Scoring Points for Traditional Hymnody

What’s great at Christmastime can be great 48 other Sundays

At the Christmas season, traditional hymnody—it’s words and musical genre—scores big. For about 30 calendar days, traditional, even some really old, hymnody rebounds in worship-life and society. People show that they actually like the old stuff.

Maybe this is one way to be more strategic in recruiting worshipers from within the contemporary side of the evangelical and reformed. It’s time to do a little CARPE DIEM. Here are some good vibes at Advent, musically speaking.

Generations Hold Hands: elementary age kids, very young children, 14 year olds, 25 year olds— goateed and lip piercings to-boot—stand next to 69 year olds, those still sporting wire frame bifocals, and they’ll work their way through five lines of #221 Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. If you look close, they’re holding a hymn book too. They appear dialed in with gratitude. Carols bring about the pleasant wrapped-up gift of the church being the church—young, old, wide, narrow, rich, and poor. Knuckles and high fives.

Sweat on the Brow is No Biggie: At Christmas we don’t mind having to work at our singing. In our worship age, when we’re told about KISS—Keep It Simple Songwriter, at Advent we’re not afraid of fancy notes, awkward beats, and funny syllables. “The shepherds at those tidings re-joice-ED much in mind…” How odd. I wonder if Chris Tomlin uses re-joice-ED in contemporary expression? At Christmas, that doesn’t scare us, and that’s good. I still struggle with the line in O Come All Ye Faithful, the one, “very God, begotten, not created.” I have to work at this line every time we come to it. The timing with the syllables freaks me. But our willingness to work at freaky beats and syllables is good. We see that people don’t mind going over and over a tune to get it right. Maybe once Christmastime is over we can make use of our willingness to be patient and work on singing skills. If people are showing that they’re not afraid of elbow grease, let’s go for it. Whistle while you work—on more difficult traditional worship music.

Use the Principle of Reinforcement: If you go to the malls and over to the hospital, and turn on the radio, and attend the Christmas programs...and—even open a Hallmark Card, you’ll get reinforcement of traditional hymnody-like carols. The principle of reinforcement should cue us. Pastor, Worship Leader: do you want a shot at seeing your people grow in their singing? Discipleship centers on familiarity, recognition and re-play. Once again—here’s hope for traditional worship music. Finding ways for traditional hymns to be piped into ears and hearts is key. If God’s people hear it enough, they’ll grow to love it. Christmas proves this.

If only it was Christmastime every Sunday.

G. Mark Sumpter

Hard to Leave, Part 6

The three Scriptural ingredients below have helped me to work through the strengths and weaknesses of Contemporary Christian Music and its role regarding public worship. These same matters also keep a Biblical grid before us on positive steps to take about choosing selections of worship music. The three are: 1) truth, 2) purpose and 3) people.

Let me illustrate the use of these three points of Biblical ingredients: In the Westminster Confession of Faith, a summary of the Bible’s system of faith, at chapter 16 we are told that a good work acceptable to God done by man must conform to three ingredients. A good work must be done 1) according to the Word of God, 2) for the purpose of glorifying God and 3)with a new heart. These three fit nicely with the triangle below with respect to worship music selections for public worship: #1 the music text and musical composition should comport with God's Standard, the Word, #2 requires that we keep in mind the occasion or setting of public worship; it's a public service for the glory of God, and #3 worship music offered to God requires that it be offered with a new heart in Christ.

#1 Truth/Standard
#2 Occasion/Purpose

#3 People

These three ingredients are to be held together, serving as complementary principles for our reflection and practice for music and singing for public worship. One side of the triangle serves as a counter-balance for the two others.

So, for example, we might find the text and tunes of a hymn or a Scripture Song or contemporary worship hymn biblically and theologically sound, and it may fit well for the occasion and purpose of public worship, but in terms of the people, let’s imagine that only the seven members of the praise ensemble have the knowledge and skill to sing the piece. Due to the Biblical principle that worship singing, for the occasion of public worship, is for all of God’s people, not a few, we won’t sing the song until the congregation has been trained. Or take another instance, let’s imagine that the worship song comports nicely with Scripture, God’s truth; and the people love the text and tune, they know it well, but it doesn’t fit the setting and occasion of public worship. Because of that deficiency we conclude that it's inappropriate for public worship.

G. Mark Sumpter

Hard to Leave, Part 5

6. What about genuine feelings? If I’m not giving the Lord the genuine heart-felt inner me, then I don’t think I am truly worshiping God, right?

The Lord Jesus Christ wants us to draw near to God with our lips and our hearts. Using both in the worship of God is important. But we battle with hypocrisy all the time; we find ourselves often trying to fake God. We say words in worship and our lives are phony. That’s wrong. But also, maybe because we don’t feel like being in worship or we don’t have interests and good feelings for a particular hymn, we think that excuses us. Oh well, I don’t feel much like worshiping, so I shouldn’t and I won’t. But here, we need to be a hypocrite to our feelings! Here we need to be different than what our feelings are telling us. Being a hypocrite to feelings that mislead is the obedient thing to do.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, “The head rules the belly through the chest.” Head=acting on factual understanding, Belly=acting on need and appetites, and Chest=acting with personal heart. This is true for worship and singing worship music, and these three are to work together.

Genuine faith is not mere knowledge about God in worship, knowing the right facts about His presence, promises, etc. Also, genuine faith expressed in worship is not merely the exercise of our will, that is, having zeal, enthusiasm and conviction in worship; and last, faith is not mere attitudinal, that is, personal heart-sincerity showing reliance and trust. All three of these must cohere and work together to make up faith’s expression in worship.

There’s the great danger of relying on feelings, especially tied to music, as the essential basis for being able to experience true worship. Feelings are not automatically wrong. But there is the danger of attaching spiritual significance to feelings apart from a faithful connection to God’s Word, the truth. The basis for genuine, Spirit-filled worship cannot be our feelings. That would lead us to a doctrine of self-help, self-dependence on feelings. Such teaching would say: my feelings determine if I am having and keeping a solid, growing relationship with God (i.e. that I am growing in the worship of Him). Having the right, sincere feelings does not open the way to Heaven. God has opened heaven to us through His Son. That is truth separate from the way I am feeling.

G. Mark Sumpter

Hard to Leave, Part 3

3. Pietism doesn’t sound too bad, what’s the issue?

With the stress on heart-warmth, one’s experience can easily become the standard for knowing God’s presence, truth and will. When Christianity starts to overemphasize the concerns of an individual soul and inner attitudes, frequently we next underemphasize doctrine, and promote subjectivism and even mysticism. In truth, it’s not that doctrine is neglected in pietism but doctrine becomes based on very personal and subjective standards.

Several times over the years, I have heard people speak of the hymn, He Lives! The chorus of the hymn continually puts forth this question, “You ask me how I know He lives?” and then it answers: “He lives within my heart.” Do we find the standard of heart-proof as the standard for proving doctrine in the Bible? The believer’s subjective experience of salvation is a very important feature of the Bible, but it is not used as a proof that Jesus rose from the dead. The New Testament apostles always pointed people to the historical realities about Christ’s bodily resurrection—the tomb is empty; they recorded the times of seeing His resurrected body, watching Him eat and touching His sides.

4. How does this relate to contemporary worship music?

In the practice of worship singing, Scripture itself must determine and give shape to our experience in the presence of God. Just to put forward one example, when I would sing words like this contemporary worship song from the Vineyard songbook, “I can almost see Your holiness as I look around this place,” a song reminiscent of the vision of the prophet in Isaiah 6, it would lead me to experience a sense of privilege and thankfulness. The song has the chorus, “Spirit of God lift me up, Spirit of God lift me up, fill me again with Your love.” But what does Scripture say Isaiah’s experience was? When Isaiah saw the Lord in His holiness, he did not see himself as being in a moment of privilege and in a time of thanksgiving concerning God’s awesome presence, but he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King…” (Isaiah 6:5). Scripture is our training manual for our experience. Emotions of joy and emotions of terror, both, are fitting according to the specific subject matter of the Bible. Bible teaching expressed in faithful words and tunes of music guides us on this.

I am grateful to Michael Horton for his Appendix B in the book, In the Face of God. There are helpful insights in this volume of his.

G. Mark Sumpter

Hard to Leave, Part 2

1. Why do you say that the contemporary worship music movement was hard to leave?

My personality and heart are thoroughly painted over with pietism. I’m an experience oriented person. The light rock, soft rock, popular radio-kind of contemporary sound and singing found in some reformed churches, and many evangelical ones, is so very attractive to me. Emotionally speaking, I easily melt with the contemporary sound. It was hard to leave it behind.

2. What does Pietism have to do with it?

Pietism, as a teaching and practice of Christianity, was handed down to us from the old Lutherans who started to fear that the Christian faith had become too academic and intellectual. In the 1670s there was a push to deal with the cold, doctrinaire kind of Christian worship and preaching that had come out of the Reformation period. This push invited authors, pastors and Christian lay-folk to promote a living faith and a personal heartfelt piety and devotion. As the years went on, pietism touched down in Colonial America. Men like John and Charles Wesley and Jonathan Edwards stirred many with heart-application for Christianity and revival; they breathed life and unction into worship, preaching, obedience and service.

G. Mark Sumpter

Hard to Leave, Part 1

Why was it hard to leave the contemporary worship music movement? I learned to play the steel string guitar in high school, and in 1976 I began to provide the accompaniment for popular praise music for a college Bible study at a campus ministry in Wisconsin. For about 22 years in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with varying amounts of involvement, my wife and I served in music ensembles as instrumentalists and singers for contemporary worship music. These ensembles accompanied the public worship services at three different OPC congregations.

The instruments included strings, winds, brass, percussion and piano and organ. I do not have music training, but gladly volunteered to lead the the contemporary worship service at (back then) Covenant OPC in Burtonsville, MD for five years. At the time, we used music from several publishing groups including Sovereign Grace Ministries and Marantha! Music. We followed, and in some cases, used the traditional re-write music of Indelible Grace and other artists like Bob Kauflin, Mark Altrogge and Graham Kendrick; we also tapped into others from the 90s, e.g. Twila Paris, Michael W. Smith and Michael Card, and et al.

Being up to my ears, whole-heartedly so, in the movement was a genuinely merry thing, and that made leaving it especially hard.

G. Mark Sumpter