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OK, I know others may disagree with this, but I have not been to a church that really seems to understand music. I have done some blog posts (and there are more coming) around this, but I wondered what other TLSers might think.
To clarify, I think I have probably finally left churches, as I have been occasionally attending a local one. The reason is a music festival I attended over the summer, and enjoyed, among other acts, Skrillex at 4:15 in the morning. I was undoubtedly the youngest there, and possibly the most churchy person there. And yet I looked over the crowd, and saw some 30,000 young people who were enjoying themselves.
And I have to ask, if this is what these people love and enjoy musically, is anyone in the least bit surprised when they don;t bother coming to church for some trite, MOR, sanctimonious church music (whether organ-based or guitar based).
For me, and for many others, music is important. It is interesting that, in the end, music is the thing that has driven me from church. And it makes me wonder why church music is so atrocious.
I miss the band we played in at my last church. We were really good. And I think the music was good and edgy. Different. But, to be honest, the words sucked. I miss playing though. I haven’t touched the guitar since I left over 3 years ago.
because there are wars between pastors and worship leaders over who gets center-stage….
This is at once an easy topic for me to talk about and also a difficult one.
From what I observe, most churches struggle to acquire and keep musicians. And then the ones they usually manage to keep are easily set in their musical ways, or never had much talent to begin with, or worse: keep what they like listening to and what they like playing totally separate. How many organists like organ music, for instance? It is also a problem when those running the music don’t have access or exposure to any sort of professional development. Or don’t know they even need it.
I’ve been in a church band of some kind or another for decades. I have a lot of experience and have almost always had people along the way who were interested in professionalism. My father is one, and he is why I know how to do a good live mix at a church sound desk.
Playing the music is similar. I play what is called in the industry “second keys”. I am not a pianist, instead I do synth-pads, organs, strings often in combination. And a bass line. Add a drummer, a guitarist and usually a pianist and you have a band better than most churches. And then I visit churches that might be lucky to have one struggling guitarist or one older lady on piano or organ. I am under no illusion that the music I help create is better than average. And we are not near the likes of Hillsong (which actually is run as a thoroughly professional event, by the way).
However, that’s just the music.
In a previous church, there were a few songs from Hillsong that kept getting requested from the congregation. We never did them, though, because the senior pastor disagreed with the theology of the words. Hillsong was known for two or three albums of songs that were basically pretty fluffy. This was because their renowned song writer, Geoff Bullock, left and it took them a while to recover from that. It was arguable that they ever truly did.
But I think the words tie in closely to what is being taught. It’s the same problem, really. How can you sing of adoration to “Christ the Lord” if you don’t know or don’t want to know what that means?
Wade.
My last church we had a worship leader who had sung on a very good trance track – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNJP8UppmAQ. There was me, who loved to put the distortion effect on my electric guitar (as well as others, but I would have so liked to seriously rock sometimes). The musicians we had were quite capable of doing some exceptional music.
We still sang the standard Christian stuff, I suspect because this is the stuff that “people expect”, and is easy and less controversial. That is what bugs me, I think – that so often we opt for the easy compromise, and so miss all of the targets.
David – good and edgy – you might mean different things by that than I do! I hope you were, but I know that “edgy” in the christian worship world sometimes means singing a chorus an extra time. It very rarely, IME, means seriously experimenting with radical alternative styles of music. I have not heard anything that is really substantially distinct from general MOR (which does cover quite a range of musical styles) or organ music.
I do realise that my experience is of the UK, and Canada may be different.
There were times I longed to head a service started with a deep thudding bass sound, or a screeching guitar. There were many times I longed for the musicianship I know we had to show itself, and the talent to be used properly. Of course, We Didn’t Do That There.
Great track, Steve! It’s the sort of music I wish we could do in church, but the congregation wouldn’t be up for that. Neither would the other musicians. :-/ We can do what we decided to call “pop folk” – I can’t remember the exact term we came up with, but that’s the common style we can all play. Some can’t play anything else.
I can and do take it pseudo-orchestral for some songs, or off into mild electro for others. (Advantages of being able to program a pro synth.) It’s just so difficult to go anywhere else. I wish we could go seriously electro-pop, for instance, or trance. In a previous church, we picked up one song that was actually funk and very cool to play (though difficult). I think we only did it because the husband of the music leader liked it! I just get so bored with “pop folk”.
Wade.
This is why I’m into instrumental music more often. For reasons I still don’t understand, the lyrics just kill the imagery that I may get, or the calm I may feel just listening to music. Even if it’s 808 State or John Michael Talbot without the words, I just feel like the words of music can often ruin a mood.
Church music is so interminably crap because:
– 80% of it is a copy of a sound that’s secular and popular and not from the heart.
– church musicians (good ones) would like to get paid enough to not have to choose between gas & groceries so it becomes a way to practice for the record deal.
– church musicians (good ones) get the heart sucked out of them for the sake of the pre-sermon concert and attendance numbers.
– church musicians (good ones) have their own sound and songs and if you’re not playing what’s popular and on the radio, you’re either benched or told you’re doing it wrong.
– church musicians (good ones) can’t go out and have a beer after work without being seen by someone who wants to crucify them for it, so they shrink inside the box.
Was I a church musician at one time? Yes. I also managed a band or two. Such talent wasted and talented people burned out by trying to live out their calling and play by the rules.
Sassy – I think you have a point, that there is a “style” of church music, which is expected, and deviation is not allowed. I have been thinking around this of late and concluded that the problem is fundamental to the church.
In the 1970s, a revolution happened in Christian music, both contemporary and worship, influenced by the hippies, and a new form of “Christian” music developed. The problem is that since that point, all that has been done is more music of exactly the same style has been produced – most current “worship music” would be very recognisable in style in the late 70s. Having had a revolution, the church music field stagnated almost immediately.
However contemporary music has not stood still in that time. Today, the music around is very different from the music of the 70’s. Current worship music is now terribly dated. In fact, it was already dated by the early 80s. And a lot of 70s music is crap.
At one time, Christians were producing THE music everyone else wanted to copy – Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. The church had great music! Even by John & Charles Wesley’s time, however, they were taking the bar tunes of the day and putting Church lyrics to them to connect themselves to the non-church crowd. A good idea, in theory, but I’d like to see the days return when the church could be the trendsetter in music.
I have many friends who are gifted, talented musicians who record their own music. Thank goodness for Derek Webb’s noisetrade.com. I think artists, Christian ones anyway, so better if they can stay away from a record label.
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