An Important Dialogue About Worship Music

This has been floating around in many of the online circles I run in.  It's a very, very good dialogue between three guys who I admire for thinking theologically and pastorally about worship--Kevin Twit, Mike Cosper, and Isaac Wardell.

Here are some of my takeaways:

• On the topic of songs and "singability" of modern musical idioms:
  • It is often said that a lot of "contemporary" music is unsingable...too many flourishes, too many pop-vocal-isms.  People say that about U2's music--too high, too irregular.  And yet, for many reasons, you attend a U2 concert and you find thousands of people joining in songs, where many people who would normally say "I'm not a singer" or "I can't sing" find themselves singing away. There is something profound about this observation.

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The Latest Developments in Thoughtful Worship

This blog is dedicated to discussions surrounding worship, church, theology, and culture.  A subtext of that agenda is to encourage Christian (and particularly evangelical) worship along its trajectory toward more thoughtfulness, biblical reflection, theological awareness, and historicity.  A sub-subtext of that subtext is to encourage this growing movement of folks dedicated to the setting of old hymns to new music.  I do this not because hymns are the be-all and end-all of the deficiencies of modern worship, but because this one practice embodies so many of the subtext's aforementioned values.  Many hymns are thoughtful.  Many hymns are soaked in scripture.  Many hymns are written from a fiery theological heart.  And all hymns except current-day ones force the Church to reckon with the fact that she is a body rooted in history--a history of God's past worth celebrating. 

So, people might get tired of me barking about this very specific thing called the "hymns movement," but they must remember that this movement is a herald of the shifts taking place with these bigger, more fundamental issues in American/Western Christian worship today.

I am therefore excited to share a brief "status update" of the movement.  More rumblings, more exposure, more buy-in.  The hymns movement continues to affect and infect the Church with greater potency and wider distribution.  Four things stand out.

Less than 48 hours ago, the 2011 Gospel Coalition Conference kicked off with none other than a hymn sing, gathering together and exposing before a new generation of eager, cross-denominational, Gospel-loving evangelicals some of the heavy-hitters in the hymns movement: Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace (Sandra McCracken, Matthew Smith); Mike Cosper and Sojourn Music.  As Cardiphonia likewise reported, Noisetrade is giving away a free sampler of these artists.  One more indicator that the next generation of pastors and church leaders care about deep, substantive worship, exemplified in hymnody.

Seven days ago, High Street Hymns released their third major hymns album, Hearts and Voices, centered on hymns for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.  It is available at a very affordable price on bandcamp.

In less than two weeks, Sojourn Music will release another album, The Water and the Blood, a second installment of an ongoing project to reshape the hymn texts of Isaac Watts for new ears.  As will be explained in my upcoming review, Sojourn continues to push out the narrow musical boundaries of contemporary/modern worship, forging ahead while reaching back hundreds of years into the vault of Christian hymnody.

In five days, an album will be released which features a bunch of well-known mainstream modern worship leaders headlining re-tuned hymn-texts of Charles Wesley.  It is called Love Divine.  I have already spoken about what a significant mile-marker this is, notwithstanding the fact that it will probably go unnoticed (though I hope not).

A little over two weeks ago, a unique conference took place in St. Louis.  Hymns movement leader Bifrost Arts hosted a gathering on "Liturgy, Music, and Space."  The average age was interestingly young, given that the topics discussed at the conference were ideas that contemporary worship used to say that only "older people" cared about: liturgy, history, aesthetics, theology, inter-generationalism, etc.

Folks, there's no organizing force behind the coincidence of these things...at least no human one.  This can be characterized as nothing short of a movement of the Spirit through renewal of the worship of God.  All this is very significant.

Crowder and the Hymns Movement Converge

The David Crowder Band is hosting a Church Music Conference at Baylor University in Waco, TX, September 30-October 2.  This is exciting on many levels.  I’m pumped to see the name of a Friday breakout workshop: “A New Old Vision for Worship – Liturgical Spirituality for Post-Modern-Semi-Reformed-Hipsters.”

Here's what is truely exciting: more signs of the subversive growth of influence of the hymns movement are on the horizon.  The David Crowder Band (for those who didn’t know) is THE name in modern worship.  Of course, they’re a performance band.  Of course, their most recent records really haven’t been “worship albums.”  Still, Crowder emerged out of the flagship modern worship movement—Passion—and is still tethered to it.  Therefore, this event with Crowder is significant.  Who’s on the roster?  You’d never know from the up-front promotion, but tucked in more detailed advertising, we hear of two names:

The Welcome Wagon

BiFrost Arts

Check out their music some time.  The first thing you notice is that, in the rock genre, they are the polar opposite of Crowder—under-produced, anti-digital, pitchy, lo-fi, quirky, indie, pop-orchestral…Sufjan Stephens-esque.  The second thing you notice is that the text-material for their songs are either old church hymns or songs which are bathed in the thought and life of historic hymnody.

But actually…this isn’t such a far leap from Crowder.  Much of Crowder’s material beyond the radio-friendly hits leans in a direction that shows that the treasure-troll-haired singer appreciates music akin to what BiFrost and the Wagon are doing.

But more is going on here than mere musical appreciation.  People often think that all modern worship has sold out to novelty with no sense of connection to the historic songs of the church.  It’s just not true.  The Passion movement put out Hymns: Ancient and Modern, and littering all of Crowder’s material are hymns as old as the Greek “Phos Hilaron” and as new as “Heaven Came Down.”  Make no mistake.  Crowder loves him some hymns.   And Crowder is obviously appreciating artists like BiFrost Arts and The Welcome Wagon, not only for their musical innovations, but for their textual focus.

Still, this goes even deeper.  The Welcome Wagon and BiFrost Arts are not only intermingled with one another, but they are wedded with the heavy-hitters in the hymns movement—Indelible Grace.  Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken’s connection and collaboration with these two groups are case in point.  They’ve got denominational ties, too: Welcome Wagon’s leader is Vito Aiuto, an ordained PCA minister; Kevin Twit of Indelible Grace is ordained in that denomination, as well.  Many of the artists associated with both groups are PCA die-hards.

All this to say: We have the hymns movement, perhaps for the first time, being welcomed in to a bona fide mainstream evangelical worship event.  Just like Indelible Grace’s Ryman Hymnsing, this is a moment to plant a flag in the sand as a marker of the growing influence of the grass roots hymns movement.  Thank God.

The Big Picture of Indelible Grace: Kevin Twit and the Ryman Hymnsing

"Edible Grace...what?"  That's the type of reaction I get when I talk to mainstream evangelical worship leaders about the hymns movement and their golden boy, Indelible Grace.  IG is a move back to substantive modern worship.  Their M.O. is to combine modern folk and rock instrumentation with old hymn texts.  Many people misunderstand "old hymns to new music" as throwing a contemporary beat and sound on a hymn...just think of all the forced, "contemporary" versions out there of "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and "How Great Thou Art."  No, no.  These are taking the hymns almost like pure poems and setting them to music.  Hear clearly.  They're taking the WORDS of the hymns, and setting those words to new melodies and backing chord structures.  These aren't "jazzed up hymns" or "contemporized hymns" or "updated hymns" in the sense of how those phrases are most often tossed around (hear my lament about an album that falls into this category).  They're actually engaging in the historic practice of resetting old hymn texts in new musical garb. 

(By the way, "indelible" should be an acceptable word to mainstream evangelicals.  The fact that David Crowder has used it in "Foreverandever Etc." is like an ex cathedra proclamation that it's okay for modern worship...Crowder has spoken.)

In late June, Indelible Grace took the stage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).  Thousands of people were there to witness what I would consider a watershed event in the life of the hymns movement in particular and modern worship at large.  Most won't pick up on its significance.  The event is important because it is a symbol of the growth and stability of the movement.  The vision articulated that evening, combined with how well it was received by so many different types of "church people," put a stake in the ground--a mile-marker that shows, since IG's birth in the early 2000s, the growth and influence of the movement alongside the maturation and individual success of many of the IG artists.  

In a rare blog post (oh, for more!), Kevin Twit (IG founder) zooms out and wears his visionary heart on his sleeve.  We see his passion for the Gospel, for college students knowing Jesus, and for the nation-wide (if not worldwide) reform of worship toward more substantive, thoughtful, historically-engaged, and theologically-reflective ends.

I wish I could have been at the Ryman that night, if only to cheer on Indelible Grace, Kevin, and the growth of the hymns movement.  But since I wasn't there, consider this post my raising my glass to God's work in and through Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace.

Indelible Grace Finally Gaining Legitimacy in the PCA

Indelible Grace (the pioneer of the hymns movement) is leading a hymnsing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.  This is exciting!  (The artist list is pretty hot, too.)  What is being undersold about this event is that it's connected with a larger event--the General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).  This is significant.

I was involved with the PCA for 5 years, gaining some important ministry chops at a church plant here in Denver, interacting with the other elders in our region (the Presbytery) as I came under care and pursued a pastoral internship.  I'm now in the EPC, so I'm an outsider looking in (my perspective may be off).  I haven't spoken to Kevin Twit or Matthew Smith (Indelible Grace guys) about this lately, but a conversation we had a few years ago in Nashville gave me the impression that Indelible Grace, to my surprise, was still trying to gain a sense of legitimacy among the old-liners in the very denomination that birthed the movement. 

Because I was involved in a PCA church plant, and because the other PCA churches I was connected with nationally were generally other church plants, "Indelible Grace" was a byword for everything that we wanted our worship to be all about--theological depth, historical-rootedness, cultural-connectedness, gospel-centeredness, old hymns to new music, etc.  But the new church plants do not summarize the ethos of the denomination.  My conversation with Twit and Smith revealed that there were still traditionalists purists who did not care for or even opposed the enterprise of setting old hymns to new music. (This is surprising, because, as I discussed in a previous post, Indelible Grace and those in the hymns movement, are actually MORE true to the practice of historical church music than those who are pure traditionalists.)

So now we find ourselves at the place where Indelible Grace is headlining a major event at the PCA GA.  Even more, the GA's theme is "Love, Sing, Wonder," taken from John Newton's hymn, which has been one of Indelible Grace's more popular hymn re-sets. 

I thank God that the PCA is placing Indelible Grace in a prominent position.  Indelible Grace deserves it.  They've carved a new path that has had considerable grass roots, underground influence on mainstream evangelical worship.  I would very much consider my own passions and desires for the broader church's worship (having come out of a more mainstream evangelical setting growing up) shaped and influenced by IG.  Despite continued traditionalist objections, IG is doing traditional worship a huge favor, and hopefully there will be more of a coming together of traditionalists and those who are comfortable with modern musical styles, because what they DO share is the most important thing--a commitment to biblically rooted, historically informed congregational songs.

Robbie Seay Band Dabbles in the Hymns Movement

By recommendation of my friend John Gooch,  I picked up Robbie Seay Band’s album, Miracle, released this past March.  John knew I’d bite hook, line, and sinker when he texts me with descriptive words like “theologically rich” and “hymns.”  It is a great album.  Miracle is further evidence of what I have tried to explain to traditional worship advocates who continually criticize the theological shallowness of modern worship.  I have noticed an evolution in the mainstream artists (e.g. Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, David Crowder, Tim Hughes, etc.) toward God-centeredness, Gospel-centeredness, mission-mindedness, and issues close to the teachings of Christ and the Old Testament prophets.  Textually, modern worship is boring down to new depths.  If you peruse the lyrics of Miracle, you will see this.

What most excites me is Miracle’s final track, “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.”  I’m excited because (you guessed it) it’s a re-setting of an old hymn written by George Matheson in 1882.  Indelible Grace has re-set this hymn as well, and it’s one of their more popular tunes.  Robbie Seay Band’s version is just as good, with probably more mainstream appeal because of its stylistic setting.  He altered the words here and there…nothing which damages the text's integrity, though.  He also added a chorus. 

Oh, love that will not let me go
I rest me weary soul in Thee
I give You back this life I owe
And in Your ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be

Oh, light that follows all my way
I yield my flickering torch to Thee
And my heart restores its borrowed ray
And in Your sunshine’s blaze, its day
May brighter, fairer be

Rejoice my heart
Rejoice my soul
My Savior God has come to Thee
Rejoice my heart
You’ve been made whole
By a love that will not let me go

Oh, joy that seeks me through the pain
I cannot close my heart to Thee
I chase the rainbow through the rain
And feel the promise is not vain
That more shall tearless be

Oh, cross that lifts and holds my head
I dare not ask to fly from thee
I lay in dust life’s glory dead
From the ground, their blossoms red
Life that shall endless be

I’m excited to see more mainstream worship artists move away a token look at hymns (see my previous post lamenting the fact that evangelical worship has sought to reset or “update” the same list of 20 hymns) to a less well-known text worthy of a re-sing in modern generations.  I’m excited that modern worship and hymnody doesn’t have to be either-or, and people are waking up to that reality.  I'm excited that "old hymns to new music" in mainstream worship is being unshackled from the confines of retaining the tune and "jazzing it up."  I'm excited that the new breed of church musician is re-embracing the tried and true practice of giving old texts to present generations by means of musical overhaul.

iworship hymns...c'mon, let's think differently about how to "redo" hymns

Check out the album. If you've been checking me out, you know me by now.  You know that I'm an odd lover of traditional hymns and modern worship.  So I usually pick up anything that says "hymns" on it and looks remotely modern, to see what kind of work is going on in that field.  I therefore picked up "iworship hymns" from Integrity music.  They've been putting out this iworship series for a while now, and they're latest issue is an album dedicated to hymns.  It is a compilation of previously-recorded, previously-released tracks from great Integrity artists like Paul Baloche, Gateway Worship, Hillsong, New Life, etc. The album is a good one.  It's a great listen and has great production.  The texts of the songs are wonderful, and the worship leaders are all great, authentic people, passionate about God's glory.  But I'm discouraged about what's going on in modern worship with regards to "resetting" hymns, and this is a prime example.* I'll begin my analysis with a vignette of a typical conversation I often have with people when I tell them about what I'm trying to accomplish with The Glad Sound. I'm sure my friends at Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, and Sojourn Community Church have had similar dialogues. Person:  So what's your project about? Zac:  We're taking the texts of old hymns and setting them to new music...new melodies, chord structures, and instrumentation. Person:  Oh, I LOVE that!  I love it when we sing "updated" hymns in our church. Zac:  Tell me about that a bit more. Person:  You know, when they take an old hymn and "jazz it up" by adding drums or guitars or something.  They just make those outdated hymns contemporary. Zac:  Oh, cool.  (sigh...)  [the conversation continues as I try to explain how what we're doing is different, and hopefully better] I don't know how many times I have had this conversation.  People don't understand that when we're "resetting" hymns, we are not keeping the music, at all.  We are not "updating" or "jazzing up" the melodies and chord structures.  It's as though we're taking a written poem and setting music to it for the first time.  The old tune and the new tune have nothing to do with each other, except that they can be affixed to the same text. I'm not completely against this type of re-hymn setting.  I think in some cases it works and sounds great (for some reason, I've felt that songs in 3/4 and 6/8 work better for this).  But more often than not, it sounds forced, canned, and a bit artificial.  There's a good reason for this.  The music was composed in a different style and genre (often block chord writing) that doesn't easily and naturally import to modern styles (melodies with fewer chord changes between).  Often, I feel that the original composers are rolling over in their graves when their music is bent out of shape.  (Again, I'm not totally against it...I plan on at least attempting to jam the plainsong chant melody of "Of the Father's Love Begotten" into a modern groove on our next album...traditionalites, don't shoot me, please). These types of conversations, and these types of "updated hymns" albums like "iworship hymns," betray a myopia quite pervasive in mainstream evangelical music: the only way to do hymns in modern worship settings is to take the original melodies and affix a new instrumentation, syncopation, and beat to them.  Friends, THERE IS ANOTHER WAY!  And this other way is something that's been going on for centuries (see my previous post on this for more detail).  For centuries, musicians have sought to re-clothe an old hymn in the current musical vernacular.  Almost any time you look in a hymnal and see a text written in one year and the music written much later, that's usually the case. Why is it that we only think we have one option here?  Why is it that new modern worship "hymns" projects deliver to us the same thing again and again?  Please don't take me as complaining about these projects.  I'm more observing and lamenting the fact that there aren't more who are "updating" hymns in ways which feel more natural to everyone.  In conversations where I'm talking to a lover of old hymns who actually gets what I'm doing, they're appreciative, not only that I'm giving modern worshipers a taste of old hymns, but that I'm not tampering with the musical integrity of the tunes previously used for these hymns. I just know that there is so much more to be done in re-setting hymns, but every time I pick up a new "hymns" album, it's just the same old concept, recycled.  There are SO many hymns to be brought back to the church, and there are SO many great songwriters out there!  Step up!  You can have so much more freedom with these hymns than you might realize! Peace, love, dove. *One mild exception to my discussion on the iworship hymns album is "When I Survey," by Kathryn Scott, re-set to the tune to "O Danny Boy."  It's actually a beautiful setting and brings out some different nuances of the text that I'm interested in exploring.

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old hymns, new music...NOT a new thing

Every innovative endeavor is bound to receive some backlash... And I've certainly had my share of less than enthusiastic comments about my re-setting of old hymn texts to new music.  Tonight is an evening where I feel like proffering a response. Sometimes I encounter old hymn lovers who give off the air (or say explicitly) that they don't appreciate old hymns being tinkered with, tampered with, even desecrated.  Perhaps some are aware (but I find that many are not) that such a practice of setting old texts to new melodies for modern ears and new generations of Christian assemblies has seen many iterations over church history.  Even more ironic is that some of the beloved hymns that I and my hymns movement cohorts are accused of desecrating are already once-over desecrated texts.  Perhaps, then, for the person unfamiliar with the history of hymnody, I'll crack open the door of just how historic re-hymning truly is by offering a brief sketch of one man, Lowell Mason (1792-1872). Mason was a Massachusettes-born Georgia boy, banker turned church musician.  After the explosive heyday of Watts and Wesley (when they shifted in the eyes of the church from being the contemporary movers and shakers to being the more staid, "traditional" hymns...funny how that works), notwithstanding some notable hymns and hymnwriters in between, church song was growing stale.  The old hymns felt tired, and worshipers wanted more fresh hymns for a new era in evangelicalism.  The flurry of the first Great Awakening had come and gone, and the revival dust was settling.  Mason observed American congregations, saddened by the lifelessness in the singing.  He commented:

“Go where we may into the place of worship…when the singing commences…the congregation are either on the one hand gazing at the select performers to admire the music, or on the other expressing their dissatisfaction by general symptoms of restlessness.”*

Mason was dissatisfied with lifelessness and decided to do something about it.  He did so, not by shirking the traditions but by re-expressing them in modern ways.  He began affixing new tunes, melodies, and chord structures to glorious old hymn texts...a musical garb he believed modern listeners in his day would appreciate and resonate with.  Check out the impressive list that the nethymnal offers of over 80 new tunes Mason composed here.  Let me point out a few hymns that Mason re-hymned: Joy to the World! A Watts hymn written in 1719...the original tune of which was certainly not what we sing today!  Mason took the music of G. F. Handel and arranged it for congregational singing...a tune that is now immortally tied to this text. There is a Fountain Filled with Blood. William Cowper's 1772 hymn saw new light when Mason re-energized it and hymns of the same meter for modern ears.  Interestingly, the tune that we often sing with it today (not Mason's tune) is a 19th century camp song (ah, those silly youth and their wild music!). When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. This beloved 1707 Watts hymn was not sung to the tune we know and love, until Mason came along and wrote "Hamburg" in 1824, blessing the church in perpetuity. The list could go on. In the light of this, it's quite ironic when hard and fast hymn-lovers criticize folks like myself who attempt to clothe old hymns in new music.  Were it not for the members of the "hymns movement" of old, like Lowell Mason, they would not have some of their most beloved hymns!  Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, Sojourn Community Church, Sovereign Grace...they're not doing anything new.  They're recycling a repeated practice in church music history--giving back historic hymns to the modern church by re-setting them with new tunes and instrumentation. Though some traditional hymn lovers criticize this practice, at the end of the day we join hands with the same burden.  It's a burden to see to it that great hymns don't lose their place in the changing church.  Some hymn lovers believe that the only way to relieve this burden is to dig one's heels in and keep singing them the way they've always been sung.  Re-tuning them is a transgression too far across the line.  I humbly disagree, because, though I share their burden not only for the texts but the music, I find that the loss of music is by far and away the lesser of two evils (and sometimes the loss of music is not an evil at all, but a great good...as some of those horrid tunes need to be put in the grave! :)).  I've waded long enough in the stream of modern worship to know that "sing em our way or the highway" will only polarize, divide, and push away.  For now, modern worship, for better or worse, is tied to a certain set of musical priorities and parameters, and the music is not ancillary to the worship expression but part of the DNA of what draws worshipers to that style (which, as history tells, will change, too). So all we're doing in the hymns movement is attempting to be 21st century Masons.  We believe in the power of these old texts.  Therefore, with our musical ability, we'll attempt to smuggle them in modern music, so that perhaps some might give them a hearing and be pleasantly surprised when a poetic profundity socks them in the gut, drawing them deeper into knowledge, insight, wisdom, and the worship of God. And if this little post can't convince some of my criticizers that what I'm doing is worthwhile, at least perhaps it can take some of the blinders off, curing historical myopia. *Thomas Hastings, Biblical Repertory, July 1829, pp. 414, 415

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