I recently visited a local congregation with Kurt Von Schakel to check out their digital organ for possible purchase for our new sanctuary. (Thanks to the generosity of many of you, we since have done that.) While there I discovered that the congregation has had the organ mothballed and unused for about five years.
Why would they have done that to such a fine musical instrument? Because, as their pastor told me, they have made the commitment to so-called “contemporary praise music” in all their worship services. While we were there, the pastor was proud to show Kurt and me their “new” worship space, which was their “old” gymnasium.
When we walked into the space, something struck me as being very odd. As we talked to one another, it sounded as if we were talking in a clothing closet. We could hear each other, but we sounded very muffled. I noticed that there were panels of baffling hung all over the ceiling and the walls were covered with fabric. As a result, there was no echo in our voices whatsoever. Acoustically it was one of the most “dead” rooms I had ever been in.
When the pastor left us to answer a phone call, I turned to Kurt and asked him, “How in the world can a congregation sing in a room like this?” He smiled and said to me, “They don’t. This entire space is designed for the electronically amplified praise band and the song leaders standing in the front of the congregation on the stage.”
Kurt’s observation reminded of the interviews Debi Prather and several members of the Building Committee held during our search for the sound engineers and consultants who would help us crafting the acoustics of our new sanctuary. During the course of those interviews it became very obvious that some of them did not understand what we were trying to do in our new worship space. Some of them were trying to sell us all kinds of electronic equipment with a huge mixing board because they assumed we were trying to support a praise band and song leaders. But that was not our goal. We wanted a sanctuary to support the natural acoustic sound of the human voice and unamplified musical instruments. We wanted a space that would not just electronically amplify the voices of a few song leaders but magnify the unamplified natural acoustics of the voices of an entire congregation.
It then dawned on me that for us at Christ Church this is not just a matter of personal taste. It is not just that we prefer the natural sound of unamplified voices over the sound of the electronically amplified voices. On the contrary, we wanted a worship space that that would reflect our understanding of the nature of worship and the church. Congregational singing is essential to both. In other words, there is a lot more at stake here than meets the eye. Or should I rather say the ear?
The world has changed dramatically during my life time. It always seems that when it comes to technology, I am the last one to figure out the changes. I still buy CD’s for my music. But my kids tell me that mode of sound reproduction is slowly dying. Now it is time to welcome the age of the iPod, of the digital download. I am sure you have seen many people, not just necessarily teenagers, walking around with plugs in their ears attached with skinny long wires to a little box in their hand or in their pocket. Welcome to the iPod where anyone can digitally download their favorite music into their own personally customized musical “library.” Now everyone can customize their own personal entertainment. Now you don’t have to put up with someone else’s bad taste in a noisy room. Now you can escape and hide in your own personal musical world.
As a result we are creating a world of musical consumers. Vocal music teachers, like our own Debi Prather, have been complaining to me for years that people just don’t seem to be able to sing or are interested in singing like they used to. In the age of the iPod, the larynx is losing out to electronics.
Just before I left Fort Wayne ten years ago to move to Zionsville, I made a discovery that dramatically portrayed to me this major change that has slowly taken place in our society over the last century. Some of the members of my congregation lived down the street from a quaint little city park called “Packard Park.” One day I asked them if that park was named after the old Packard automobile. They said, “Oh no! That was the location of the old Packard Piano Company.” I had never heard of the Packard Piano Company before. So, I did a little research.
At the turn of the 20th century, i.e. 1900, America was filled with hundreds of piano manufacturers. Many, many homes had their own pianos. And the biggest, most widely produced printed matter in the country was not books or magazines but . . . sheet music! Why? Because in the age before radio and TV and computers and iPods, families would actually get together in the evenings around the piano and sing. If you didn’t have someone who could play the piano, you would buy a “player piano.” It was then that I realized that as wonderful as our modern musical technology is, we have lost something in the process. Those must have been great days to experience family and community as everyone gathered around the piano to actually sing. That sense of “togetherness” and community is so difficult to create today as we race through our frantic weekly schedules. We are lucky if the whole family gets to sit around the table to eat together. Sitting together to sing . . . that is unheard of! We might join in humming the melody of a popular song that we hear on the radio. We might be able to mouth a few words. Have you ever tried to get several people to join in “singing” the latest rap or hip-hop song? It is virtually impossible.
We live in a world dominated by “individualism.” The days of the Top 40 hits are long gone. The music market has been splintered into dozens of different styles and demographics. There are only a few piano manufacturers. Who buys sheet music besides choral directors? What do we sing together any more? “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” or “The Star Spangled Banner?” And it seems that there are fewer and fewer who can even sing those any more. But everyone loves music and has their own, private and personal favorites downloaded onto their individual iPod so that they can go off in their corner and listen alone.
Much of the so-called “contemporary praise” music is focused on relating to just this sort of world. The desire to relate our world in a relevant manner is commendable. However, sometimes I wonder, “At what cost? When do we end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater?” As we seek to reach out and fit in with our world, when do we become so much IN the world that we forget that as Christians we will always be NOT OF the world?
I am concerned that in this rush to speak to the world of the iPod, its language of electronically amplified and personalized music and its core entertainment values, we will abandon being the church. The church is a kind of community that ought to never totally “fit in” to the world because to do so would abandon who we are as the people of God.
The church in the New Testament is called the ekklesia, that is the “called out ones.” The church is not just a collection of individuals. We are called as individuals into a community by the voice of the Gospel. The Gospel holds us together into a community and collection of people that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. We come together not just as people of northern European ethnic extraction, not just as upper middle class suburbanites, or as people who prefer a given style of music or church architecture. We are called together because we have heard the good news of Jesus and Christ and have staked our lives on it. For as much as we might share common tastes and preferences or as much as we might like each other as friends, what ultimately holds together this diverse congregation is Christ and the message of His Gospel.
That sense of being a community called together by a message is reflected in the most important thing we do as community every week: worship. We are gathered as a community to be a community. We come together not just as individuals, living in our own private space to have our own private needs met. We are a community that has been called together and remains glued together by the grace of God. Therefore, our worship ought to reflect that reality.
That means worship is not merely “entertainment.” We come not to just sit in seats to watch and listen to a “show” that is taking place before us on a stage. Worship is not like going to a concert where we are entertained by performers on a stage. If it were, then we would want our churches to be modeled after a good concert venue, i.e., good sight lines, visually stimulating, good sound amplification that enables us to clearly hear the music of the performers and eliminates any distracting noise from the audience. The audience is welcome to sing along but clear amplification of the sound of the performers is most important.
The church which Kurt and I visited and sold us their organ was modeled exactly on that kind of experience. They no longer needed an instrument like this large organ that was designed for congregational singing. They needed a space which inhibited and even silenced congregational singing since everything is about the performance of the worship leaders who were positioned in front of the congregation on a stage. It is no accident that many such churches will call their worship not a “service” but an “experience.” Personal, subjective, individual involvement is of paramount importance. Unless “I can feel it,” the worship experience is of little value.
Our understanding of worship at Christ Church is very different. Yes, we want worship to be lively and not boring. We want music to be performed well, regardless of its style. (The so-called distinction between “contemporary” and “traditional” music is not very helpful. All music is “contemporary,” performed and heard in the here and now. The question concerning music ought to be quality. Is it done well? Does it fit the occasion?) Yes, we want it to be relevant to our daily lives and not simply an exercise in some unintelligible, mysterious cult. But the focus of worship first and foremost is not on us but on God and the good gifts God so graciously showers on us, beginning with God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ. Therefore, our songs, prayers, words, drama, dance, music are “served,” (“service”) to God. Our worship is to honor, praise and glorify God. It is not about us and our “experience.” It is not a “performance” that we put on for one another’s benefit or entertainment. So our musicians and vocalists do not stand in front of us so that we can “watch” them. No, our attention is directed to God. If we applaud, it is not for a good performance done well but because we are thanking God for making possible such marvelous music. But I suspect that, when worship is done “well” and honors God, we will also find it pleasing to our sensibilities. It will have been something that was a pleasure to “experience.”
But most of all weekly, corporate worship is something the “community” does. It is something that we do together as a group. That is reflected in how we seek to do worship at Christ Church. Congregational song, singing where we all join together raising our voices in a common melody, making a sound that is simply impossible to create as individuals, is essential and fundamental not only to our worship. Even more importantly, it is a reflection of how we understand ourselves as the church of Jesus Christ.
Christ Church is an amazing collection of people. This particular group of people would probably never choose to associate with each other were it not for the voice of the Gospel that has called us together. But since we have been “called out,” since we are an ekklesia, expressing ourselves as a community is important to us. When we together raise up our voices in common song, when we actually can hear each other sing and reinforce and encourage one another in our singing, we give powerful testimony to the power of Christ and His Spirit that has created this amazing and marvelous community.
Perhaps some of you have walked into the new worship space recently and heard the amazing acoustics. The space is anything but the “dead” space Kurt and I experienced at the other church. This space is incredibly “lively.” (In fact it is so “lively” that we may have to install some baffling to partially “muffle” a sound which now even “amplifies” a whisper.) A few months ago we experienced that on Pentecost Sunday. At the conclusion of the service, we processed out into the new space continuing to sing our closing hymn. I distinctly remember what happened to our singing as we entered the new sanctuary. Without the aid of any electronic amplification, the sound literally “exploded.” It was as if someone had turned up the volume ten-fold. Our congregational song literally took on a new form. It sounded totally different. We were able to vividly hear each other sing in such a way that we encouraged one another to sing even louder and clearer. That day we literally experienced “auditory evidence” for this new reality called “the church.”
Just think of it. There are very few places any more in our society where people gather together to sing as a group. The days of families gathering together to sing around the piano are long past. Our individualistic world has made us pay a great price and lose something that was truly precious. But not the church! Here we still gather together around the piano, the organ, the table, the font and the sacred text to hear the good news and experience a sense of togetherness, family and community that can be found no other place in this world.
Christ has called us together to make a new song. On Sunday July 20 we signaled that a new day for our music ministry is upon us. We installed as our new music staff: Debi Prather (Director of Music), Kurt Von Schakel (Music Associate) and Kim Handrock (Director of Bells). We are blessed to have such a find group of musicians to lead us. On September 28 we will dedicate our new building which will include a fantastic new worship space. It will be a new day for Christ Church as we will now be able, as never before, to leave behind our iPods, flex our larynx and join in congregational song. Together with our new organ the congregational song will be naturally amplified by our new space in ways that we have never experienced before. Our sense of community will be strengthened. We will be able to “serve” God with worship that is truly worthy of the grace God has showered upon us in Christ.
Christ Church, the Lutheran Church of Zionsville
Rev. Dr. Steven E. Albertin (Click to E-mail)
