Why Architecture Matters: Our Quest to Unify Organ and Drums for the Sake of the Gospel

Philosopher and liturgical theologian, Nicholas Wolterstorff, recently reminded listeners at the “Liturgy, Music, and Space” Conference hosted by Bifrost Arts this past spring that the architecture around and in your worship space makes theological statements whether you like it or not.  For instance, a tall, raised platform at the front the sanctuary with the Communion table positioned in the very back can make the theological statement that the Lord’s Table is so holy that its access must be limited and guarded.  Or, think of a worship space in which the seating is arranged in a circle or semicircle around the leaders in worship in the middle.  This can make a statement about the unity of the people of God in worship and the tearing down of sharp divisions between the congregation and the worship leaders.  Or, think about the warehouse with a huge stage and lighting structure.  It says, “we’re here to perform for you…sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”  Architecture tells the story of your theology of and priorities in worship.  I want to share with you how we’ve chosen to let some recent changes to our sanctuary’s architecture inform our theology of worship. 

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Five Reasons Why Contemporary Worship Should Embrace Liturgy

Alex Mejias from High Street Hymns shares why churches characterized by contemporary worship should engage in liturgical music:

1. Liturgical music is biblical.
2. Liturgical music helps us retell the Gospel-story.
3. Liturgical music connects us to the Historic Church.
4. Liturgical music connects us to the Global Church.
5. Liturgical songs complement contemporary worship songs.

Read the whole post!  It's worth it.

Review of 10,000 Reasons, by Matt Redman

It's not an exaggeration to say that 10,000 Reasons is Matt Redman’s best album to date.  Despite how popularity polls would re-arrange the pecking order, Redman stands at the top of the heap among the well-known modern worship songwriters (Tomlin, Hughes, Fee, Hall, Maher, etc.). 

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The State of Worship Music Today

Mike Cosper, Pastor of Worship at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY, is interviewed briefly by Bob Kauflin on the state of worship music today.  Note what this pastor-theologian-musician is and is not focused on.

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Critique Less, Sacrifice More: The Rule of Love in Worship

I recently attended my denomination’s General Assembly (the gathering of pastors and elders from every church in the country) at Hope Church in Memphis, TN.  For such a little denomination, we are quite diverse in our worship-expression.

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The Similarities Between Baroque and Rock Music

History is one of elitism’s greatest enemies.  The more I study history, and particularly that of music, the more I realize that there is nothing new under the sun. 

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Experience: Analyzing a Supreme Value of Modern Worship

Any time you want to go deep quickly, I’ve found this question to be one of the most helpful of analytical grids: “What are the values which shape our practice?”  This single question is applicable in so many sectors of human life, and it is penetrating in its findings.

I am a lover of and believer in modern worship.  When the contemporary worship movement began in the 60s, and when it blossomed into what many now call modern worship in the 90s, I believe that the Holy Spirit was behind this fresh wind.  I believe that God was stirring things up in American/Western worship to awaken us to deficiencies, lopsidedness, and overly hardened practices.

However, every human movement is flawed because it is human, and many times these flaws can be traced back to underlying values, either imported from without or manufactured from within, which have unwittingly seized preeminence in the minds and hearts of people.

Tim Keller is often heard saying something to the effect of, “Idolatry can happen when you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing.”  A cousin of this idea is that problems can arise in one practice when one elevates a value to an inappropriate height.  Modern worship has elevated the value of the “experience with / encounter with God” to a very high place.  In fact, it is so high that one can quite easily observe this value in everything from the top CCLI songs of the last twenty years to the pressure a lonely worship leader feels in his or her office on a Monday as he or she looks to the following Sunday.  Lester Ruth, in a penetrating chapter analyzing top modern worship songs for their Trinitarian content, makes this statement as a side note to the summary of his findings:

If explicit witness to the Trinity is not the high priority [in these contemporary worship songs], then what is? The songs demonstrate a common concern: the priority of a shared affective experience in the worship of God.¹

Put another way, Ruth is saying that, upon observation of these songs, a major value of contemporary/modern worship is having an experience of God which is tangible and moving.  Do I really need to elaborate on this value?  Isn’t it clear from the way we structure our services (to drive someone toward an affective experience of God)?  Isn’t it clear from the questions we often ask in evaluating whether a service was “successful” (e.g. Were people really “into it,” evidenced by their posture, body language, or facial expression?)?  Isn’t it clear from the language of our worship songs (e.g. “rain down,” “come down,” “we are waiting on you,” etc.)?

Now, is valuing a “shared affective experience of God” wrong?  Absolutely not!  We are whole beings encountering a real, personal God.  We should expect to have a shared experience which moves us—mind, body, will, emotions.  But the question for modern worship remains: Has this value moved to an improperly high status on the hierarchy of priorities?  I believe so.

Symptoms that the status is too high include:

• disappointment a worship leader feels after a service when the people sang with stoic faces and unmoved bodies
• conclusion by congregants that a worship service was “bad” if they did not have an affective experience
• language in our worship songs that betray we are seeking an experience of God rather than seeking God Himself
• pressure a worship leader feels to plan a song-set or liturgy which flows to some climax or peak intended to create that moment of supreme affect

We lovers of modern worship can embrace a helpful corrective: worship is just as much act as it is experience.  A while ago, I posted a more lengthy explanation of what this means, but suffice it to say here that worship, because it not only involves affections but actions, can be meaningful even if the actions lack affect.  Like many others, I use the language of “I truly worshiped” when I am speaking of affective experiences of God in the worship context.  But we mustn’t let such language fool us that action without affect is not true worship.  Perhaps it is not the richest or most holistic form possible, but act-worship is not void of all power and consequence. 

At the Bifrost Arts conference a few weeks ago, Pastor Greg Thompson reminded us that our worship is habit-forming, even if we don’t realize it.  This means that worship-as-act is not inconsequential.  Think about routine exercise.  Those committed to it don’t necessarily demand an affective, euphoric experience every time while working out.  But exercise, nevertheless, forms a habit of health and muscle-use.  Think of worship as “spiritual exercise.”  You certainly hope and wish for the type of exercise-experience which is deeply emotionally satisfying, but when it is not, you haven’t not exercised.  Yet, how many times have we thought we “haven’t worshiped” when we haven’t had an affective experience?

So perhaps what we are learning is not that desiring an affective experience with God is bad, but that desiring it to the level we do is placing it on the wrong level in our value hierarchy.  There are manifold, unintended consequences of misplaced values, but exploring this would open another discussion for another day.

¹Lester Ruth, “How Great is Our God: The Trinity in Contemporary Christian Worship Music,” in The Message in the Music, ed. Robert Woods and Brian Walrath (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 37.

Review of The Water and the Blood, by Sojourn Music

The folks at Sojourn Music continue to lead modern church music down a different path.  Each album seems to be more aggressively their own, pushing outward the narrow boundaries of contemporary/modern worship by experimenting with new and old sounds and styles.  The Water and the Blood was produced with a different set of values than the industry standard—in analog, as a whole, and with a vinyl option.  Producer Mike Cosper explains,

While still reflective of a variety of moods and styles that occur at Sojourn gatherings, it’s a recording with a sound, a sense of space, something that’s meant to be listened to as an album, as a whole. It’s meant to be a listening experience, and vinyl, with its added depth, warmth, and presence, has a way of conveying that experience like nothing else.¹

The album was recorded largely in Bloomington, IN, with Paul Mahern, who has worked with Over the Rhine, The Fray, John Mellencamp, and others.  Tracks were laid down on tape, not bits and bytes, trading digitized perfection for human warmth.  Herein lies another subtle challenge to the value-system of contemporary/modern worship.  It makes a theological statement about authenticity, humanness, imperfection, and grace.

The Water and the Blood is installment number two of their ongoing quest to re-give the hymns of Isaac Watts to the Church.  The first installment, Over the Grave, was a masterpiece, as well.  “The Water and the Blood” appears to be a phrase codified over time in English hymnody.  It is perhaps most famous in Augustus Toplady’s “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me,” whose opening verse reads, “Let the water and the blood / from Thy riven side which flowed / be of sin the double-cure / cleanse me from its guilt and power.”  But the lesser-known hymn of Watts, “Lord, We Confess Our Numerous Faults,” which, adapted, appears as the title track, contains the phrase which predates Toplady.  Ultimately, the wording belongs to Scripture (1 John 5:8), but English hymn-writers have given this pairing a strong significance.  And, now, so has Sojourn Music.  We might consider “the water and the blood” poetic shorthand for the entire gospel story, and, given the album’s content, it is a fitting title.

SUMMARY

Musically, The Water and the Blood is superb.  Its production is fresh and original, and its diversity of style is so off the grid of a typical “worship album” that it seems other-worldly.  Textually, one simply can’t find fault with lyrics that pull from Isaac Watts, one of the most formidable theologian-pastor-songwriters of all time.  Sojourn could spend the rest of their musical years retuning Watts’ texts, and the Church would be incredibly blessed for it.  In my opinion, not every song is fit for congregational singing, but the two I’d be especially inclined to bring into my local church’s repertoire are “The Water and the Blood” and “Let Your Blood Plead for Me.”

MUSICALITY

If you have narrow tastes and appreciations, this album is not for you.  If you’re looking for modern worship’s standard sound, this project will be a disappointment.  If, however, you have a taste for blues, folk rock, country, bluegrass, soul, and Americana, you will love The Water and the Blood.  The album bears the hand-print of Mike Cosper’s subtle, soulful, and artistic guitar style—especially electric and lap and pedal steel, though he plays dobro and mandolin as well (!).  The guitar solos throughout aren’t necessarily always flashy, but they are thoughtful, melodic, and musical.  I am thinking particularly of the three songs I will mention next.

One of the first things to note is the album’s use of blues to convey confession and lament.  I have longed to see the intersection of this genre with this biblical expression.  Blues is uniquely suited to convey the hope-tinged anguish of the lamentations of David and Watts.  From the recurring electric line (and complementary bass line) in “From Deep Distress,” to the descending tremolo guitar line and soulful vocals in “Deep in Our Hearts,” to the heavy joy of “Death Has Lost its Sting,” Sojourn shows how powerful a song can be when music and text are so thoughtfully wedded.

The vocals are likewise remarkable.  I sense some different hues of control and expressiveness in Rebecca Dennison’s voice, especially on “The Water and the Blood,” which is a favorite track of mine.  The fact that six additional vocalists (Jamie Barnes, Rebecca Elliot, Kristen Gilles, Brooks Ritter, Megan Shaffer, and Chad Watson) sing on the album is a testimony to the vision of community music-making and anti-rock-star vision for artistry that Sojourn has grown to champion.  (Though not every church has the human resources to do this, I would add.  Sojourn is very blessed in this regard.)

One of the marks of creativity in songwriting for the local church is in the careful balance of innovation and singability.  “Compel My Heart to Sing” is a great example of this.  The melody is melismatic and easy to sing, and the music beneath is far from bland.  The chorus’s progression (C, C/E, Fm, Bb, Eb, Ab, G) is beautiful and different.

“Let the Seventh Angel Sound” is a fun arrangement that sounds like it came from the brains of Paul Simon and James Taylor.  The organ is calibrated to a mellow, almost whistle-like setting.  The clean, loose guitar playing, coupled with Barnes’ smooth vocal style, is engaging.  I wonder, though, how fitting the text’s intensity is with the song’s easygoing nature.  I’d love for Barnes to comment and bring insight to that.

Brooks Ritter has written a beautiful new setting of “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”  The music brings out certain hues from the text absent in its more triumphant (and equally beautiful) setting (“St. Anne,” by William Croft, 1708).  Ritter’s tune is a soulful country ballad that highlights the comfort Watts probably intended to evoke in his beloved text.

Some might think that the musical setting of “Let Your Blood Plead For Me” is too playful for the gravity of its content, with its on-beat, honky-tonk-style piano and interlude progression (I, III⁷, vi, I, IV, II⁷, V, V⁷).  I find its light-heartedness an interesting take on the hymn (see comments on the text below).  The Scriptures speak about the human response to salvation being our “skipping like calves” (Malachi 4:2), and this music surprisingly and tastefully colors the text in that direction.

THEOLOGICAL CONTENT

As noted above, the first thing that one should notice about this album, textually, is the amount of verse devoted to the under-used biblical expression of lament.  Verse 1 of “Death Has Lost Its Sting” cries:

My God, how many are my fears
How fast my foes increase
Conspiring my eternal death
They break my fleeting peace

The first verse of “From Deep Distress,” in keeping with the anguish of the opening lines of Psalm 130, records:

From deep distress and troubled thoughts
To You, our God, we raise our cries
If You truly mark our faults
No flesh can stand before Your eyes

I have now heard many a worship theologian proclaim that the church’s song really does shape the church’s spiritual health. Unfortunately, because evangelicals have little vocabulary for lament, when suffering comes our way, we have no theological and spiritual categories to handle it, and we question our faith, God’s goodness, or even His existence.  Lament teaches us to suffer rightly.  Sojourn has given a gift to the church by bringing this to the fore.

The second thing one should notice is the album’s gospel-saturation.  Time and again, the source of delight in the texts is found in the meritorious work of the life and death of Jesus Christ.  “The World Will Know” praises:

Our faith adores Thy bleeding love,
And trust in one that died
We hope for heav’nly crowns above
Redeemer crucified

The world will know the righteousness
Of our incarnate God
And nations yet unborn profess
Salvation in His blood
Salvation in His blood

The chorus of “Deep in Our Hearts” testifies:

Oh gracious God, You’ve heard my Plea [notice the capitalization]
A once cursed pris’ner, now released
Those dreadful suff’rings of Thy Son
Atoned for sins that we had done

The gospel is the motivation of all our worship, as “Compel My Heart to Sing” intones:

Jesus, my God and King
Thy wisdom is a boundless deep
What wondrous love has purchased me and
Compels my heart to sing

Sojourn and I share a passionate desire to see modern worship embrace a richer vocabulary of the gospel in our song.  If there continued to be progression in even that one area in contemporary Christian music, the Church would be tremendously blessed.

There are two songs, though, that stand out in their weaving of text and music.  “The Water and the Blood” is the first:

Lord we confess our many faults
And how great our guilt has been
Foolish and vain were all of our thoughts
No good could come from within

But by the mercy of our God
All our hopes begin
And by the water and the blood
Our souls are washed from sin

It’s not by the works of righteousness
Which our own hands have done
But we are saved by our Father’s grace
Abounding through His Son

It’s a simple song of confession, but the words are crafted so carefully and beautifully.  The verses center around minor tonality, and the choruses switch to major, with a lift in the melody to a new tessitura.  It’s all just very well put together.

“Let Your Blood Plead for Me” is the other outstanding song.  It is a song of testimony:

Lord, how secure my conscience was
And felt no inward dread
I was alive without the Law
And thought My sins were dead

My hopes of heaven were firm and bright
But then Your standard came
With a convincing power and light
To show how vile I am

This testimony is starkly (and without much transition) contrasted with the chorus:

Let Your blood plead for me
Let Your blood wash me clean
I believe, Lord I believe
Your blood has covered me

It is a song that aptly exegetes the oft-used phrase (it appears in various forms), “The bad news is I am more sinful and broken than I dare imagine, but the good news is, in Christ, I am more loved and accepted than I dare hope.”  The Law rightly condemns me, but, through Christ, the Father justly pardons me.  This is the essence of the song.  And it’s powerful!

Both for its text and its music, I heartily recommend The Water and the Blood as a fresh and timely work.  I look forward to what’s next from Sojourn Music.  They’ve quickly become leaders in a new kind of evangelical modern worship, and I welcome it!