Singing in the key of autopilot – Part Deux

Last updated on: April 30, 2010 at 9:30 am by Michelle Van Loon

Singing in the key of autopilot – Part Deux 2010-04-30T09:30:00-05:00 Michelle Van Loon

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The church was a massive cathedral, constructed on a prime plat of rich farmland over 100 years ago in order to provide a house of worship for the German farmers who’d settled the area. Suburbia tried to swallow it whole, but didn’t seem to be able to digest the massive steeple, European stained glass windows and beams hewn from ancient trees that once clustered near the town’s cold, still lake.

Up in a loft is an ancient pipe organ, no doubt the pride of the folks who gave sacrificially to purchase and install it when the church was first built. This instrument serves as the worship leader for the church. At the proper moment in each scripted service, the organist pounds out an intro, readying the aging congregation to launch into every verse of each top-heavy hymn.

Well, in theory, anyway.

In actuality, the most of the congregation rises to its feet on cue, and then stands there. Few actually sing. Yes, the some of the songs are hard to sing, and others lumber on and on and on, a musical endurance test.

Is this worship?

I would contend that worship is taking place in this church…but it’s not happening during the church service.

If you keep watching the bored, tired congregation after the final note of the last hymn ends, you’ll se them come alive after the service ends. It appeared that most of them endured the service just as they had for decades in order to have those little social-glue conversations in the lobby after the service:

“How’s your granddaughter doing, Martha?”
“I heard there’s going to be snow again tomorrow afternoon.”
“It was a beautiful funeral.”

Those moments were the emotional marrow of the service – connection, communion and care happened in ways that they couldn’t during the service. The laughter and handshakes between ancient men wearing ancient blazers; a wheelchair-bound woman patting a visiting toddler on the head contained a palpable hunger for emotional connection with God and others in ways that the interminable service and that grim, soul-less music could never satisfy.

Visiting this church a few months ago got me to thinking about the role that music does (and doesn’t) play in worship. It was an extreme version of what I’ve experienced in lots of other church services.

Corporate, sung worship is our birthright as Christ-followers – song/psalm lyrics are ribboned throughout Scripture as a response to the work of God. Without exception, these songs are rooted in overflowing emotion whether their content is lament, thanksgiving, awe, joy or longing.

Though the creation of music is in part a cognitive, volitional act, if it originates solely in the domain of the brain alone, I believe it will fly like a lead balloon. When I was involved in planning chapel services at Trinity, some on campus voiced their concerns that service music might be used in some evil way to manipulate a congregation’s emotions, similar, perhaps, to the way that a movie soundtrack is meant to lead an audience to feel. Someone there once suggested to me that the ideal would be found if the congregation had a new bit of doctrine to think about in every sentence of a song.

This was in part a reaction against modern worship music, but I think it came from something more, too. I wonder if some of this was fear of tapping into the wellspring of emotion that lies beneath the surface of us all. I don’t see that fear of feeling emotion rewarded (or even expected!) anywhere in the Psalms – or anywhere else in Scripture, for that matter.

Sung worship must engage our messy, unmanageable emotions. If fear of a mess or an unhealthy commitment to nostalgia in our church services keeps us from feeling those emotions, worship becomes about us – which is the exact thing that those who default to these positions claim they’re avoiding.

Do you agree or disagree with dragging our emotions into the conversation about worship music? Why?

Does your congregation shy away from emotional engagement in music?

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April 23, 2010

Singing in the key of autopilot

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