Audience of One

Music in the CU

Last weekend I was away with UCCF on a new leaders’ training conference, looking at the distinctives of Christian Unions (CUs), with wonderful teaching on leadership, Christian growth, joy, and more practical issues alongside. Our main sessions were looking at Philippians, and at the start of his talk on chapter 2 (which includes what is probably an early hymn), John Risbridger addressed the musicians in the group, as an experienced musician himself.

In reality, you guys will probably shape the theology – that is, the sort of understanding, the ethos, the spirituality – of your CU more than any individual speaker who comes to speak to you over the course of the year. The reason for this is that on the whole, people forget the words that they hear, but they remember the words that they sing. And those words that they sing sink down deep into their hearts and lives and minds, and actually form the whole way that they think about God, and about what being a Christian means. It’s a really huge responsibility … that you need to exercise with great care and humility and dependence on God. I’ve come to the conclusion that stringing together a few of my favourite songs that I just happened to listen to while getting dressed in the morning isn’t good enough. I want to do what Kenny was doing this morning – I want to harness the power of music, which is a God-given power, to help people grasp life-changing truth, and then to respond to it with love and adoration and praise. Don’t be ashamed of the power of music. Music is God’s gift to us; it has power because he gave it power – but we can use that power for good, or for ill, and I want to use that power well, to engage people with truth, and to give them the vocabulary to respond to God with love and worship. And you thought all you had to do was play the guitar. (Condensed from recording, available at Dave Bish’s blog)

Glad it’s not just me who thinks these things then.

The weekend was challenging on many fronts, but thinking more about music in the CU was a big one. I’m from a more conservative (as opposed to lively) background, so my natural inclination is towards shorter times of singing. Sometimes it feels to me like too many songs in a row can detract from the words of individual songs. The example I used to explain this to some people on the weekend was talks. Talks from the Bible are great, but in our meetings we only have one, because having two would be too much to take in. Similarly with songs, it can be hard to take in all the words (letting the words “dwell in (us) richly”) if we sing too many. So my initial feelings were fewer, better songs, like Braddon Upex calls for:

There is a mighty power in a song
And they can wreak great havoc when they’re wrong.
This is the reason why I join with him
Who called for fewer, better, shorter hymns:
For fewer, for we sing too many songs,
Reducing services to sing-a-longs;
For shorter, though for mine it would suffice
Were we to sing each once instead of thrice;
For better, for so much of what we sing
Is far from fit to set before our King.

However, while my initial inclination was therefore to limit the number of songs we sing in our CU team meetings, I came to the conclusion that this was over-reacting. We can sing lots of songs on a similar topic to help a particular truth sink in, and that can be helpful. Alternatively, we can sing just a few select songs, perhaps with more verses, to accomplish a different purpose. The example of only having one talk doesn’t quite hold, as in one talk a speaker can hammer home one point throughout, or make various points as he goes along. Similarly with songs, we can hammer home one point through multiple songs, or have a few select songs on (sometimes, but not always) distinct topics. What it comes down to is discernment as to what will best help the words sink in – and that will sometimes mean fewer songs, and sometimes more.

How many songs is too many? Well, it depends how long your meeting is! At Bristol our meeting is an hour and a half long, with just under half an hour for the talk. My feeling is that anything from three to six songs is good, depending on what else is to be included. At this point, it comes down to what best serves the words (as above), and how much else there is to fit in. Whereas singing is important, I don’t want to it to crowd out prayer, or testimonies, or practical training, or other important things.

Different people expect different things from the music. Some want an extended time of singing, allowing them to “get into it” so that they can focus more and more as more songs are sung. (I spoke to someone who equated this with a speaker starting with a joke or an anecdote to allow people time to concentrate.) Some prefer shorter times, as too many songs makes it hard for any particular words to sink in. Hopefully discernment on my part will enable people on both sides to benefit from the music. However, I have a slight issue with allowing time to “get into it”, because it seems to me that if we’re merely “getting into it” during the first song or two, we’re not letting the words “dwell in us richly”. (I’m not saying more extended times are therefore bad – note what I’ve already said about both long and short times of singing being appropriate.)

Here we’re touching on a much larger issue to do with emotions and what happens when we sing, which I’ll come onto another time. This is perhaps where I’m going to most strongly disagree with people on music, and is one of the areas of conflict I mentioned last time. Here there is a difference in theology to be explored, not just a difference in style (and just so people are clear, I think emotion when singing isn’t just good, but essential!).

Matthew @ 12:53, March 7, 2008 to Discussions | Comments (6)