Roman Catholic

Actions of Reverence at the Eucharist and the Design of the Table

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Christians in many worshiping traditions use a variety of ritual actions to indicate their reverence for the worship of God and participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist. This article explains what these actions of reverence look like and how the architectural design of the sacramental symbols can enhance their meaning.

We were well trained from our earliest childhood and had been so for countless generations. When we entered God’s House, after having made the sign of the cross with holy water, we genuflected toward the tabernacle (on or above the main altar) and then entered a pew where we knelt in prayer. In many cases, the ritual had become perfunctory, but we knew the etiquette of entrance into God’s presence. Whether coming into church for private prayer or Mass, we knew how to get started. We knew that the genuflection was a special mark of honor and greeting to Christ sacramentally present in the tabernacle.

Things have changed. Now Roman Catholics entering new and/or renovated worship spaces seem at a loss as they perceive that the tabernacle, the central focus of liturgical etiquette in the experience of Catholics more than 30 years old, has been relocated within or outside the main worship space. The altar, with the ambo and presider’s chair, has replaced the tabernacle as the visual center of the worship space. Rarely do we see, however, a new etiquette of entrance consonant with this rearrangement. It would seem that the sacramental presence of Christ in the tabernacle was so central to Catholic piety that its absence causes ritual confusion.

The confusion is a testimony to the loss of an ancient element of popular Catholic spirituality—devotion to the altar. The restoration of the altar to its former architectural prominence is not an exercise in archaeology. It is an attempt to give physical expression to the centrality of eucharistic celebration in our common life. The altar is not itself the center but is one of the elements which makes the eucharistic act possible.

The reformed Roman Sacramentary bears witness to that more ancient reverence for the altar which was once so integral to the piety of all the baptized. The Sacramentary directs the presider at the Eucharist to reverence the altar as part of the introductory rite. This the priest does by first bowing before the altar, then approaching it and kissing it. He also has the option of incensing the Holy Table. This is an etiquette of greeting. The Table of the Lord is perceived to be a symbol of Christ who is himself altar, victim and priest, table of fellowship, food, and drink, host and fellow guest.

Just as the etiquette of the dinner party continues through the event and does not come to end with the rituals of entry and greeting, so the ritual directives of the Roman rite reveal “good manners” which bear witness to a deep altar spirituality. Whatever is placed on the Lord’s Table is set aside exclusively for God’s service. The Scriptures may be placed there until borne in honor to the ambo for the liturgy of the Word. During the preparation of the gifts, the deacon assists the priest in setting upon the altar in clarity and simplicity the bread and wine over which the eucharistic prayer shall be proclaimed. The text of that prayer is the only object to be placed on the altar with the bread and wine.

What about an altar etiquette for all the baptized? In fact, the presider models manners for all the congregation. Just as we reverence Christ present in the tabernacle, so the tradition calls us to reverence Christ’s Table, the locus of the eucharistic place of identification between Christ’s act of self-offering and our daily Christian service.

Look at the altar. Bow deeply and deliberately to it before taking your place in the congregation. This is an act of attending to the presence of the One who has called us together to hear his Word and share his flesh and blood. It is good liturgical manners. It is a way for the whole person (body and spirit) to enter into contemplative prayer.

The ritual etiquette elaborates a spirituality:

  • This Table is honored by being allowed to stand free and unencumbered. Allowing space is an act of hospitality. The altar is to be allowed its space so that it may be an instrument of liturgical hospitality for the community.
  • This Table is honored by being in harmony with the other appointments which enable our worship. If sacraments are “visible words,” then the altar must allow the table of God’s Word, the ambo, its space and not be out of balance or in conflict with it or the presider’s chair. Much less should the size, shape, or visual impact of the Lord’s Table ever dwarf the presider and/or other ministers. The altar, like good ritual music, serves the church’s ritual prayer; it does not draw undue attention to itself.
  • This Table is honored by the vesting which celebrates its crucial role in our worship. Nothing cheap or poorly crafted should adorn it. Altar cloths are not foundation fabrics for words or theme statements. Altar cloths are vesture as much as the chasuble and alb.
  • This Table is honored by keeping it free of anything and everything which is not the focus of eucharistic prayer. It is no longer a shelf for the cross and candles, much less for flowers, statues, reliquaries, missalettes, songbooks, homily notes, parish announcements, mass intentions, or the list of deceased to be prayed for during the month of November. It is certainly not the repository for pumpkins (Halloween or Thanksgiving), toys (Christmas), rings (high school celebrations), or diplomas (graduation ceremonies at any and all levels). A good rule of thumb is: if it is placed on the altar, it is consumed in the celebration and reserved for the sick (the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood), a constituent of and reserved for liturgical celebration (vessels and books), or is placed in archives of religious communities (profession charters). Anything else belongs somewhere else.

The Table of the Lord, like our dining room and kitchen tables, is a bearer of memories. To this Table Christians bring their tears and their joys, their dying and rising with Christ. As such a vessel of individual and collective memory, it is an object worthy of contemplation as much as any icon or statue. Indeed, the more we see our lives joined to the ongoing paschal offering of Christ, the more we will see the altar as a symbol of that great communion. In time the altar becomes a partner in our dialogue of prayer. The Byzantine tradition admirably sums up this rigorous sort of devotion to the altar when it directs the priest to bid farewell to the altar as he is about to leave the sanctuary at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy:

Remain in peace, holy altar of the Lord, for I do not know whether I shall return to you or not. May the Lord make me worthy of the vision of you in the assembly of the first born in heaven. In this covenant I trust.

Remain in peace, holy and propitiatory altar. May the holy body and the propitiatory blood which I have received from you be for me for the pardon of offences and the forgiveness of sins and for a confident face before the dread judgment seat of our Lord and God for ever.

Remain in peace, holy altar, table of life, and beg for me from our Lord Jesus Christ that I may not cease to remember you henceforth and for ever.

An Environment of Worship that Fosters Devout Attendance and Active Participation

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This article argues for an environment of worship that encourages the full participation of the people and complements the symbolic meaning of the actions of worship, particularly the sacraments. It is written in the context of Roman Catholic worship but reflects the concerns of nearly all highly liturgical traditions. Many of these have been emphasized throughout the Christian church, given the recent phenomenon of liturgical convergence.

We are all aware that today’s liturgy requires a different kind of space than the liturgy of yesterday. But different in what ways? Just what adjustments are required? It may be helpful to reflect on some of the differences between past and present needs. Both new buildings and remodeling require attention to them.

Before Vatican II, the church building was, above all else, a place for devoutly attending Mass. Mass was celebrated as a drama in the sanctuary to be watched by those attending. The primary mode of communication was visual, signaled in architecture by the central, elevated, and normally very large high altar, and signaled in a rite by the dramatic elevations of the host and chalice at the peak moments in the Mass. Any number of secondary elements served that visual concentration: precision movement by celebrant and ministers, symmetrical side altars and candles, deep sanctuaries drawing the eye forward and upward. Virtually everything else was subordinated to that central function of the church building as a place for devoutly attending Mass. Devotional services outside Mass took place before the altar and normally culminated in benediction. Other services either took place outside of church (e.g., anointing of the sick) or were carried out in relative privacy in corners with a bare minimum of ceremony (e.g., penance, baptism).

Today’s liturgy is the result of a reform that sought to replace devout attendance with active participation. Today’s ideal worshiper is not a spectator, but one who is part of what is taking place. The people in the pew concelebrate the liturgy with the ministers in the sanctuary (see #54 of the Instruction of the Roman Missal for the strongest possible statement of this understanding of the people’s role at the liturgy). This displaces the visual as the primary mode of communication. To be sure, watching is an indispensable element of participation in any public act. But watching is not the only element in active participation. People are expected to sing, respond vocally, listen, and, above all, to feel as a real part of what is taking place.

The absolute centrality of the altar has also been displaced by the restoration of the importance of the proclamation of the Word and the communal celebration of sacraments other than the Eucharist. Respect for the presence of Christ on the altar has been balanced by respect for his presence in proclaimed word and worshiped assembly and for his action in all the sacraments.

The arrangement of the church building requires that these enrichments of the Catholic perspective be taken fully into account. Many experts now prefer to speak of the environment for worship rather than speaking of church buildings and furnishings. The term is indeed appropriate. Liturgy is an activity that communicates on many levels and in diverse ways, and it is only when all of these various modes of communication (hearing, feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, sensing movement) are integrated and work together that the liturgy can work well. There is a genuine ecology of worship that should unite Word and sacrament, people and ministers, Christ and church.

When that ecology is neglected, we have to cope with a liturgy that is confusing and distracting, because it does not clearly signal what we are doing. For example, any number of recently built or recently remodeled churches have a large altar in the center of the sanctuary, flanked on either side by a lectern and music stand. This says, and says loudly, that the Word is only a mere appendage to the sacrament, on more or less equal par with commentary, announcements of parish schedule, and the songs of the liturgy. It is not enough to reduce the size of the music stand. The prominence of the Liturgy of the Word, not only for Mass but also for the other sacraments and for common prayer, requires that we rethink the proportion between altar and lectern. If our worship is to signal the importance of the Word, then the place of proclaiming the Word will have to look important. One of the ways to make it look important is to scale down the size of the altar. As long as the altar is located in the dead center of the sanctuary and is as large as it normally is at present, the altar will be perceived as the only important focus of attention. The conventional elongated altar is an inheritance from the medieval Mass-with-back-to-people and is totally unnecessary now that it can be seen in front of the celebrant.

In fact, our oversized altars confuse the kind of sign that the altar is supposed to be. The point of turning the altar around was not simply to make it visible, but to make it visible as the Lord’s Table around which we gather. But our very large altars inevitably mean that the gifts are swamped in a sea of linen and unnecessary decorations. The average large altar makes the Eucharist look more like starvation rations with window dressing than the banquet of the kingdom. A smaller altar, say four feet wide, would force the removal of flowers and candles to other places where they belong and allow the gifts to look more like a generous banquet.

The height of the floor on which the altar stands is an equally critical matter. The point of turning the altar around and moving it forward is to create a sense of unity with the congregation. That sense is destroyed when the altar stands in an excessively elevated sanctuary or when it stands on steps that are too high. In contemporary liturgy, dramatic elevation of the altar is a distraction. An altar is easily visible without seeming remote if the floor beneath it is elevated six inches for every thirty feet of distance between altar and people. In other words, an altar that stands a hundred feet from the back pew should stand on a floor twenty inches higher than the floor of the nave. If it stands higher, the congregation senses distance and remoteness from the altar.

Scaling down the altar and placing it lower than it once was is a real departure from the practice of the past, and some may see this as demeaning the altar. Emotions aside, it must be observed that the altar does have a different function now than it did in the past. In the old liturgy, it was the liturgical center. Now, the importance accorded to work, to the congregation, to the communal celebration of the other sacraments means that it is a liturgical center, functioning in relation to the lectern and to the people gathered around it.

Also, the primary mode of according a sense of importance to the altar in the old liturgy was its dramatic visibility. Now, the importance of the altar can be dramatized ritually with the shift of ministers from the lectern to the altar after the liturgy of the Word, with the offertory procession, with the visibility of the gifts on the altar, with speaking aloud the eucharistic prayer. We no longer need to rely so exclusively on elevation and size to make the altar appear as a thing of importance. Some new churches are being built with the altar to one side of the sanctuary.

This solves several problems at once. The lectern can come into its own, suggesting the importance of Word as well as a sacrament. The vexing problem of the celebrant’s chair is also solved. When the chair is at the side, its use makes the celebrant seem to be in temporary retirement from the celebration. When it is placed directly behind the altar, the chair either has to look like a throne or the congregation must live with looking over the top of the altar at a bodiless head. In this plan, the chair requires no pedestal or only a very low one, and the celebrant can be readily seen by most of the congregation. The greatest advantage of this plan is that chair, lectern, and altar together constitute a strong focus of visual attention. Credence tables, music stands, and devotional appointments can be readily seen as the secondary items that they are. Radical as this plan may look at first sight, it is also the one that most readily accommodates either a statue or a tabernacle at the side without distracting attention from the liturgical action itself.

Contemporary liturgy requires a larger and lower sanctuary than we normally had in the past, and not only because there are more ministers running around the sanctuary than there used to be. The ministers represent the church at the altar, and so the sanctuary should be experienced as an extension of the place where the people are. In some older churches, this is an architectural, financial, or emotional impossibility. In such cases, some kind of makeshift will be inevitable. But in other churches, the only barrier is imagination.

Another acid test of liturgical ecology is the placement of the font. There is a general awareness that baptism should be celebrated as much as possible as an action of the entire assembled church. It is often indicated by placing the font somewhere at the head of the nave or in the sanctuary. Placing the font at the front does mean that people can see more readily, and there is much to be said for this concern. But there are requirements beyond mere frontal visibility. One of the most important is room for candidates (or parents), sponsors, and ministers around the font. Not all sanctuaries readily provide this sort of room. The font should also be visible to the eye as a thing of importance and dignity. This does not necessarily require that it be of immense size. But when the font draws no more attention to itself than a music stand or credence Table or is rivaled by the tabernacle, it does not have the proper place of importance in the sanctuary.

There is still something to be said for having the font at the back of the church, near the entrance. There is nothing to be said for its being kept in the small and generally invisible baptisteries of the past. If the main aisle is wide enough, the font should stand there. Placing the font in the back suggests in a dramatic way that baptism is an entry into the church, especially if it can be used for holy water, instead of the conventional little bowl. There is an almost superstitious fear of having people touch the font or the water in it, a curious inversion of piety that makes the water more important than those who are baptized. This should be firmly resisted. The real difficulty with the font in the back is not that people cannot see, but that they generally cannot turn around comfortably during a baptism. If pews had a little more space between them, it would be possible to turn around without peril to nylons and knee bones. It should also be noticed that the word font means “fountain” or “pool,” not the sink suggested by the style of the average font. Indoor plumbing has been around for a while, and it is time that the church makes use of this convenience. Priests and catechists deplore the fact that most ordinary Catholics are so tied to the baptismal symbol of washing that everything else escapes them. A real fountain with moving water would suggest life, movement, celebration, as no font without running water can.

Active participation demands that processions play an important role in the liturgy. There is nothing like a parade to get people involved in a civic event, and the procession is the religious counterpart of a parade. A generous aisle that cuts through the midst of the assembly is a must, as is generous space between pews and sanctuary. Almost every rite of the church, to say nothing of the need for room for such necessities as wheelchairs and bassinets (this writer does not approve of the leprosarium called a “cry room”), demands that there be free room for movement.

Closely related to the processional space is the entrance and exit space. A truly appropriate entry to a church would say loudly and clearly that this is a place of significance and a place that gives welcome. Outside, even a small patio entrance would do this. Inside, there should be room for conversation, informal greetings, and real entrance rites. It is not surprising that priests are often reluctant to begin a wedding, a funeral, or a baptism at the entrance to the church. Many of them are not places where most of us would care to linger, much less pray in! Some newer or remodeled churches have the sacristy near the door. Then, not only the space, but also the ministers give welcome to the people, who have come to pray with them. Places used for genuine social occasions, like theaters and good restaurants, have just such generous entrance spaces. Places that have a more utilitarian purpose (like supermarkets and take-home eateries) allow you to move as quickly as possible from the parking lot to the counter. The question is, do we want the church to seem like a spiritual supermarket or a place that houses a serious social occasion?

Many people complain that new or remodeled churches are “cold,” and the complaint is genuine. Some are cold because of insufficient attention to lighting and color or because of poor arrangement. Some are cold because of puritan housecleaning that removes all touches of the past. With careful planning, such things as statues and vigil lights can be placed where they are still accessible for devotion, but not a distraction from communal worship. Some innovations are utterly tasteless—like tabernacles resembling microwave ovens or the refusal to use old and perfectly serviceable pieces of furniture that do not match the new decor. Any room that has all new furniture has certain sterility and flatness because it conveys no sense that this is a room whose users have a common past.

But it should also be realized that the newer church building is much more suitable for public, communal celebration than it is for private devotion. Nothing is colder than an amusement park in the winter or a good restaurant in the early morning, because those are places meant to be filled with people socializing. The more a space is functional for public gatherings and communal celebration, the less it is apt to be a pleasant place for solitude. Our newer churches probably require devotional chapels or corners that invite private prayer and reflection. This would be a far happier solution than the compromises that now afflict our churches—old high altars left in place for the reservation of the blessed sacrament, vigil lights burning before abstract Madonnas, and all the rest. Compromise is an excellent political principle, but it is liturgically disastrous. Good liturgy calls for wholehearted affirmation, and a church that is neither here nor there is anything but a strong affirmation of what we are about.

If a parish does not have a sense that certain things from the past are liturgical distractions, then perhaps its liturgical sensibilities need further education. Improvement of the celebration and understanding of the liturgy may be more necessary than remodeling the building. Better, perhaps, to make a few absolutely necessary changes and to live with a makeshift for a while, than to do a full-scale remodeling that will saddle the next four generations with the problems of their grandparents. Remodeling ought to be done with an eye to further and later improvements. If compromise is inevitable, and sometimes it is, then it should be carried out in such a way that those who are able to make further improvements will not have to undo everything that has been done in the present remodeling.

The Church Building as a Home for the Church

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The church building is the home for God’s people, providing identity and a place in the world. The article illustrates how the change in liturgical understanding since Vatican II has changed the understanding of what a church building wants and needs to be for God’s people.

What does the building want to be? Architect Louis Kahn, whose work ranges from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, introduced this question into the discussion about architecture. Although the question has been posed in a variety of disguises throughout the history of architecture, Kahn’s phrasing stands in stark contrast to the modernist preoccupation with function: What should a building do? In light of Vatican II, its reformed liturgy, ecclesiology, and view of the world, Kahn’s question may be asked more specifically: What does the church building want to be?

We may answer the question by showing how the church building has undergone a change in identity from the house of God to the home of the church. An appreciation of this change is now fundamental for designing church buildings and worship spaces. The new paradigm for the church building is, in light of the reforms, the home.

House of God—Home of the Church

Adapting an older church building to the liturgical reforms is often difficult and frequently unsuccessful. This indicates the radical shift in the identity of the parish building. The older buildings were not meant to house worshipers. They were meant to house God, and this was consistent with the theology inherent in the liturgy and popular piety of the times.

With the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Roman church aggressively attempted to defend against the confusion introduced by the Reformation, especially regarding the Eucharist. For example, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that the substance of the bread and wine undergoes a radical transformation at the moment of the consecration and becomes the body and blood of Christ, even though appearances remain the same. Reaffirmation of this doctrine renewed devotion to the consecrated host, a devotion that had its genesis in medieval church history and nourished later as the reception of Communion waned. What people felt no longer worthy to receive, they could worship and adore from a distance. Thus, the consecration at the Mass became the raison d’etre of the Mass.

Parallel with this devotion, preaching took on a life of its own outside the Mass. Architects then designed churches to feature the sermon and the consecration. The pulpit became prominent; acoustical projection became essential. However, except when the pulpit was in use, the focus was the high altar where the consecration could be seen. With the increasing focus on the consecrated host, the tabernacle found its place on the high altar. Thus, even after Mass, one could prolong that moment of consecration by gazing at the tabernacle, which typically was placed where the priest would have elevated the host. The tabernacle often included its own balcacchino where a monstrance, which also served to keep the faithful focused on the consecrated host, could be enshrined.

The architecture of the church—from the reredos that embellished and augmented the tabernacle to the plan of the building—reinforced the importance of the tabernacle and the theology it symbolized. The lines of the church from the main entrance led the eye to the sanctuary, up a flight of stairs, to the high altar upon which the tabernacle rested, augmented by an elaborate backdrop. Here was the locus of God’s presence, where one could witness the sacred moment and sustain it in worship and prayer.

In effect, the Tridentine church became a tabernacle to house the tabernacle that housed God. One came to church to pray to God who resided there. God’s court could be found there, too, hence the various side altars and shrines for the Virgin and various saints. The church was a place to make a sacred social call in God’s earthly dwelling.

We should not be too quick to denigrate such piety. It was practiced for centuries and was supported by a formidable theology. The greatest and most sophisticated architecture gave expression to it. Such architecture served the spiritual needs that today we run the risk of ignoring, forgetting, or denying.

The Essential Recovery

That piety, however, neglects the essential character of the eucharistic liturgy that the church needed to recover. To Christians, the divine presence is not manifested primarily in objects and images, but in the community of believers, especially when they gather for the eucharistic liturgy.

Despite the long tradition of seeing the consecrated host as the primary manifestation of God’s presence, the documents of Vatican II, along with subsequent documents, emphasized the primary importance of the assembly. The assembly not only has the right and duty to be present at the liturgy, but it also has the right and duty to take an active role in it. The liturgy, which formerly was a rite performed by one man for a passive congregation, became a ritual celebration demanding the activity of all present—from actively listening to the Word of God to moving around an altar in song and prayer. Sacred objects, instead of helping to focus attention on a consecrated host, now facilitate the liturgical action. In short, what was formerly the house of God has become the house of an active congregation.

The difference between the house of God and the house of the church reflects the difference between two significantly different kinds of prayer. Since Vatican II, both private passive prayer and active public prayer have been encouraged. However, they require different times and, perhaps, even different spaces. The house of God is suitable for private prayer, which calls for quiet and solitude. Even when devotions are done in common, they are essentially passive. Gestures, movement, and active responses are typically detrimental. Such prayers engage the imagination, experience, and emotions and may be deliberately inspired by sacred images and objects.

True community prayer is exactly the opposite. Because it requires the faithful to gather together as a community, it is predisposed to socializing. Entering the church quietly, saying a prayer, and waiting for Mass to begin is no longer appropriate. Community worship requires the active participation of people: to greet each other; to sing and pray with one voice; to wish each other peace; to break bread and share it; to drink from the same cup. The eucharistic liturgy still engages the feelings and imaginations of the congregation, but this occurs less through extraneous visual images beheld by the individual and more through the word, action, and symbols of the liturgy made available to the entire assembly.

Where Is the Sacred?

This shift in the nature of the church building also reflects a shift in the way the church perceives herself—from militant and triumphant to personal and serving. With Gaudium et Spes the person received renewed recognition and importance. With Lumen Gentium the people of God recovered their identity as a church of disciples and servants. With Sacrosanctum Concilium the Sunday assembly assumed a vital significance as the visible manifestation of the body of Christ gathered again to remember and reenact the saving work of the Lord.

The church needs a new architecture to house its people, its liturgy, and its other activities. This new architecture must have a “good feeling in terms of human scale, hospitality and graciousness. It does not seek to impress or even less to dominate.” A monument or temple of exaggerated proportions is no longer deemed appropriate.

The document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship suggests another possibility. “The congregation, its liturgical action, the furniture and other objects it needs for its liturgical action—these indicate the necessity of a space, a place or hall, or a building for the liturgy.”

Since the council, architects like E. A. Sovik and Frederic Debuyst have designed such halls and parish buildings fully equipped with portable altar, movable platforms, stackable chairs, office rooms, classrooms, and what Sovik calls the centrum, a space large enough for a congregation to meet for any number of reasons, only one of which is the eucharistic celebration. The new space is meant to facilitate and house the activities of a parish or faith community. The main centrum becomes a space that can be adapted to the needs of a large group, but primarily it provides space for the celebration of the Eucharist.

One might question the appropriateness of this multipurpose hall for the liturgy. As Environment and Art in Catholic Worship indicates, “such a space acquires a sacredness from the sacred action of the faith community which uses it.” At the same time, the community of the church and her liturgy find their home in the space because the space is sacred. This is not a simple matter of cause and effect, but a matter of the mutual relationship between the space the community. What is sacred about the space must be sustained by its design and “feel.” To use the metaphor from modern architecture, the model of the multipurpose hall is in danger of becoming nothing more than a machine for worship. To paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright, the church building is a machine for worship, but architecture begins where the machine ends.

Look Homeward

Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, with its emphasis on hospitality, graciousness, and human proportion, suggests that the church building should be a home, a dwelling. A home is more than shelter, more than skin to house the inner activity. Like Heidegger’s understanding of “thing,” a dwelling gathers “world.” It is the space where life occurs. It serves as a reference and orientation point. The home, the dwelling, becomes for the household part of the fabric of its life together. Home is the place where the person creates his or her world. It is the place where the person is at home in the world. This is not a matter of convenience, appliances, or decoration, but a matter of meaning, harmony, and integrity.

What are the characteristics of the home that might be pertinent to the church building?

First, the home is both public, or at least a semi-public, and a private place. It shelters, facilitates, and becomes integral to the ritual activities of the household. At the same time, it allows and fosters spontaneity, individuality, and solitude. As the place that gathers the world, establishes and maintains meaning, it must be instrumental in gathering family and friends and in gathering the self. It must help designate the subsets of the world that stand for the world and that are progressively more intimate: friends, family, lover, self. It thus articulates one’s relationship with the world.

Second, the building becomes home when the household takes possession of it. This is not accomplished by the exchange of title deeds. The classical Romans had the custom of carrying and moving their household gods with them. The household “moved in” when the gods were established in the house. The household moves in when the spirit of the family meets the genius loci, the spirit of the place, and the two are wedded, shaping each other and accommodating each other. The family takes possession when those tokens, those things which stand for the family, are established and when the new place embraces the rituals and the uniqueness of the individuals who contribute to the household’s spirit. This is not an immediate occurrence, but one that takes time and that resists manipulation.

Third, the home must stand over and against its surroundings as well as respond to them. As the subset of the world, it is of the world and opposite to the world. To maintain a sense of the mutual relationship between the home and the world, the home includes something of its surroundings: plants and animals, for example. The house, built of materials like stone and wood, assumes characteristics of its environs, while open windows for view and air allow for interpenetration of the world within and the world without.

The fourth follows from the third. Even as the home articulates the distinction between outside and inside, it must also celebrate the transition from one to the other. Entry into the home is carefully arranged so that it becomes something of an event. One removes outer garments, proceeds through a vestibule, and so on. The home is supported architecturally by a porch and a door that is an integral part of the structure, but more than a machine for gaining entry. All this conspires to promote a feeling of hospitality and welcome. The dwelling opens its arms and enfolds the one who enters and then sends them on their way.

Fifth, the house needs a center around which the household gathers. In some cultures and at certain times, this was the hearth or the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Perhaps now it is the kitchen. But it must become the center for the group’s most intimate and significant experiences. It must provide a means for preserving former experiences and for documenting the history of the household. The hearth is perhaps the best example of this. Favorite chairs were placed around the hearth. Pictures and family relics were displayed on the mantelpiece. The center is the place within the space that gathers the household, gathers meaning. It is the center of the world; the place where the family is most at home; the place where the family leads its guests to be at home with them.

Thus, the house as home facilitates relationship and communication as well as the withdrawal from them. It is a place replete with meaning and memory, a place that encourages and ritualizes the activities which are sacred to family.

Moving In

The church building is a public facility, but people who use the church building are bound together by a faith which makes them more a family than a random collection of people on independent paths.

Although there is a communal aspect to the church building, the design of the building must allow for the need to withdraw, to be alone, to pray. The building which houses the people of God and becomes the facility for their prayer and worship must accommodate both public and private prayer.

To be at home in the church building, the community must take possession somehow and move in. The household gods must be established, so to speak. The spirit of the community and the genius loci must embrace. This is achieved in a number of ways and on a number of levels. First, the design of the church must communicate the presence of God, whether the community is assembled or not. Through its eloquent beauty, it must bespeak the presence of the holy. For Catholics, the “household God” moves in when the blessed sacrament is reserved and the red lamp burns. The blessed sacrament testifies to the lasting presence of God. The “household gods” move in when the patron is adopted and the beloved Virgin finds a home.

In terms of its surroundings, the church building, like the home, must stand over and against its environs and, yet, relate to them. By separating the space for the people of God, the building thus groups the people and gives basic architectural expression to the unity of those who assemble there, but which does not extend beyond the walls to those who do not believe. Yet the church serves as a witness to the world. To be entirely self-enclosed, with no relation to the world, would frustrate the community’s essential duty to the world.

A sense of welcome and hospitality must be woven entirely into the fabric of the building. This does not take the place of a welcoming community, but architecture has the capacity to help make hospitality possible and more likely. Moreover, even when the community is not assembled, the solitary visitor ought to feel welcome to enter and pray. A church, especially in a busy urban area, has the responsibility to be a place where one can withdraw momentarily in order to recollect oneself. Such a welcome can be achieved through the combination of several elements: a vestibule; light; warmth; color; familiarity; and a place for coats, hats, bags, and so on.

Hospitality is not merely a matter of functionality. The design of the church must embrace the community and the individual. It must reveal the God who summons a people to gather. The break in the boundary, the entrance, must serve as the invitation and the point where the building begins to reveal itself.

Finally, the church building needs a center where the most significant actions of the community can be experienced. This center is where the Eucharist becomes “the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed” and “the fount from which all the church’s power flows.” Although this place is conducive to and may be used for other events such as concerts, other artistic performances, meetings, and prayer groups, its vital importance as the space for the Eucharist must not be compromised or violated. Any activity that divorces the sacred experience of the liturgy entirely from the space is a questionable practice. Space acquires its sacred nature from the activity of the community, but the sacred is not so transient a characteristic that it can be disregarded immediately after the sacred activity is completed. Like the house, the church building becomes part and parcel of the sacred activities of the community and cannot be violated without violating the sensitivities and the dynamic of the community.

The Second Vatican Council reestablished the church as a people called to holiness and to be witnesses of the good news to the world. It also reestablished the Eucharist as the activity of that people, a ritual that asserts their identity in relation to God. In light of this, what the church building wants to be is a dwelling for this people, the place that allows them to be, the center of their lives, which holds and communicates the meaning of their lives. Nothing is so expressive of this meaning as the eucharistic liturgy, and the church building that houses this sacred activity becomes an integral component of it. More than a platform or a facility for their activity, the church building becomes the place where this people gathers its world and its greater meaning, which is not finally thought, but felt. It is where religion is articulated and restored through the community’s experience of God. The church building is that existential foothold where the community is at home.

Roman Catholic Service Music Since Vatican II

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Roman Catholic liturgy, like that of many of the more liturgical churches, features texts that are sung in each liturgy or service. These are called ordinary texts. Often these texts are sung. Settings of these texts, and other frequently used texts, are called service music or liturgical music. This music is part of the liturgy itself, not something that interrupts or is added to the liturgy. Since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, Catholic churches have had more freedom in choosing service music. This has resulted in vast numbers of new compositions, many of which are valuable for churches in many worship traditions.

The repertoire and use of ritual music within the English-speaking Roman Catholic church today cannot be fully understood without understanding that, since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s (when liturgy moved from Latin to the vernacular), there has been no “official” national hymnal for the United States churches. This is a unique situation, unlike that in the English-speaking Canadian Roman Catholic churches, which have published two versions of the Canadian Book of Worship, and the Australian Roman Catholic church, which also published a national hymnal in the mid-1970s. The General Directives within the Roman Missalprovide instruction regarding the structure and elements of the Mass, but the only musical settings provided in the Missalare chant melodies for the eucharistic prayer and its acclamations, melodies which are not widely used.

This means that the publication of new music and worship books for U.S. Roman Catholics has been determined by publishing houses that are largely independent of the church and in competition with each other. Today there are a number of independent publishing houses in the United States associated with Roman Catholic worship, including GIA Publications (GIA), Pastoral Press, J. S. Paluch Company, and North American Liturgy Resources (NALR). Other companies that are affiliated to an archdiocese but that retain a good deal of publishing independence include Liturgy Training Publications, Chicago (LTP), and Oregon Catholic Press, Portland (OCP).

When a church as large as the English-speaking Roman Catholic church, with a rich liturgical tradition, changes from Latin to the vernacular in all the components of its ritual, a huge increase in the amount of new music generated is inevitable. This growth is only strengthened when combined with competition between independent publishing houses. Thus, it is not surprising that over the past 25 years music has been written and published that represents all manner of styles, quality, and appropriateness. The lack of an “official” worship book and the resulting eruption of new compositions has also meant that the United States Catholic church today utilizes a repertoire of bewildering complexity and uneven quality. A myriad of settings of the various parts of the Ordinary is currently in use in Roman Catholic churches across the United States. (One difficulty in an article such as this is the definition of terms across denominations. The Ordinary of the Mass refers to those parts of the liturgy which Lutherans and other Protestant groups often refer to as service music, that is, those parts of the ritual that are normally used each week, or at least whenever Eucharist is celebrated.) The evolution of the various weekend liturgies within one parish into organ masses, guitar masses, traditional masses, folk or contemporary masses, and silent masses (meaning the absence of music) has further aggravated this confusion. Another factor is the wide diversity of ethnic expression within the Roman Catholic church in the United States. There are many parishes today that have at least one-weekend liturgy in Spanish, and there are also a growing number of parishes that primarily reflect African-American culture in their liturgy.

Until now the choice and use of music within an individual parish have depended mainly upon the particular missalette, hymnal, or songbook which that parish uses and upon the liturgical style and interest of the clergy and musicians. In addition, it is not uncommon today for a parish to supplement published music with unpublished compositions by musicians within the parish. Musical settings of the Ordinary of the Mass consequently become nationally known through grassroots acceptance rather than because of any official mandate. This acceptance-by-acclamation system has allowed and encouraged the composition and distribution of many more settings than would otherwise have been available. While it could be argued that the number and diversity of these settings have provided for a good deal of creative interchange, the situation has also created a somewhat fragmented English-speaking church, in which neighboring churches or even the various liturgies within one parish have such different repertoires that they often can find no common eucharistic settings.

There are currently nine English-language texts of the eucharistic prayer approved for use by the Bishop’s Committee on the liturgy (BCL), the official committee that oversees and approves the publication of musical settings of those texts. For seven of the texts, the congregational responses consist of the Holy, the Memorial Acclamation (with four optional responses), and the Great Amen. Two of the prayers, both intended for use with children, include additional acclamations for the congregation. Because of the length of the Roman Catholic Eucharistic prayer texts (some of which can easily run for 5 minutes), there has been an increasing desire over the past ten years among composers, liturgists, and parish musicians for permission to publish musical settings that provide additional sung acclamations for the congregation.

Beginnings of Liturgical Renewal

In the early days of the liturgical renewal, the division into “organ-based” and “guitar-based” acclamations in settings of the Ordinary was very clear and distinct. The first guitar-based acclamations were very much like popular folk songs that utilized ritual language. Settings such as the “Missa Bossa Nova” (Peter Scholtes) published in the Hymnal for Young Christians (FEL, 1966) were widely used. Little thought was paid at this time to the connection between sung acclamations and the eucharistic prayer, or for the need to sing all the congregational parts within the prayer. The most popular of the early “organ-based” acclamations was “Mass for Christian Unity”, composed by Jan Vermulst and published by World Library Publications (in 1964) for their People’s Mass Book.

With the North American Liturgy Resources (NALR) publication Neither Silver or Gold (1974), a group of Jesuit priests calling themselves the St. Louis Jesuits introduced an influential body of guitar-based music written for liturgical use. Their compositions marked a shift toward music based more directly on scriptural texts, specifically texts from the Sunday Lectionary. Neither Silver Nor Gold also contained a number of eucharistic acclamations written in a through-composed form (similar in form to settings written for organ at that time). A “Holy, Holy, Holy” and a “Doxology—Great Amen” written by Daniel Schutte, S.J. and Robert Dufford, S.J., became immensely popular throughout the English-speaking Roman Catholic church at that time (and continue to be widely used today). As guitar-based eucharistic acclamations, these settings were a step forward. However, in their initial form, the acclamations provided no option for keyboard or other instruments and lacked a memorial acclamation, ensuring that musicians would not for some time have a complete set of eucharistic acclamations that were nationally known and could be easily accompanied by either guitar or keyboard.

Also in 1974, an English translation of The Performing Audience by the Dutch composer, Bernard Huijbers, was published in the United States. This book greatly influenced the way that liturgical music in general and eucharistic acclamations, in particular, would be composed. In The Performing Audience, Huijbers describes the concept of elemental music as a model for good liturgical compositions. Elemental music consists of simple, diatonic melodies and intervals that are mainly step motion. Leaps are to be predictable and limited in range, mainly thirds and fifths. Together with Huub Oosterhuis, a Dutch priest and text writer, Huijbers composed a number of “Tableprayers” utilizing elemental music. These were through-composed, musical settings of alternative eucharistic prayer texts. While the prayers themselves were not widely used in the English-speaking church, they helped to influence a number of other composers in the creation of later eucharistic prayers.

The “Community Mass” by Richard Proulx, which became known throughout the English-speaking world through the GIA Publications’ hymnal, Worship II (1977), set a new standard for quality eucharistic acclamations. Singable, elemental melodies, well-crafted keyboard accompaniments, and a wide variety of instrumental parts made the acclamations very useful for liturgical celebrations accompanied by the organ. Unfortunately for guitarists, Proulx’s “Community Mass”, as well as his “Festive Eucharist” and Alexander Peloquin’s popular “Mass of the Bells” were not well-suited for guitar accompaniment. It was (and still remains) very common within the same parish for one or more weekend liturgies to utilize the St. Louis Jesuit acclamations on guitar while other liturgies use the “Community Mass” on organ.

Also at the same time, Fr. Michael Joncas composed a musical setting of the Institution Narrative in his collection of music, Here in Our Midst (NALR). Although the composition did not include the entire eucharistic prayer, it served as a beginning effort pointing toward a sung eucharistic prayer setting.

More Recent Developments

Marty Haugen’s “Mass of Creation” (GIA) was published in 1984. This was the first published Mass in the United States that attempted to provide a setting of the Ordinary that could be accompanied either by organ, piano, or guitar. It sought to begin the process of breaking down the divisions between guitar and organ repertoire. One of the factors that helped in the popularization of “Mass of Creation” was the inclusion of a sung setting of Eucharistic Prayer III.

In 1986 Sr. Theophane Hytrek received permission from the BCL to publish the “Mass for St. John the Evangelist” (GIA). This was the first set of eucharistic acclamations published in the U.S. that included additional optional sung acclamations for the congregation within the eucharistic prayer. The approval of this Mass led to the composition and publication in the United States of many similar settings by other composers.

The past ten years have seen an enormous increase in the number of musical settings of the Ordinary, reflecting a wide variety of styles. The popularity of these settings has to a large degree been dependent upon the use of the hymnal or missalette in which they appear. GIA Publications’ hymnals, Gather, Worship, and Lead Me, Guide Me, have popularized Proulx’s “Community Mass,” Haugen’s “Mass of Creation” and “Mass of Remembrance,” David Haas’ “Mass of Light” and Michael Joncas’ “Psalite Mass.” The Oregon Catholic Press missalette Breaking Bread has exposed congregations to Owen Alstot’s “Heritage Mass,” eucharistic acclamations by Bernadette Farrell and Paul Inwood, and, more recently, Bob Hurd’s Spanish-language setting “Missa de Americas” and gospel-style setting “Alleluia, Give the Glory.” The most popular acclamations from North American Liturgy Resources’ songbook Glory and Praise continue to be those of the St. Louis Jesuits.

Prospects for the Future

Twenty-five years ago, no one would have predicted the amount and diversity of music that would be in use within Roman Catholic parishes today. It is therefore entirely speculative to suggest what might be the sound of Roman Catholic worship in the next century. However, there are a few tantalizing developments that might suggest the future evolution of liturgical music.

In 1992, a study group of composers, text writers, liturgists, and theologians convened by Archbishop Rembert Weakland produced the Milwaukee Report. Among other things, the document called for an increased understanding of the nature of “Christian ritual music” by all those involved in the creation, publication, and use of worship resources. Composers were called to fashion music that is “embedded within the rite,” music that finds its meaning and full expression as ritual. If this call is taken seriously, it will mean the creation of ritual music in musical forms that are more sensitive to the structure and dynamics of the liturgy, forms that are flexible, elemental, and dialogical. Some examples might be “gathering rites” that offer the option of conjoining a hymn or song with a kyrie or sprinkling rite, or “Communion rites” that yoke a fraction song (possibly an adaptation of a “Lamb of God”) with a Communion song. Rather than moving seemingly from one disjointed element to another, such a model creates (in the words of liturgist Ed Foley) a seamless “macro-rite.” Another recommendation of the Milwaukee Report was that composers, publishers, and parish musicians begin to discern which settings of ritual music have won widespread grass-roots recognition, and seek to give those settings quasi-official status so that a universal repertoire of ritual music can begin to evolve. Naturally, there is little clarity and much debate about how and to what degree such a move should happen. The Milwaukee group called on composers and publishers to “flesh out” existing ritual music publications rather than create endless new settings. This might mean setting a number of the eucharistic prayer texts to the same congregational acclamations.

Over the past six to eight years there has been a significant increase in the sharing of music between liturgical publishers. A notable result of this sharing is that a number of musical settings of the Ordinary are now appearing in all the major publications and becoming more widely known. As this trend continues, it is likely that an unofficial national repertoire of service music will evolve.

International, Interdenominational, and Multicultural Cross-Fertilization

The North American Roman Catholic church has reaped enormous benefits from its interaction with Protestant composers and text writers, and from the contributions of artists in other English-speaking countries. In the past few years, Lutheran composer Richard Hillert, English composers Bernadette Farrell, Paul Inwood, and Christopher Walker of the St. Thomas More Group, and Tony Way of Australia have all contributed settings of the Ordinary to the North American Catholic church repertoire. Liturgical compositions from such Protestant composers as Hillert, John Bell (of the Iona Community in Scotland), Carol Doran, Hal Hopson, Austin Lovelace, Don Saliers, and new settings of texts by such Protestant text writers as Timothy Dudley-Smith, Fred Pratt Green, and Brian Wren (all of Great Britain), John Bell and Graham Maule (of the Iona Community), Ruth Duck, Sylvia Dunstan, Tom Troeger, and Jaroslav Vajda have all been published by unofficial Roman Catholic publishing houses such as GIA Publications and Oregon Catholic Press.

In seeking models for dialogical ritual music, many U.S. and Canadian composers have looked to the music of other cultures. The music from the Taizé community, music collected and written by John Bell and Graham Maule for the Scottish community of Iona, and the South African music in the collection Freedom is Coming have been especially popular. The use of such music will certainly influence the musical forms and sounds of future North American liturgical compositions.

The number of Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics has been increasing dramatically in recent times. Publishers have done an uneven job at best in addressing the needs of Catholic parishes with Spanish-speaking liturgies. At the present time, composers and publishers are beginning to become more aware of the need for a more extensive and useful liturgical repertoire in Spanish. Hispanic composers Donna Pena, Lorenzo Florien, and Cuco Chavez, and the Anglo composer Bob Hurd have been providing significant music for Spanish-speaking parishes.

Congregational Singing in England, Canada, and The United States Since 1950

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Since 1950, there has been more music published for congregational singing than at any other time in the history of the church. Nearly every major denominational body, as well as many independent congregations and publishing companies, have produced official and supplementary hymnals and related collections of songs. In almost every case, these collections evidence a recovery of traditions once lost and relentless pursuit of contemporary music that is both faithful to the gospel and representative of the languages—both verbal and musical—of modern culture.

The 1950s

Several trends continued throughout the decade of the 1950s. Many new publications indicated an increase in the use of some one hundred to two hundred common historic hymns which later became the basic repertoire of congregational songs found in most hymnals. At the same time, the multiplication of simple choruses, sung chiefly in evangelical gatherings, made differences in the musical styles used in the church more pronounced.

Most hymn singing of the 1950s came to sound all the same, almost always sung to organ accompaniment. With the development of technology for sound amplification, numerous sanctuaries were “remodeled” to nullify the distraction of any sound except that which originated from the preacher or singer stationed behind a microphone. This discouraged wholehearted congregational hymn singing.

However, during the same period of time, a new working of God’s Spirit was evidenced in the phenomenon of glossolalia (i.e., speaking in tongues). This new movement claimed participants in the mainline denominations as well as churches of Pentecostal persuasion.

By the end of the decade criticism against traditional forms of worship and musical styles increased. And, although it was most intense among the youth, adults too voiced concern against archaic language and what seemed to them to be medieval music.

The 1960s

The great divide between the past and the present in congregational singing erupted in England with the publication of Geoffrey Beaumont’s Folk Mass in 1957. Written for young people, this work was composed in an innovative manner, calling for a cantor to sing a phrase of the text, which was then repeated by the congregation. This responsive form, along with the popular style of its melodies and harmony, made this work an instant success.

Similarly, in the early 1960s, Michael Baughen, later Bishop of Chester, along with some friends, sought to provide new songs for a new generation. Even though no publisher would support their first endeavor, they published Youth Praise (Michael A. Baughen, ed. [London: Falcon Books, 1966]). The Church Pastoral Aid Society subsequently published Youth Praise 2 (Michael A. Baughen, ed., [London: Falcon Books, 1969]) and Psalm Praise (Michael A. Baughen, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1973]). This cluster of friends, known as the Jubilate Group, includes such outstanding writers and composers as Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926), Christopher Idle (b. 1938), Michael Perry (b. 1942), and Norman Warren (b. 1934). It has grown to forty members, becoming well known in the United States due to the consistent effort of George Shorney, Chairman of the Hope Publishing Company. Their modern language hymnal, Hymns for Today’s Church was published both in England (by Hodder and Stoughton, London) and in the United States (by the Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, Ill.).

Fred Kaan, a one-time pastor of Pilgrim Church in Plymouth, England, also wrote contemporary hymns for his congregation which was used far beyond those sanctuary walls. His first collection of 50 texts was called Pilgrim Praise (Plymouth, England: Pilgrim Church, 1968). After moving to Geneva, Switzerland, where he collaborated with composer Doreen Potter, he published twenty new hymns under the title Break Not The Circle (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1975). Later, in 1985, Hope Publishing Company issued the complete collection of his work, The Hymn Texts of Fred Kaan (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing, 1985).

Other publications appeared with new texts and music. In London, Josef Weinberger became the publisher of a series of supplemental books beginning in 1965. These contained representative works written in a pop style by the Twentieth Century Church Light Music Group. Some of these songs also became available in the United States in the 1970s. In addition, Gailliard (London) published the Sydney Carter song, “Lord of The Dance,” in l963, followed by a collection of other songs by Carter which were recorded and made available in the United States.

Continuing in the tradition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 100 Hymns for Today (John Dykes Bower, ed., [London: William Clowes and Sons, 1969]) was published as its supplement. Some years later, a similar supplement to The English Hymnal was completed with the title English Praise (George Timms, ed. [London: Oxford University Press, 1975]).

The United States. The earliest work in the United States similar to Beaumont’s Folk Mass was Herbert G. Draesel, Jr.’s immensely popular Rejoice (New York: Marks Music Corp., 1964). Later recorded, this sacred folk mass promoted the use of electric guitars and drums in the regular worship services of churches. Then soon after Vatican II, young Roman Catholic musicians introduced a large number of folk masses intended for unison singing with guitar accompaniment. Each of these was made available both in print and on records, which accelerated their popularity.

The great success of F.E.L. (Friends of English Liturgy) Publications widened the acceptance of these and other new songs into Catholic and non-Catholic circles. Their Hymnal for Young Christians: A Supplement to Adult Hymnals (Roger D. Nachtwey, ed., Chicago: F.E.L. Church Publications, 1966) was released in Roman Catholic and ecumenical editions in 1966. A second volume appeared in 1970. Songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” “Allelu,” “Sons of God,” and “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” were commonly sung by Christian young people.

At the same time, many Methodists sang songs found in New Wine (Jim Strathdee, ed., 2 vols. [Los Angeles: Board of Education of the Southern California—Arizona Conference of the United Methodist Church, 1969,1973]), and some Presbyterians adopted Richard Avery and Donald Marsh’s Hymns Hot and Carols Cool (Port Jervis, N.Y.: Proclamation Productions, 1967).

In evangelical churches, the rapid development of the youth musical (such as Buryl Red’s Celebrate Life [Nashville: Broadman Press, 1972]) coincided with the popularity of compositions for youth by Ralph Carmichael that appeared in films and on record. A number of these songs were printed in the little pocket edition (melody line and texts) of “He’s Everything To Me” (Los Angeles: Lexicon Music, 1969).

More traditional in its orientation, the most important Protestant hymnal published in the 1960s was The Methodist Hymnal (1964), released under the expert supervision of editor/composer Carlton R. Young.

The 1970s

In the 1970s, ecumenical and denominational hymnals continued to be published. A staggering number of smaller supplemental books, often experimental in nature, also appeared.

The continuing ecumenical emphasis of earlier years was evident in the fourth edition (1970) of The Lutheran World Federations Hymnal, Laudamus (a fifth edition was published in 1984). And the more comprehensive work of hymnologist Erik Routley was evidenced in the 1974 Cantate Domino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), compiled for the World Council of Churches. In 1971 the impressive Hymn Book (Toronto: Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada, 1971) drew together quality selections from past centuries as well as some of the finest new songs, such as Sydney Carter’s imaginative “Lord of the Dance.” During the following year, 1972, the Presbyterian Church in Canada issued its own revision of an earlier book, The Book of Praise edited by William Fitch (Ontario, Canada: The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1972). This collection adopted the more modern practice of placing all stanzas of the text between the staves of music. The Baptist Federation of Canada followed with their 1973 book, The Hymnal (Carol M. Giesbrecht, ed.) And a joint American/Canadian venture, the General Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Churches, published the Worship Hymnal (Hillsboro, Kans.: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1973) with Paul Wohlgemuth as chairman/editor. The Covenant Hymnal (Chicago: The Covenant Press, 1973) of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was the result of a careful search for the finest hymns of the past as well as new works, particularly hymns written in response to requests of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. Its supplement The Song Goes On (Glen V. Wiberg, ed. [Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1990]) was issued in 1990. Meanwhile, Donald P. Hustad served as editor for one of the more scholarly books to be published by the Hope Publishing Company. That book, Hymns for the Living Church (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1974) proved itself to be a valuable resource for churches with a broad musical taste. At the same time William J. Reynolds, another outstanding national leader in the area of church music, served as editor of the new edition of the Baptist Hymnal (Nashville, Tenn.: Convention Press, 1975).

In the middle of the decade, the editors of the Roman Catholic Worship II (Robert J. Batastini, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1975]) were free to admit that the Roman Catholic Church has its own sacred music tradition, but that tradition does not include a long history of singing in the English language. Unlike their fellow Americans of the same American “melting pot” culture, Catholic parishes for the most part have yet to experience the same vitality of song that echoes from their neighboring Christian Churches.

That vitality of song had already existed in the worldwide Lutheran church for over 450 years. Lutheran immigrants to America sang their chorales in their original languages. However, by the time of the 1960 and 1962 Lutheran church mergers, those various nationalistic branches had become “Americanized,” adopting a larger number of English hymns, along with translations of their ethnic songs. The Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1987) is a culminating work that includes these translations and a number of contemporary texts and hymn tunes by recognized American Lutheran authors and composers such as Charles Anders (b. 1929), Theodore Beck (b. 1929), Jan Bender (b. 1909), Paul Bunjes (b. 1914), Donald Busarow (b. 1934), Gracia Grindal (b. 1943), Richard Hillert (b. 1923), Frederick Jackisch (b. 1922), Carl Schalk (b. 1929), and Jaroslav Vajda (b. 1919). Members of the committee which produced this book represented all of the participating American and Canadian churches in the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship.

Also of importance was the innovative and highly influential collection Hymns for the Family of God (Fred Bock and Brian Jeffery Leach, eds. [Nashville: Paragon Associates, 1976]). A new era in congregational singing was proclaimed in its preface:

Whereas it used to take decades or centuries for a hymn or song-style to become an established part of the Christian’s repertoire, today this can happen in a matter of a few month’s time. For example “Alleluia” and “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” are sung almost everywhere by almost everyone.

In addition to the appearance of these new hymnals, there was a flurry of publications of a quite different nature, published to fill the need for more contemporary songs with updated language, and using a greater variety of popular musical styles.

In England, the work of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland introduced the newest texts of Albert Bayly (1901–1984), Fred Pratt Green (b. 1903), Fred Kaan (b. 1929), and Brian Wren (b. 1936) as well as the most current music by Peter Cutts (b. 1937) and Michael Fleming (b. 1928). Galliard of Norfolk had a continuing series of books that were made available in the United States, such as Songs for the Seventies (James D. Ross, ed. [New York: Galaxy Music Corporation, 1972]). This collection contained Sydney Carter’s controversial “Friday Morning.”

In America, Hope Publishing Company’s subsidiary, Agape, and editor Carlton Young had their own series of imaginative and innovative books. In both a pocket-size edition and a larger spiral-bound edition, they presented a collection of seventy eclectic songs called Songbook for Saints and Sinners (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1971). The Avery and Marsh folk-song pieces were printed next to Catholic Ray Repp’s “Allelu,” Lutheran John Ylvisaker’s “Thanks be to God,” Southern Baptist William Reynold’s “Up and Get us Gone,” Episcopalian Herbert G. Draesel’s “Nicene Creed” and numerous black spirituals. The Genesis Songbook (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1973) which followed in l973 contained such popular songs as Stephen Schwartz’s “Day by Day,” Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” James Thiem’s “Sons of God,” Sy Miller and Jill Jackson’s “Let There be Peace on Earth,” and Gene MacLellan’s “Put Your Hand in the Hand.”

The Exodus Songbook (Carlton Young, ed. [Carol Stream: Agape, 1976]) was next in 1976 with an amazingly different gallery of songwriters: Burt Bacharach, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Paul Simon, Kurt Weil, Malcolm Williamson, and Stevie Wonder. Some of the titles indicated the unusual nature of the group of songs in this collection: “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “What the World Needs Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “A Simple Song,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “Come Sunday,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Somewhere,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

By 1977 editor “Sam” Young had turned his attention to a uniquely adventuresome supplement project. Ecumenical Praise (Carlton Young, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1977]) came to be the most experimental and influential work of its kind. The list of its contemporary composers was quite impressive: Samuel Adler, Emma Lou Diemer, Richard Dirksen, Richard Felciano, Iain Hamilton, Calvin Hampton, Austin C. Lovelace, Jane Marshall, Daniel Moe, Erik Routley, Ned Rorem, Carl Schalk, Malcolm Williamson, Alec Wyton, and Carlton R. Young.

In addition, the evangelical “youth” booklets came forth in a steady and seemingly endless stream. Many had only lyrics, melody lines, and guitar chords. They were intended to be used for unison group singing in Sunday school, at camp, in youth meetings, and in coffee houses. The youth in the Lutheran church used a number of books such as David Anderson’s The New Jesus Style Songs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972) while those in evangelical churches sang the songs in Ralph Carmichael’s He’s Everything to Me Plus 103 (Los Angeles: Lexicon Music, 1972). Those who participated in Young Life or Campus Life on high school and college campuses sang from Yohann Anderson’s Songs (San Anselmo, Calif.: Songs and Creations, 1972). In time many larger, independent hymnals included other songs of the seventies, such as Andre Crouch’s “My Tribute” (1971), Kurt Kaiser’s “Oh, How He Loves You and Me” (1975), the Gaithers’ “There’s Something About That Name” (1970), Jimmy Owen’s “Clap Your Hands” (1972), and a large number of spirituals that had been revived during the years of civil unrest.

The 1980s

Ecumenical efforts in the publication of hymnbooks continued. The successor to the 1933 English Methodist Hymn Book was the 1983 Hymns and Psalms: A Methodist and Ecumenical Hymn Book (Richard G. Jones, ed. [London: Methodist Publishing House, 1983]) Prepared by representatives of the Baptist Union, Churches of Christ, Church of England, Congregational Federation, Methodist Church in Ireland, United Reformed Church, and the Wesleyan Reform Union, it produced one hymnbook for several denominations, not unlike the idea of the unified Korean Hymnal of 1984 and similar efforts in Sweden. The contemporary British authors represented in this large (888 items) Methodist book include Albert Bayly, Sydney Carter, Timothy Dudley-Smith, Fred Pratt Green, Alan Luff, Erik Routley, and Brian Wren. Some of the notable hymn tune composers are Geoffrey Beaumont, Sydney Carter, Peter Cutts, Erik Routley, Norma Warren, and John Wilson.

The “hymn explosion” that had taken place in Great Britain became the “hymnal explosion” of the 1980s in the United States. This was due in part to the exceptional efforts of George Shorney, chairman of America’s largest publisher of nondenominational hymnals, the century-old Hope Publishing Company. As host to visits of leading English hymn-writers and the publisher of single-author books of texts, he did more than any single person to promote the use of those new texts on this side of the Atlantic.

One of the early volumes contained The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (Bernard Braley, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1982]), complete with notes on each text. This collection contained “General Hymns,” “Hymns for Special Occasions,” “Ballads,” “Translations,” “Early Hymns,” and “Anthem Texts.” It seems as though every new American hymnal has adopted his oft-quoted “When in Our Music, God Is Glorified” (Later Hymns and Ballads and Fifty Poems, Bernard Braley, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1989]).

In 1983 The Hymns & Songs of Brian Wren, with Many Tunes by Peter Cutts was published in the United States as Faith Looking Forward (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1983). “Christ is Alive!,” one of his innovative works, found its way into a number of hymnals during the eighties. Another collection followed in 1986. Then in 1989, thirty-five new Wren hymns were issued under the title Bring Many Names (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1989).

The following year the collected hymns of Timothy Dudley-Smith were published as Lift Every Heart (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1984). And in a very short period of time, a number of his widely accepted texts were printed in a variety of denominational and nondenominational books. Likewise, the work of Canada’s leading hymn-writer, Margaret Clarkson, was collected in A Singing Heart (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1987), while American counterpart Jane Parker Huber had her texts published in A Singing Faith (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1987). In the same year, Lutheran Jaroslav J. Vajda had his hymns, carols, and songs published in a volume entitled Now The Joyful Celebration (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1987). In the early 1990s, New Zealander Shirley Erena Murray’s work was introduced in the United States by the collection In Every Corner Sing (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992).

A few years later the collected hymns for the church year (after the model set in Keble’s Christian Year) were assembled in Carl P. Daw, Jr.’s A Year of Grace (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1990). Eighteen of the metrical canticles from this significant work were published subsequently, each with two musical settings, in To Sing God’s Praise (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992).

Finally, the single-author collection Go Forth for God (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1991) introduced the complete hymn-writing opus of English clergyman J. R. Peacey to editors and worship leaders in the United States. The British “hymn explosion” had become a significant part of the “hymnal explosion” in the United States.

This decade of the hymnal began with the publication of Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1982), the authorized hymnal for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It restored original unequal rhythms to a number of the early chorales and included important contributions by such contemporary Lutheran composers as Anders, Beck, Bender, Bunjes, Busarow, Manz, Sateren, and Schalk.

However, it was The Hymnal 1982 (Raymond F. Glover, ed. [New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1985]) which set the standard for future denominational hymnals. A revision of The Hymnal 1940 (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1940), had several noticeable differences: (1) the use of guitar chord symbols; (2) added instrumental parts; (3) metronome markings; (4) black note notation, and (5) music within the musical staff.

In l985 the Reformed Church in America issued its own book, Rejoice in the Lord: A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures (Erik Routley, ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985]). It is chiefly the work of editor Erik Routley and it bears the stamp of his genius.

A year later two very different collections of congregational songs were published. In Worship III (Robert J. Batastini, ed. [Chicago, Ill.: GIA Publications, 1986]), Roman Catholics made an effort to move into the mainstream of congregational hymnody. Distinguished composers included in this new revision of the l971 and 1975 editions were Marty Haugen, Howard Hughes, and Michael Joncas.

Remarkably different was The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration (Tom Fettke, ed. [Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1986]). Its brief services (and medleys) with choral introductions and codas and the complete orchestration of its contents made this a distinctively new collection. Moreover, the eclecticism of its contents may best be illustrated in the titles of some of the songs: the “Hallelujah Chorus” (Messiah); Timothy Dudley-Smith’s setting of the Magnificat, “Tell Out My Soul”; Andre Crouch’s solo song “My Tribute”; the country/western song, “I’ll Fly Away”; the spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”; Ralph Carmichael’s hit song, “He’s Everything to Me”; and Jack Hayford’s praise chorus, “Majesty.”

Another pair of hymnals was published in 1987. The carefully constructed Christian Reformed Psalter Hymnal (Emily R. Brink, ed. [Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1987]) featured metrical versions of all 150 psalms, settings of biblical songs from Genesis to Revelation, and hymns for every act of worship and season of the Christian year.

This may be contrasted with the evangelical Gaither Music Company publication, Worship His Majesty (Fred Bock, ed. [Alexandria, Ind.: Gaither Music Company, 1987]). Here the reader will find Christian contemporary solos by Paul Stookey, Dottie Rambo, and Bill and Gloria Gaither, along with nineteenth-century gospel songs by Fanny Crosby and Ira D. Sankey. The Church of God also used contemporary Christian songs in their new hymnal, Worship The Lord (Alexandria, Ind.: Warner Press, 1989).

Until the publication of their new hymnal in 1989, the United Methodists used the 1982 Supplement to the Book of Hymns (Carlton R. Young, ed. [Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1982]) as well as a 1983 Asian-American collection, Hymns from the Four Winds (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983) edited by the distinguished ethnomusicologist, I-to-Loh.

At the end of the decade, a superb collection of congregational songs was completed by the members of the Hymnal Revision Committee of the United Methodist Church under the editorship of Carlton Young. This 1989 book was the result of a careful review of traditional and contemporary materials. Well-known hymns from Greek, Latin, German, Scandinavian, Wesleyan, English, and North American traditions were placed alongside representative and meaningful evangelical songs. Selections from the contemporary popular repertoire were printed with English and American hymns of the “hymn explosion” period. A wide variety of ethnic songs were also given some prominence.

Apart from these large collections of congregational songs, a large number of supplemental books appeared during the eighties—books of every possible kind, many with accompanying cassette recordings. And with the recording of the songs in these very diverse books, the adoption of the new music became increasingly rapid.

Roman Catholics purchased cassette tapes of single artists/composers such as John Michael Talbot as well as the music and tapes of Gather to Remember (Michael A. Cymbala, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1982]). Moreover, the many cantor-congregation publications encouraged an easy form of responsive singing. The Music of Taize (Robert J. Bastastini, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1978]), a Protestant community in France, was promoted by Robert Bastastini, editor of GIA Publication.

Episcopalians made a significant contribution to the growing repertoire of ethnic hymnody in the publication of Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Collection of Afro-American Spirituals and Other Song (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1981), and the Catholics followed with Lead Me, Guide Me: The African-American Catholic Hymnal (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1987).

The Hope Publishing Company, Agape division, published a 1984 Hymnal Supplement (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1984) followed by Hymnal Supplement II (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Co., 1987) with new material from leading British and American writers and composers. Then in 1989, Tom Fettke compiled and edited Exalt Him (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1989) which was issued in a words-only edition, a music edition, and a piano/rhythm book, and was recorded on cassette and CD, along with a variety of accompaniment tapes.

Three major groups emerged as leaders in the publication of praise-and-worship music. Maranatha! Music had early been the leader with its famous Praise (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Maranatha! Music, 1983). Integrity’s Hosanna! Music also developed a continuing stream of both printed and recorded materials, while the Vineyard Ministries spread both their style of worship and their musical repertoire to a number of countries. All three repertoires have been used extensively.

One of the most unusual series of publications of the late 1980s came from the Iona Community in Scotland. The wild goose, a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit, was adopted as the symbol of this community of prayer, which is made up of ordained and lay men and women of all denominations sharing a common rule of faith and life. The chief author of each collection of unaccompanied songs was John Bell. Some sixty percent of the fifty songs in each volume were his own compositions. The remainder were mostly British folk tunes such as “O Waly Waly,” “Sussex Carol,” “Scarborough Fair,” and “Barbara Allen.” The first collection, Heaven Shall Not Wait (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Maranatha! Music, 1987), was issued in 1987 and revised in 1989. The second volume, Enemy of Apathy was issued in 1988 (John Bell and Graham Maule, eds. (Chicago: GIA Publications); Heaven Shall Not Wait was revised in 1990. The third in the series, Love from Above (John Bell and Graham Maule, eds. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1989]) was published in 1989. The main themes here pertain to the Trinity, Jesus as a friend, creation, and the oneness of worship and work. A recording of each compilation was also made available.

The 1990s

The publishing of new hymnals continues and shows no sign of abatement. Under a directive to develop a hymnal using inclusive language with an awareness of the great diversity within the church, the Presbyterian hymnal committee included 695 selections in its Presbyterian Hymnal and its ecumenical edition Hymns, Psalms & Spiritual Songs (Linda Jo McKim, ed. [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990]). Their aim—“to provide a book for congregational singing with the expectation that all who use it may be enriched by hymns from gospel, evangelical, Reformed, and racial and ethnic traditions in the church”—is clearly stated in the preface (p. 7). True to the Presbyterian heritage, the book includes one hundred musical settings of selections from the Psalter, including six settings for Psalm 23. And there are 157 congregational songs included in the Christian Year section, indicating the continuing interest in the denomination to observe the Christian year. The remaining 347 songs in the Topical Hymns and Service Music sections comprise a varied selection including music provided for Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese texts.

The leadership of George H. Shorney and the enthusiastic efforts of hymnal editor Donald P. Hustad, one of America’s leading church musicians and hymnologists, resulted in The Worshiping Church: A Hymnal (Donald P. Hustad, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1990]). Of particular interest in this important book are its several adjunct volumes. The three accompaniment books have been published for keyboard, brass, and handbells. The Worship Leader’s Edition contains helpful articles related to worship and congregational singing as well as a brief analysis of each song printed. The concordance tabulates the texts which contain any important word that the user wishes to find. Moreover, the dictionary companion contains complete historical information about all texts and tunes.

The latest Baptist Hymnal (Wesley L. Forbes, ed. [Nashville, Tenn.: Convention Press, 1991]) is a magnificent contribution to the ongoing development of heartfelt congregational singing in the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination. A hymnal for people of the Book, each text has been carefully examined as to its theological content. From the beginning of congregational singing in Benjamin Keach’s London church (1691) until 1991, the published books for Baptist congregations have included a wide variety of forms and styles. This book features the greatest variety to date, including traditional hymns and gospel songs as well as contemporary classical hymns, contemporary gospel songs, renewal songs, choruses, and ethnic selections.

Likewise, the 1992 Mennonite Hymnal (Kenneth Nafziger, ed. [Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1992]) contains a wide variety of texts. There are twenty by Watts and twenty-three by Wesley, fifteen by Brian Wren, and eight by Fred Pratt Green. The music is also varied. There are fourteen American folk tunes here and thirteen Afro-American songs, ten tunes by Lowell Mason, and thirteen by Vaughan Williams. Ethnic songs are represented by Swahili, Swedish, Taiwanese, Welsh, South African, Slavic, and Spanish melodies.

In England, the work of the early church music reformers continues in the endeavors of the Jubilate group. Hymns for Today’s Church (Michael Baughen, ed. [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982]), Carols for Today, Church Family Worship, and Songs from the Psalms were followed by Psalms for Today (Michael Perry and David Ibiff, eds. [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990]), also available in the United States from Hope Publishing Company. Intended for Anglican worship, this volume is certain to be widely used in both England and America. Extensive use has been made of folksong-like tunes, as well as newly composed melodies to supplement those selections which continue the use of familiar traditional music.

The printing of supplemental books continues and is well illustrated by Come Celebrate!: A Hymnal Supplement (Betty Pulkingham, Mimi Farra, and Kevin Hackett, eds. [Pacific, Mo.: Mel Bay Publications, 1990]) with its very singable songs. Written for the Community of Celebration of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, a community drawn together for daily worship, this collection, which is a supplement to The Hymnal 1982, is intended to be “a resource for enriching parish family worship with simple songs and hymns, on Sundays, at home, at work, and in the dailiness of life” (Preface). Here one will find unison and part songs (with piano or guitar accompaniment and other instruments, including a bass instrument and percussion) for the Daily Office and for celebrations of the Holy Eucharist and the Church Year.

An additional 1992 book of hymns from the Hope Publishing Company is 100 Hymns of Hope (George H. Shorney, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992]) commemorating the company’s 100-year history. Its contemporary hymn texts and music are by English, American, and Canadian authors such as Michael Baughen, Margaret Clarkson, Peter Cutts, Carl P. Daw, Richard Dirkson, Timothy Dudley-Smith, Fred Pratt Green, Hal Hopson, Alan Luff, Jane Marshall, J. R. Peacey, Michael Perry, Richard Proulx, William Reynolds, Erik Routley, Jeffery Rowthorn, Carl Schalk, John W. Wilson, Brian Wren, and Carlton Young, all members of congregational song’s “Hall of Fame.”

Finally, Word Music has issued a comprehensive collection of Songs for Praise and Worship (Ken Barker, ed. [Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1992]), an anthology of 253 songs and choruses providing material from a number of praise-and-worship-style music catalogs to serve as either a stand-alone collection or a supplement to any hymnal. The several editions include the pew edition, the singer’s edition, a worship planner’s edition, a keyboard edition, and fifteen instrumental editions. Transparency masters and slides are also available. Its table of contents reveals a growing sensitivity to the need for topical songs and includes sections such as God Our Father, Jesus Our Savior, The Holy Spirit, The Church, The Believer, Opening of Service, and Closing of Service.

Conclusion

Because so many materials are available for congregational singing, and since only a small fraction of the various texts and song forms can be assimilated by any one congregation, worship leaders are constantly required to make difficult choices. Also, because there is such rapid change taking place in American society and within the church itself, worship leaders must be sensitive to the needs and requests of a shifting multigenerational and sometimes multicultural membership.

Lyle E. Schaller says it well in his descriptive work, It’s A Different World!: The increase in the range of available choices has made the task of being a leader in the church more complex and more difficult than it was in the 1950s. Being able to recognize that every choice has a price tag, encouraging people to understand the matter of trade-offs, and being able to identify those trade-offs makes the responsibility of serving as a leader in the church today far more difficult than it ever was in 1955. ([Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1987], 239)

One of the major problems which emerged from the church music renewal movement of the 1960s and 1970s is the division between those churches that chose to continue singing traditional songs and those assemblies which adopted praise-and-worship-style music exclusively. Also, there are those church leaders who opted for both by scheduling two services, one traditional and one contemporary. However, this practice has been just as divisive, though confined to the local church. Congregational song, however, is for all of the people of God in united acts of worship. Thus, the convergence so wonderfully advocated by Robert Webber and Chuck Fromm is the most rational and pragmatic response to the problem. In Signs of Wonder (Nashville: Abbott Martyn, 1992) Webber points out the following:

There is a movement among the people of the world to find out each other’s traditions and to share from each other’s experiences. We the people of the church have even more reason to learn what is happening in other worship cultures and to draw from each other’s spiritual insights and experiences. After all, there is only one church, and although there are a variety of traditions and experiences within this church, each tradition is indeed part of the whole. The movement toward the convergence of worship traditions and the spiritual stimulation which comes from borrowing from various worship communities are the results of the worship renewal taking place in our time.

In the final analysis, those responsible for leading congregational singing are required to know the entire repertoire of congregational songs appropriate to the culture in which they live. They need to know the most meaningful and relevant songs from the past, and they must exercise a growing sensitivity to the heartfelt needs of those whom they lead. And they primarily must seek the mind of God—together with pastoral leaders in their churches—in making the crucial decisions of what is to be sung.