Lord’s Word from the lectionary, not your own thoughts or ideas.

A completely memorized proclamation should also be avoided. Attention becomes focused on the performer.

Sharing Faith Convictions

From childhood, many of us have been discouraged from expressing negative feelings: Don’t be angry, fearful, or jealous. And so we are generally uncomfortable with negative reactions in ourselves and in others. The result is that when we turn off expressions of negative feelings, we also become unable to share positive feelings freely. Therefore, many of us have to learn how to share our faith with others.

Make the decision to share your faith as you proclaim the Word. Gradually you will improve in your ability to do so. If you become discouraged, keep trying.

How can you tell when you are making progress? Ask yourself the following questions: Am I expressing genuine enthusiasm when I proclaim the Word? Is my faith conviction transparent? Do I proclaim the readings as an urgent invitation to Eucharist?

The Functions of Music in Worship

Music in worship serves many purposes and manifests itself in a variety of expressions. It is used both to praise God and to proclaim the Word; it both expresses prayer and relates the Gospel story. This article examines the various functions of music in worship and describes their implication for the church musician, who is the leader of the people’s song.

What is the role of the church musician? The question can be answered by looking first at the nature of the church’s song. Five headings suggest themselves.

A Song of Praise

The church’s song, especially for Protestants, is most obviously a song of praise. Many Psalms—like Psalm 98, “O sing to the Lord a new song”; Psalm 100, which calls us to “Come into [God’s] presence with singing”; or Psalm 150, where instruments and “everything that breathes” is all exhorted to praise the Lord—give expression to what is implicit throughout the Bible: God is to be praised, and music is one of the chief vehicles for expressing that praise.

Luther explains how this song of praise comes about. “God has made our hearts and spirits happy through His dear Son, whom He has delivered up that we might be redeemed from sin, death, and the devil. He who believes this sincerely and earnestly cannot help but be happy; he must cheerfully sing … ” (Foreword to the Geistlich Lieder of 1545, quoted in Walter E. Buszin, Luther on Music [St. Paul: North Central Publishing Company, 1958], 6). God acts with loving-kindness toward us, and we respond with a jubilant song of praise. That is an essential part of the church’s song from its most formal to its most informal expression.

Karl Barth, one of the most important twentieth-century Reformed theologians, virtually made the church’s song of praise a mark of the Christian community. He wrote, “The praise of God which constitutes the community and its assemblies seeks to bind and commit and therefore to be expressed, to well up and be sung in concert. The Christian community sings. It is not a choral society. Its singing is not a concert. But from inner, material necessity it sings.…”

What we can and must say quite confidently is that the community which does not sing is not the community. (Church Dogmatics, IV.3., second half, trans. G. W. Bromiley [Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark], 866-867)

A Song of Prayer

The song of the church is also a song of prayer. This perspective finds preeminent expression among Roman Catholics and those with more Catholic liturgical forms. The roots of temple and synagogue worship are a sung tradition, as are Christian liturgies of both the East and the West. Gregorian chant, which accompanied much of the Western liturgical tradition, is seen by some as prayer itself (Dom Joseph Gajard, The Solesmes Method, trans. R. Cecile Gabain [Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1960], vii). The Solesmes school of thought even calls Gregorian chant “a way of reaching up to God” and “a means of sanctification” (ibid., 85).

While many who live in the heritage of the sixteenth-century Reformers may wince at the Solesmes perspective because it can easily be seen as works’ righteousness, John Calvin himself considered church song in the section on prayer in his Institutes (ed. John T. McNeill [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960], III:X:31–32.) Luther and the Lutheran church retained the singing of collects and indeed the whole liturgy, and a large body of Protestant hymns are in fact prayers. Though the emphasis may differ, almost all traditions treat music as prayer in some way. That should not surprise us any more than using music as praise should surprise us. Human beings both laugh and weep. Laughter is the incipient form of sung praise, as weeping is the incipient form of sung prayer (cf. Joseph Gelineau, Voices and Instruments in Christian Worship [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1964], 15-19). The two very often run into one another and cross (see Patrick D. Millar, Jr., Interpreting the Psalms [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986], 64-78).

A Song of Proclamation

The church’s song is also a song of proclamation. The author of Ephesians expressed this by saying, “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:18–19).

Here it is clear that music is a means by which the words and word of the gospel are proclaimed. Luther referred to the parallel verse in Colossians (3:16) and wrote, “St. Paul … in his Epistle to the Colossians … insists that Christians appear before God with psalms and spiritual songs which emanate from the heart, in order that through these the Word of God and Christian doctrine may be preached, taught, and put into practice” (Preface to the Geistliche Gesangbuchlein of 1524, quoted in Buszin, Luther on Music, 10).

There is often an element of praise in thoughts of this sort. One can easily move from music as proclamation to music as praise without realizing it. Such a leap removes the distinction between these two motifs and tends to collapse one into the other. Usually, since praise is so obvious, it takes precedence.

The use of music to proclaim the word, however, needs to be kept separate, even though the connections to praise can be close. This is true not only for theological reasons but to do justice to the church’s musical heritage. Much of that heritage is exegetical or proclamatory: music helps to proclaim, to interpret, to break open the Word of God. That is in part what happens when the congregation sings. That is why, from ancient times, biblical lessons have been sung or chanted. Motets by Schütz and chorale preludes, cantatas, and passions by Bach are more complex examples of the same intent. Without a kerygmatic (proclamatory) understanding of these pieces, they are incomprehensible (see Robin A. Leaver “The Liturgical Place and Homiletic Purpose of Bach’s Cantatas,” Worship 59:3 (May 1985): 194–202 and J. S. Bach as Preacher: His Passions and Music in Worship [St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1984]).

The Story

Praise, prayer, and proclamation probably move, for many, from the most to the least obvious definitions of church music. A still less obvious aspect of the church’s song is, upon reflection, both the most obvious and the most profound: the church’s song is story.

When the people of God recount the history of God’s mighty acts, they invariably sing. The morning stars “sang together” at creation on behalf of the people (Job 38:7). After their deliverance from Egypt, Moses and the people sang a song (Ex. 25:1–8). The reason for the psalmist’s songs of praise is that God “has done marvelous things” (Ps. 98:1). New Testament canticles like the Magnificat (Luke 1:47–55) and the Benedictus (Luke 1:68–79) are songs that recount God’s mighty deeds. The songs of Revelation tell the story of God’s mighty acts in an eschatological frame of reference. From the beginning of the biblical saga to its end, from one end of history to the other, the story is a song to be sung.

The same can be said of the church’s hymnody. If you were to lay out the hymns of almost any mainstream hymnal in a sequential fashion, you would find the entire story of God’s mighty acts there—from creation through Old Testament history and incarnation, to the church in the world “between the times,” to last things. Individual hymns often tell the story by themselves. “Oh, Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High” is a good example. Music is the vehicle by which the community remembers and celebrates what God has done—which leads me to three points about the church’s song as story.

First, it is sequentially and logically easy to lay out the story of the Bible from creation to consummation as I have just done in the last two paragraphs. In fact, the story is more sophisticated than that, and sorting it out is more complicated. Like our own stories and those of the psalmist, it often begins in the midst of things, with personal laments and personal songs of thanksgiving and with people who emerge on the stage of history with their own struggles and visions. For the Christian, the event of Jesus stands at the center of the story and as its key. It radically alters and fulfills all personal laments, thanksgivings, struggles, and visions, and gradually gives meaning to past and present.

Second, music has a peculiar communal and mnemonic character. A group who sings together becomes one and remembers its story, and therefore who it is, in a particularly potent way. Hitler knew this and exploited the demonic potential of that reality. Whenever the church loses its song, a vacuum is created that the Hitlers among us will invariably fill.

Third, music spins itself out through time just like the story which the song recounts, and just like the worship where the song is sung. As the Eastern Orthodox church knows so well, music “is by nature an event. It is dynamic rather than fixed.” Like the story and like worship and “more than any other art … it carries the possibility of change, of transformation” (Archbishop John of Chicago, et al., Sacred Music: Its Nature and Function [Chicago: The Department of Liturgical Music, Orthodox Church in America, 1977], 2). This means it is peculiarly suited not only to tell the story but to accompany worship as well.

A Gift of God

Finally, the church’s song, like music itself, is a gift of God. Music is a joy and delight with which God graces creation. We do not bargain for it. We do not deserve it. It is simply freely given, there for the hearing, a joyous overflow of creation’s goodness.

This gift can be viewed in many ways. One is the way Luther did it. Oskar Söhngen points out that Luther was forever amazed that music, this “unique gift of God’s creation,” comes from “the sphere of miraculous audible things,” just like the word of God (“Fundamental Considerations for a Theology of Music” in The Musical Heritage of the Church, vol. 6 [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1962], 15.) This perceptive insight points to music as a gift and to the close relationship between music and words: both are audible, words, amazingly, can be sung, and it is all gift.

A more Catholic approach, like Joseph Gelineau’s, is to call music “God’s daughter,” given to humanity to signify the love of Christ (Voices, 27). Viewed this way, music almost takes on the character of a sacramental sign that points beyond itself to pure love. The Eastern Orthodox church often takes a similar view: that music can “reflect the harmony of heaven” and “can provide us with a foretaste of the splendor of the Age to come” (Archbishop John, Sacred Music, p. 2, 3).

These views always bring with them music’s power to uplift, transform, refresh, and recreate the heart and soul. John Calvin asserts this when he calls music a “gift of God deputed” for “recreating man and giving him pleasure” (Charles Garside, Jr. “Calvin’s Preface to the Psalter: A Re-Appraisal,” The Musical Quarterly 37 [October 1951]: 570). While Ulrich Zwingli in the sixteenth century related the refreshment of music to secular play, thereby allowing music no relevance at all to worship (Charles Garside, Jr., Zwingli and the Arts [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966]), even liberal Protestantism today may call music “revelatory.” Robert Shaw, for instance, when he was installed as minister of music of the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, Ohio, quoted J. W. N. Sullivan and argued that “a work of art may indeed be a ‘revelation’ ” (Music and Worship in the Liberal Church, typescript, September 25, 1960, 8). Many Christians would disagree with what Shaw means by revelation and worship, but his use of the term revelation shows how all worshiping traditions grapple with the gift of music and with its power.

The Cantor’s Task

A host of theological issues attend these matters. The intent here is not to explain them in great detail. The point is that defining the church’s song under the headings of praise, prayer, proclamation, story, and gift offers clues to the dimensions of the cantor’s task.

Leading the People’s Praise. The cantor is the leader of the people’s praise. The explosive response to God’s grace, in order to be expressed, needs form and shape. Someone has to take responsibility for that forming and shaping, and this is the cantor’s role. He or she has to sense the capacities and resources of a particular congregation, then write or choose music that expresses the praise of God with those capacities and resources. Once the music is composed and chosen, the cantor must then lead the people in actually singing the song of praise.

The song of praise is preeminently vocal. Words are the means by which our praise is articulated, and music is the means by which the articulation is carried aloft so that song gives wings to the words. But not only humanity sings this song of praise. The whole creation is called to join in. Instruments are therefore called to play their part. That part is not only to accompany the voices but to sound alone where fitting and appropriate. The cantor is called to coordinate this and even to play, as talents warrant so that instrumental music relates to the people’s song of praise. Neither instrumental music nor any other music ought to be an afterthought or an unrelated addendum.

Leading the People’s Prayer. The cantor aids the presiding or assisting minister in leading the people’s prayer. The presiding and assisting ministers bear the primary responsibility for the proper prayers and petitions of a particular service, and the pastor bears the ultimate responsibility for the prayer life of a people. The cantor assists in this responsibility in the following ways:

First, the cantor provides the leadership for the people’s litanic responses, spoken and sung. Corporate responses to a pastor’s bids, even when spoken, are incipiently musical—elated forms of speech. The cantor through his or her direct leadership or through training of the choir shapes this response and thereby helps to shape the prayer life of the people.

Second, since some hymns are themselves prayers, the cantor sometimes leads the people in prayer by leading hymns.

Third, the choir also sings some texts that are prayers. In this case, the cantor leads a group who prays on behalf of the people just as the pastor does. This is obviously not a performance before the people; it is rather an act of intercession on the people’s behalf.

Proclaiming the Word. The cantor aids the readers in the proclamatory work of reading lessons. This may on some occasions involve the use of more or less complex choral or solo settings of lessons in place of readings. That is rare for most of us. It should not be normative, although it deserves more consideration than we normally accord it. Where lessons are sung by a lector, the cantor should obviously aid those who do the singing. For most of us, lessons are read. There too the musician has a role we rarely think about, namely, helping readers read clearly. Musicians understand phrasing and the ebb and flow of a line of words. Choral musicians understand diction and enunciation. These are necessities in good reading, which is close to a lost art in many churches and in the culture at large. Musicians can help repair the breach so that lessons can be understood.

The preacher obviously has the primary proclamatory task of publishing the good news of God’s grace and love among us. By careful application to the biblical word and the daily newspaper, the preacher speaks his or her poor human words in the hope that they will be heard as the word of God itself so that the love of God in Christ will be known among us.

The cantor cannot and should not attempt to preach in the same way as the preacher because, first, the composing of text and music and the preparation of music by musicians preclude the preacher’s relevance to the moment, and, second, the preacher can examine detailed relationships in spoken prose in a way that is not possible for the musician.

On the other hand, a polyphonic piece of music or the simultaneous juxtaposition of two texts gives the musician an opportunity to proclaim relationships in a way that is not open to the preacher, who must communicate in a stream of monologue. And, while the relevance of the moment is not the responsibility of music, which is of necessity more prepared and formal, music also has the capacity for breaking open a text in a way spoken words cannot do. In singing a hymn or hearing a Schütz motet or a Bach cantata, many Christians have shared William Cowper’s experience:

Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in his wings.

Telling the Story

The cantor helps the people sing the whole story and thereby tells the story. The preacher also tells the story, of course, as does the teacher. Some understandings of preaching would even argue that it is at heart storytelling. There is a sense in which that is true: proclaiming the good news is telling the story of God’s love. But the preacher is always compelled to apply the story to us at this moment so that the searing edge of God’s love can burn its way into our hearts. This requires the context of the whole story, and preaching can only give that context over time or in an ancillary way. The cantor is responsible for the context and the fullness of the story.

This means that the cantor tells the story by seeing to it that the whole story is sung. The lessons, prayers, and sermons for a given service are likely to have a thematic focus. The hymnody, psalmody, and anthems ought to relate to that focus also, but in addition, they flesh out the rest of the story and remind us of other parts of the plot. Over the course of a year, the whole story should certainly have been sung, from Creation to Last Things. This means that doing the same six or ten hymns over and over does not serve the people well, because it keeps them from singing the whole story and omits much of the context the preacher needs for his or her words.

The Steward of God’s Gift

The cantor is the steward of God’s gracious gift of music. Since this gift is so powerful, the steward receives tremendous power as the deputy. That power can easily be misused for selfish ends of ego gratification and personal power. The cantor is called, therefore, to the paradox of using the power which is granted, but of using it with restraint on behalf of God in Christ from whom all blessings—including this one—flow.

That paradox brings with it another. The cantor knows that the preacher or lector can stumble over a word here or there, and still the message will have its impact. To stumble over a note is much more dangerous; the message’s impact will dissipate much more quickly when there is musical error. So the cantor is constantly constrained to attempt excellence and perfection that are never humanly possible. That drives the church musician to rehearse and practice every detail until it is right, for without practice there is the certainty that the necessary perfection and excellence will never be achieved. The paradox is that even with disciplined rehearsing, there is no guarantee. The musician who is at all sensitive knows that when she or he finally gets it right, that too is a gift for which the only appropriate response is thanksgiving.

12 Roles Artists Play in Life and Living

Artistically gifted people have been endowed with “unusual wisdom at imaginative design and expression” (the definition of the Hebrew term “craftsman”—see e.g. Ex. 31 or Ex 35).

Hopefully these categories will help you recognize the strategic ways the artistically inclined are critical to the way God has designed human relationships and community.  

Artists are far more than wacky eccentrics; they are “imaginative expression specialists” (a term I’ve been using for several years). And they have been created by God for the purpose “of leading people into touching the transcendent realities God, and life.

So hopefully these twelve areas will help you see more clearly how and why “Artistics” are so important to the way God has designed us and the way we related to Him, and to ourselves and others.

ARTISTICS are clearly strategic to the ways God’s made the World because, through our God-given design we are:

  1. Human Expression Specialists—who have been endowed by God with unusual wisdom and skill in imaginative human expressions.
  2. Transcendence-Touchers—leading Humanity into touching the transcendent realities of LIFE, and GOD.
  3. Environment-Designers—Culturally Appropriate Gathered Worship, Celebration, and Memorialization (funerals, weddings, rites-of-passage, any EVENTS in which the Community manifests its “heart-and-soul” in tangible terms).
  4. Heart-Strikers of Humanity—specialists in sculpting “environments” wherein people’s hearts can enter and touch the Transcendent Realities of life, and of GOD.
  5. Values-Reflectors of the culture or the community—we always reflect, express, manifest the Community’s/Culture’s core attitudes, beliefs, and values … through the creative human expressions that go beyond WORDS and STATEMENTS. In fact, these OTHER Expressions as a WHOLE … are much more IMPACTING than are Words by themselves.
  6. Relationship-Makers—positives that artists bring to human interaction—that produce relationships.
    • We are curious about cultural expressions (yes there are exceptions).
    • We are respectful of and interested in cultures’ ways (yes there are exceptions).
    • We forge relationships, in the process of shared-artistic-collaboration, … wherein productive mutual appreciation increases openness, interaction, explanation, understanding; and ultimately loving relationships.
  7. Community (Culture)-Connectors – providing the Christian Community holistic channels that facilitate our ability to …
    • Contribute – contribute to community and culture.
    • Confront – confront the problems of community and culture.
    • Correct – bring corrective input TO the community and culture.
  8. Compassion-Context-Creators—artistic activities—drama groups, bands, choirs, art groups, public mural projects, dance classes and groups, video/film classes and projects … motivated by the need and intent to CARE and DEVELOP the person and the community.
  9. Story-Tellers of our culture or community—we are the “mouth-pieces” of our cultures and communities—narrating our peoples’ stories through the poems, paintings, dances, films, dramas, designs, architecture, fashions, sculptures, songs, and lore of the people; and interpreting how our story makes sense and has meaning within the framework of The Story of the World (The BIG Story of GOD, Himself).

AND for you who insist that we highlight the PROCLAMATION that does occur through each of these nine just-mentioned Dynamics of the Artist’s Role in community and culture, I could suggest a 10th role of the artistic expression specialist – that of . . .

  1. Public-Proclamation-Producers –
    • Designing, directing, and doing public meeting and events
    • Designing and doing
  2. Boundaries Stretcher
  3. CULTURE CREATORS we are the “specialists” at creatively arranging human Metaphors, Symbols, and Signal Systems in ways that express culture

We are the specialists who creatively design the PROGRAMMING that captures the Transcendent realities of LIFE and COMMUNITY in ways that people can ENTER, HOLD, EXPERIENCE.