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.
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
2 comments:
Mark, I hear you on the rich reserve found in traditional hymns. They are rich and give so much.
But...I've got to say some things that perhaps are obvious at this point in these ongoing discussions. At one point, those "traditional hymns" were new, novel, and something people had to "get used to." By now we all know enough about human nature that we can safely presume that there was resistance when these hymns were first introduced. I mean, we are creatures of habit. We are suspicious of the new, and want to conserve what was prior. This is not new. Even in the Old Testament, when the people returned from the Babylonian captivity to rebuild the temple, this dynamic was in play. Some rejoiced as the new foundation was being laid for the new Temple, but others wept when they remembered the former (Ezra 3:11-13, especially verse 12).
To be sure, the traditional hymns of today were one day novel and had to find their way into the course of the Church's bloodline. We can say much about the music of today. Of course, much will pass away, but some of todays songs will likely be rich treasures for the saints in the decades and perhaps centuries to come.
Anyway, I think the way forward is found in a recent wise word I read by Rick Warren on Facebook. He said, "The church who argues the past againts the present has no future." Love the pithy wisdom there.
Matt
Thanks for the comments.
I too appreciate the fact that the idea that modern folk just can't sing hymns doesn't stack up to our experience this time of year.
I didn't read your piece as a being against new songs, but in situations where there are policies not to sing anything more than ten years old the disjoining of both contemporary generations and from the praise of historic Christianity need to be reviewed.
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