Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow
the great stories further up and further in in pursuit of the
life of Christ. Welcome back.
We have been talking about we songs, Brian Brown, Matthew
Clark, Terry Moon. We have finished our longer
discussion about the way that those that that we songs connect
us to God as in us. So we talked about how they
connect us to him vertically, how they connect us to the
people of God chronologically, and how they connect us to the
people of God on on either side of us and, and around the world
now. Horizontally.
Horizontally and and that's of course, in the context of of
Christian we songs, there are folk, we songs that have nothing
to do with any religion. There are we songs in other
religions, but that's the the Christian version of them.
Now we're going to do something that I think will be a little
bit shorter conversation. And then it's to talk about a
little bit of the how of it by looking at our second general
principle, which is that we songs are written on purpose to
give us a voice in God's story. In other words, to empower us to
sing. So the application of this will
be a little bit different for, say, one of your songs for
something that's written for individual voice.
And so I would value your perspective on this as we go.
So, so I will, I'll, I'll, I'll give us the 33 principles again
and we can talk through them. But some of the things that I
will think of most directly are going to be for songs that are
designed for corporate singing, designed for us to sing
together. So there's a little bit of a
different application for them in, in other contexts.
So fair warning. OK, so we are on the first of
our three points point #4 total. And that is that a we song is
written for voice first, not the composer's favorite instrument.
So it's purpose is to help you sing.
It's purpose is not to be a hit on the radio.
It's purpose is not to please a producer.
It probably did if it got recorded, but that wasn't the
primary reason it was getting created.
The the melody is typically going to stay in or close to 1
octave and in a comfortable middle range.
So it's not written for somebody with a super deep bass voice and
only they can go that low. It's not written for a super
thin high counter tenor voice and only they can go that high.
And it's not it's not there's not too much jumping all over
the place. It doesn't require you to hit
notes only dolphins can hear, and it doesn't depend on having,
I would say a full band or even 1 specific instrument to sound
good. The instruments that are brought
to the table either in a particular recording or in a
particular live singing setting are there to accompany the
choir, that is the people. Again, this is in the context of
corporate singing. It's not the people singing
along with whatever the band happens to be doing or feels
like doing, right? The the band is not accompanying
the primary singer in the context of a corporate singing
environment. All of them are accompanying
whether it's a an organ or a piano or a full band or whatever
they're they're accompanying the singers.
That is the the congregation, the group of people that's
gathered there to sing. So that.
I mean, I just eliminated almost all pop music, right?
Not because pop music is bad, not because we hate pop music,
but because they're. They're usually not wee songs.
Yeah, or sometimes they can be. They just sort of accidentally
fell into being one. But someone that's writing a wee
song on purpose is going to be thinking about it's it's written
in a posture of hospitality for the normal singer's voice.
I love that word. Yeah.
Hospitality. OK, so you think about the that
what it really means at its heart is making space, making
space for someone else. And that's what a good We song
does. Yeah.
And, and there are a lot of really practical things like
you're talking about. Like I remember when I was
leading worship that that was a sometimes I would change the
melody. I will.
Often times I would have to lower the key.
Yeah. Or there would be songs that I
would reject because the melody might maybe for 2/3 of the song,
the melody was in a normal range within that other third.
It would it would go somewhere that only a professional singer
could handle. And I'm going to lose everybody.
Nobody's going to be able to participate.
And so, you know, it takes a lot of consideration to to pick the
songs that are going to be most hospitable for these people
because the point is not me performing a song that sounds
cool from the front or wherever I am, but facilitating or making
it easy for people to enter in. Yeah, I, I like what you said to
Brian about the the band is not the primary thing and that the
people sing, are just singing along with the band.
I like to say a lot to my team when we're preparing is that the
primary instrument that we have at our worship is the voice of
the people and we're accompanying them, really.
Yeah. And, and it's one one of the
challenges, and I've talked to a lot of contemporary worship
leaders that have this problem. They'll try to say that to the
congregation, but the songs that they are choosing and the type
of music that they are using makes them out a liar really
hard, right? Like, hey, we're just here to
accompany you now. Try to keep up while we sing
something that wasn't written for you and that we're having a
heck of a lot of fun playing without you and that you can't
where you can't hear yourself sing because the amplification
is so is too right, right. So like this is this is the
probably the closest we're going to get to entering into the
worship wars in this in this conversation right where it's
we're not having a conversation about what type of music is or
what type of instrument is appropriate in church.
What we are doing though is, is, is saying that at a certain
point, if 60708090 percent of your assumptions the the the
instruments, the style of music, where the song came from
production factory wise and how it's all executed.
If, if, if almost all of that is coming from a pop music
perspective, you are going to have to do some really heavy
lifting to foster good congregational singing because
you're fighting against the form you have chosen every step of
the way. So you're talking about the
you're talking about the Prince, the poll behind this, not like
rules about and you can't use that instrument because I think
if you read Psalm 150, you, you have to kind of come to the
conclusion that, OK, there really is no instrument that's
off limits that cannot be used in worship.
It will OK. Put that little cartoon thing
that makes like a It's not Control the line, Sir, I.
Would be very reluctant to bring a bagpipe in to the building,
but but you know we're. There's a cultural context
piece, right? Part of the argument that for
more contemporary instruments is is is the cultural context
piece, right? Oh, this is how everyone relates
to music. Now.
But if what you are bringing in with those styles, with those
instruments, with the actual songs is a set of assumptions,
including congregational assumptions about what that
music is for and who's supposed to sing it and how they're
supposed to sing it, again, you're you're, you're swimming
up straight. You're making it hard to to
foster a we song environment fun to do what we're talking about
here, which is giving people a voice in God's story.
Again, that's not to say plenty of those songs aren't beautiful.
That's not to say there is an incredible execution of a lot of
them that. But we are saying if your goal
is to give people a voice in God's story, when you're doing
an entire genre of music that's not written for the human voice
1st and has all the assumptions, a different set of assumptions
going into it. Everybody involved is is
actually swimming upstream if when it comes to the goal of us
developing our ability to lift our voices to God.
Yeah, and I think hospitality is a great term.
And maybe, you know, that day of worship leader, if you might
think of it in terms of like a musical host and someone who is,
you know, if you come into my house and it's the first time
you're in my house, I'm going to say like the kitchen is here,
the bathroom is through that door.
Make yourself at home. Here's where the glasses are,
here's where the drinks are. You know, I'm, I'm helping you
navigate something that is unfamiliar to you.
And, and I want to do that. Well, I want to be a very
considerate, thoughtful host who is paying attention to.
If the melody is so weird that you can't follow it, what can I
do to to make sure that you have you, you know, that you can be
at home here, you know, and that may take some process, but it
also I have to be deliberate about hosting it's.
Not just saying that now you all I want.
I can't hear you all. You got to sing.
And so thinking about different traditions, I was thinking about
sometimes you might have a Cantor who who's sings something
or even in the African American church, how a lot of times songs
have a sort of host. Yeah.
Who sings a line the next the line that you're about to sing.
Yeah. And he sings it.
Show you how. Kind of at the end of the last
line before the next line and he says Amazing Grace, how sweet
the sun. And then you sing amazing.
And then so he he sets you up every time.
And that's an act of hospitality.
Yeah. Because he's saying we're about
to sing this. Let me sing it real quick and
now you can do it. Yeah.
And. Or in one of my favorite bands
and college, because I got into international student ministry
and there were a lot of folks from India where I was.
And we brought in this band called Aradhana, which is a word
that just means worship in Hindi.
And a lot of those songs, they were coming from a totally
different tradition, totally different historical musical
background, but they were Christian.
And the way that those songs were structured was, was often
different. You'd, you, a lot of times you'd
have a sort of Cantor sing a verse that you sort of listened
to and then there was a chorus that everybody would join in on.
That was more, it was pretty simple and repetitive and, and
everybody kind of knew that that worked that way.
You know I. I would love to see us do more
of that, more songs that that kind of split the difference
between congregational singing and like in a story or a ballad
song by a singer-songwriter. Where we did this a little bit
at our and Psalms Fall Feast this past weekend time of
recording the where you might have essentially A storyteller
that is singing the verses and then a refrain, then everybody
sings together. We don't do a ton of that.
Which is kind of a liturgical calling response.
Kind of. A thing.
Yeah. That's I I would love to see the
Psalms sung that way, you know, with an, a refrain that people
could join in on. I think there's a lot of
possibilities there. But what I was thinking about
when you were talking about hospitality, Matthew, and about
welcoming people in and people that come from different
backgrounds is that if I'm hosting someone at my table,
I'm, I'm going to have a seat for everybody, you know?
And I want everybody to join in and be able to be part of the
feast. And it doesn't mean you can't do
complex things. And it doesn't mean that I can
only invite people who already know how to do all this.
Yeah. It means that like you, I might
be asking you to enter into something that doesn't feel
super comfortable. But I want you to know or
familiar, but I want you to know, like, I'm going to take
good care of you. I'm going to help you find your
way through this thing. And.
That's. Really what you just said is so
important because because it's another area where the singing
topic mirrors spiritual disciplines topic.
There's there's, there's so much about being Christian that
doesn't come naturally to us that we have to learn that is
hard. That is, that is unpleasant
because it is hard initially. And there's so many, so many
doctrines that we just shy away from because they make us
uncomfortable. And then we choose churches that
reinforce what we already believe about those doctrines
and, and we're. Missing so much.
But but at this, but the premise of our relationship with God is
that he is calling us, meeting us where we are, but calling us
out of who we are to who he is making us to be.
We have to be willing to take those steps of courage.
Likewise, if we take this approach to music where I'm just
going to go with what I already like, well, I'm going to choose
a church whose music reminds me most of when I was young and
singing enthusiastically, right? Whether that's 90s Christian pop
or whether that's you too. If I choose a church, musically
speaking, however, that is going to take me further up and
further in. I may have some things to learn
along the way, and a good church is going to equip me to learn
those things along the way with their.
Hospitality, yeah. And that might mean that you
giving people permission to maybe say like, you can sit this
one out and just listen, let let us sing this one over you.
And as you get the hang of it, you know, you can do there are
lots of ways to be considerate of people and and not make them
feel like less than not make them feel stupid for not being
able to participate because that that doesn't help any to
belittle people. But but to say it's OK, if
there's a bit of a learning curve, it's probably, it may be
worth it, you know? And encouraging people also to
recognize that my favorite songs are not the only songs we're
going to sing, right? Right.
There are other four other people, a song that I may not
particularly like that really means a lot to that other
person. So as an act of hospitality, I'm
willing to sing that for them. Well, it's like eating dinner
with with people and like we're hopefully we can find something
that everybody likes to eat. But if I'm in a family long
term, you know, like I don't love fish that much, but you
know, maybe Brian loves fish. And so like, I can eat fish
today, like with Brian, because I want to eat dinner with Brian
more than I want to eat the thing that I want to eat.
Right there you go. That's.
Great. Well said.
Yeah. And so there, this is a tricky
1. They're written for voice first,
just because I think one of the things we're hitting a lot along
the way here is just that a lot of grace is in order and a lot
of hospitality is in order at every step in the process.
Because there's almost no music today that is written for the
human voice first. Almost none either, in the sense
that it was written for my favorite instrument to begin
with. You know, there are there are
tons of pop stars that came up with, you know, guitar first.
There are others like Rachel Platten or Billy Joel that came
up with piano 1st. And it affects how they sing and
it affects what types of melodies they write.
And you can tell like you can like, I have a piano background.
I can nearly always tell, even if someone's playing guitar,
that they were a pianist first. Yeah.
But this this voice first thing, even if they did read it mostly
with from that perspective of how am I going to say it?
That's not the same thing as reading it from the perspective
of how is everyone going to sing it And it and it can't depend on
this is a crucial thing. If you want people to be able to
sing to God without all the smoke and mirrors, without all
the production value that you have in your sanctuary, you have
to be able to create music that does not require them.
So I'll give you an example. I told Terry this one the other
day, see if I can turn around without knocking everything
over. But so we were we were all here
the other day. And, and, and Terry, you and I
were talking about this. And so this is by Keith and
Kristen Getty, who write lots of great we songs and who are
central players in the revival of hymnity.
And I'm very grateful for so much of what they've done.
But they wrote a song called Christus Victor, which I love.
I I really like this song. I want to just play through it
real quick though. And I want to show you something
so it goes almost high king of the ages.
Great. I am God of wonders.
By the blood you have redeemed us.
Let us through. Mighty waters our strength, our
song, our sure salvation power to the Lamb upon the throne
with. Blasting.
On the glory power from the battle you.
Have won. It goes on from there.
Very. Rousing chorus, very rousing,
yes. And it does not work without a
very loud piano, very loud electric guitar or a full band
because you have that know where it goes.
Oh sure, salvation and then you need something to go bomb or it
doesn't work. Yeah.
So that is a great we song from all the perspectives of the
first three things that we talked about connecting us to
God, connecting us to the people of God, chronologically
connecting us to each other. It's great.
It goes, it goes through the Trinity, it goes through past,
present and future of the Christian story.
It's great from that perspective and it's a great melody.
Yeah. However, it has this particular
weakness on this particular point.
You better have a good piano player that day.
I can't have eight people in my living room.
We just got this piano as a gift from a generous friend a few
weeks ago. We lived in this house for five
years with no piano before that. If I had eight people and let's
Sing, no one would have suggested that song because we
don't have something to go bomb. Right, right, right.
Nobody gets lost at that moment. Yep.
So, you know, so in the in, in church history, the very first
instruments were people singing just acapella.
That was Christian worship for centuries, honestly.
But you know what the best instrument is, the very best
instrument to accompany human singing is an instrument that
sounds a lot like voices already.
And that's an organ. Yeah, if you've ever been in A
room. Where, Matthew, you and you and
I experienced this this summer when Amber played.
When you hear the room filled up with the sound of an organ, it's
amazing because it fills the room without drowning you out.
It's not about volume, it's about space filling the space
with sound. And it gives you this feeling
that I can just add my voice to this, you know, mighty sound.
It's really a supportive kind of instrument.
And if you've never heard an organ like, like, we're not
talking about like the circus organ that I've, I've been,
I've, I've, I've, well, I've been, I've been in a couple
churches where the organ, that's what it sounded like they're.
Yeah. And it was like, yeah, OK.
You read somewhere the churches were supposed to have an organ.
And this is what she bought and but no, the the the the huge,
incredibly expensive pipe organ thing.
So like probably everyone listening to this is seen Sound
of Music. How do you solve a problem like
Maria the wedding March. That's the kind of organ.
We're talking about yes. OK, Yeah, Yeah.
Well, guess what? I just saw in the news just
yesterday that a an organ has been unearthed from the 11th
century. People think it's the oldest
Christian organ in existence. It was used in an Abbey in
Jerusalem. It made with.
It was made with bronze pipes, all different sizes.
Some of them were named what notes they were playing.
And when The Crusaders were worried about the the Muslim
armies invading Jerusalem, they took that organ, they carried it
to Bethlehem and they buried it so that it could be preserved.
And it's just been discovered. They've re put it back together
and it's beautiful sound. Beautiful sound these bronze
pipes make. Yeah, that's.
That's an amazing. Story.
An ancient instrument. So this the, the second-half of
of this, if it's, if it's written for, for, for voice
first in the sense that it's designed to equip you to sing
well, the second point for this conversation and the 5th total
point in our we songs conversation is a Foster's
confidence. That's the best way that I can
think of to summarize something that's a little more complex,
which is that it's, it's reasonably intuitive to learn
and remember. And typically, melodically
speaking, once you've heard the first verse, you've heard the
whole song so that you can focus on the words and singing
confidently and loudly. So I'll give you some of this
might sound obvious, but, and I want to throw a bone to
something that you at least alluded to earlier that we
didn't touch on in too much detail, which is simply that
sometimes we do have to learn things.
And, and, and, and you have to recognize, hey, there are songs
in our there are songs in some of these hymnals where you're
like, that's unsingable. Well, it, it might feel
unsingable to us. It may not have felt, it might
have, but it might not have felt unsingable to someone in these
1600s when it was written where the all the live entertainment
was singing to each other. Yeah, right.
Like if you sing a lot, you will eventually branch out into
singing in parts and you will eventually set branch out into
singing rounds. You will start doing more with
your voice as you get more comfortable with your voice in a
communal setting. So just having said that,
keeping in mind that something that will foster confidence for
a typical 21st century American evangelical churchgoer today
might be different than fostering confidence for another
person somewhere else in the world right now or the American
evangelical 50 years ago and so on.
So but then I'll give you an example of what I'm of the
opposite of what I'm talking about.
All pop songs and almost all songs sung in corporate worship
in American churches that descend from sort of the pop
pedigree are what I will I will pejoratively call them karaoke
songs. OK, so, so for so and they, and
and so they go like this. Verse one, chorus one, musical
interlude, verse 2, chorus 2 with some of the words different
from chorus one, maybe verse 3, chorus 3, longer musical
interlude, guitar solo, bridge. Completely new tune that came
out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything that's
that's preceded as far as me, the casual listener knows.
Key change, chorus 5, chorus 6, chorus 1 again, I'm confused
now, right? That's like 9 different times
that you ambushed the singers, right?
All of that is a totally legit pop song.
All of that is a totally legit folk song.
All of that is a totally legit any kind of song.
You're trying to build a musical narrative, you're trying to tell
a story. You're like, that's completely.
Interesting. But if I have to remember and
geez, some of my favorite, even some of my favorite hymns do
this. Oh, that's right.
This is the this is the time around on the chorus where we
change that one word to that other thing instead.
So what what that dynamic does in a worship song for everything
other than the like 3 or 4 concrete like favorites for your
congregation? Is it?
It tells everyone in the room be quiet because you might
embarrass yourself. I'm singing loudly and strongly
verse one, chorus 1 and I start loudly into verse 2.
Except I forgot there was a musical interlude.
There. And I was the only one who did
it right, so I didn't get that from anywhere.
I just started noticing it over time.
Like, I'm looking around, the confident singers that know all
the songs, They're fine. The 2/3 of the congregation,
that's not those people. They look hesitant.
They look tentative. They're scared of what's going
to happen next. By contrast, we had staff and
board dinner right here a few days ago, and we all decided
that before we ate, as part of our prayer, we would sing holy,
holy, holy. Now, did we all know all the
words? No, right.
Like what we got to the we got to, you know, verse 3 and some
people started going, is that verse 3 or verse four?
OK, fair enough. But once we sang that first tune
but first verse, we all knew it, right?
There wasn't a doubt. There was no we didn't have to
wonder, is the pianist going to do something funky before verse
2? We didn't have to worry about is
the is the tune different? Did the words change?
I know musically speaking, I know the whole song after I've
heard the verse, the first verse, and now I can just lose
myself in what I am actually. Singing right, Right.
Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if if there might be a
little push back to say, like, part of the difficulty of that
is that we live in a time now where the ability to write and
record and distribute and and hear and find out about songs
that are coming from right, all over the place just makes it
more difficult for any given song to become very, very
familiar. Yeah.
You know, so we, we have new songs coming at us all the time.
Yeah. And so, you know, because I
remember again, when I was leading worship, there would be,
you know, about every week somebody would say, oh, can we
sing this song? And I'd be like I've never.
Heard on the radio I've. Never heard of that song.
OK, I got to go learn it and now it's a brand new song.
And so I think I think probably the further back in time you go,
you would have communities that would know a sort of set of
songs or a little. And of course that's why we have
a hymnals. But that's got to be one of the
things that contributes to that. And not just because actually I
think that the sort of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge
verse, chorus is actually a very natural form that I think
because you see it so occurring so frequently, I think it's
actually a form that we gravitate towards.
One of the things I struggle with is a lot of times melodies
and I think there is a such thing as just a good melody and
a bad melody. And like so you get a lot of
times melodies that are not intuitive or they're not,
they're very unnatural. They're just not good melodies.
And so they might be very weird or, and you really got to like
contort yourself to you get to that melody or rhythms or, you
know, they're just ways that if you're not looking at it and you
don't like me, I don't read music.
So if you've got a strange rhythmic thing, like we were
dealing with some of that in the pub songs the other night and
what we were doing was written on the paper felt really
unnatural to me. And so you have to learn those
things and it could be really difficult, but there are ways as
a songwriter that you can, well, you can create situations for
yourself where in the songwriting process you're
actually submitting those songs to people and saying, OK, what
trips you up? Like, right, but you want to
know the stuff that doesn't work.
And if people are like this part where it goes up here, like, I
can't do that. And he's like, OK, well, I need
to rework the melody there or I couldn't follow this rhythmic
thing or I got really confused, or this lyric doesn't even make
sense. I don't know what you're talking
about, You know? So you'd really need
accountability. Whereas if you're just writing
and you know, individualistically or a pop
song, like you're going to get feedback from your producer and
your the people you're working with, but but to a different
end. Whereas in this context, how can
we be most considerate so that people, and you're talking about
confidence as well think, I think unfortunately, we, we live
in a, a culture that the church is one of the only places where
we still do this kind of thing. And it's like this bastion of
corporate singing, unless you love this particular band and
you go to that concert. But that's not what we're doing
in corporate singing. And so I think in general,
people aren't confident about singing with people, not because
sometimes maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the music,
but it's part of kind of where we are culturally.
That's unfortunate, but we do want to make a place where they
can congregate and find out that they can do it and discover
like, oh, this is something people do.
Yes, actually you were made for this.
So I just heard two things that I want your opinion on as a
music director. One is the notion of a body of
songs that everybody knows, right?
And the other is the notion of of a type of singing that people
have been equipped to do. Because one of the things that
I've noticed on that second point is, yeah, the church is
pretty much the only place where we get together and sing
anymore. But in the church, the vast
majority of the time, we just sort of launch into it as though
that's normal for everyone. And it's not right where you
almost it it, it's almost like when you join, when you become a
Christian, we should give you singing lessons.
Like, hey, we're going to do this thing that's weird.
You've never done this anywhere else.
Could we let let's explain to you how this works?
What if a small group was just about that?
Yeah. So they so those are two things,
A whole bunch of songs that everybody knows.
Not really a thing. A whole bunch of type of singing
everybody knows how to do. Also not really a thing.
What's how do you think about those things as a music
director? Oh man, well, one thing that I
love to do is you're right. We're, we're as a church, we're
trying to find the songs that are our songs, like our body of
songs that describe who we are at this time and place.
And so that means I'm going to limit myself.
We're going to be limiting. We're not going to sing every
song there is out there. And we're not going to be trying
to be, you know, keep up with the whatever the newest thing is
by bringing that into the church.
I guess I would say probably 90% when I'm choosing songs for a
service. 90% is songs we already know.
Maybe one song. You can build those in Gret, you
know. One song is new and I'll try to
put it in a place where the congregation doesn't feel like
they have to sing necessarily, like during communion where
they're walking up front anyway and they can listen to it and
kind of get accustomed to it then.
Then maybe the next time I'll bring it and I'll put it in a
different spot in the service. She just made a sneaky argument
for communion every week. Oh yeah.
Oh, yeah. I also love it when I feel like
the congregation does know this song to save a verse where we
deliberately drop all the instruments out and let them
hear themselves singing. I really think that's important
because people can they discover, Oh my gosh, this
sounds great. I sound good.
You know, which is really sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.
That's really interesting because another thing I've,
I've, I've seen church bands do sometimes is if they feel like
this is like the, this is like this, the, the quiet verse
before we go crazy on the last key change or something, they'll
have some of the instruments drop out or everybody will sing
or we'll start playing quieter and the lead vocalist will start
singing quieter. And in, in my opinion, that
doesn't work very well in a congregational singing because
now everyone panics. It's another ambush.
Everybody's like, I got to think quieter or someone might hear
me. And now it sounds like
everything's whispering, which. But.
But a very different thing happens when you just cut the
instruments entirely. There's that little moment of
panic, but then the confident singers launch into it.
And then everybody goes, OK, I can hide in that mix.
It's all right. And, and then.
Yeah, you so often, not always, but more often than not, you
hear that this really powerful and empowering thing.
Oh, we can sing. Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, it's, it's developing a culture that's kind
of what you're talking about, developing a culture where
people, you're continually reminding yourselves and each
other that this is for everyone. This is not just for the the,
you know, the few. I, I think you refer to this a
little bit ago, Matthew, that we live in a culture where we don't
have singing together very much except when we come to church.
We also have a culture where people are listening to perfect
recordings of someone who's done 20 takes of something, you know,
to get it just exactly right. And then they have this feeling
that will, unless I can do that, I Can't Sing.
You know, I'm not born with that.
Well, the reality is no one is born with that.
I saw a great, great video of Ed Sheeran a few days ago with
where he just played it on his phone on a talk show, a
recording of himself singing a certain a certain number of
years before. And.
And then he's how people always tell me you're so talented and
isn't this is what I sounded like before I worked my butt off
and studied a craft for 10 years.
Yeah. Yeah, so, so, OK, so we've
talked about singing being a spiritual discipline.
I'm, I really want to explore that thought a little bit in my
own mind. I mean, not maybe not all right
now, but OK. Well, so we learned to pray
together, right? As a congregation.
Lord, teach us to pray. The Lord's Prayer, he gave us
that as a prayer to teach us how to pray.
We do it together. We say it corporately.
So in the same way, we need songs that we are, our songs
that we sing together, you know? On that note, a couple of
thoughts that to just sort of tack on to things both of you
have said in the last few minutes. 1 is I hear you on the
form thing, like first chorus, first chorus bridge.
Like that's a familiar form. And, and I'm not discounting
that I would distinguish that sum from like verse one chorus
one verse 2 chorus. Two, you talked about the chorus
having different. Everything, everything's
changing all the time. Yeah.
Whereas yeah like a lot of the
old hymns don't have choruses at at all and they get sometimes
can feel a little bit unnatural, which is why usually very bad
songwriters feel compulsive needs to write choruses for them
that are not nearly as good as the original melodies.
But and frequently we when we have songs that are kind of a
little bit like that, we often will get to the place where
there's the instrumental, you know, interlude and we'll just
go, we're just going to cross that out right there and move
right to the next verse, you know, because it works better
for the congregation. So.
So there's that form thing, but then but also the the, the weird
assumption of the dynamic that that you guys have described
where where we're constantly trying to keep up with basically
kept up, keep up with the radio. The expectations, that's.
An interesting thing to try to keep up with.
Right. Like, oh, the the the radio
stations, many of which are not even Christian owned anymore,
are going to drive our congregational singing,
including the substance of it. I think there's a, there's a
great argument to be made for approaching the songs that your
congregation wants to be our songs from a posture of, well,
this, this isn't, we shouldn't have theologians and pastors
over here and worship leaders. Who's the random guy who plays a
guitar over here? This person needs to be a
theologian too. And he needs to be in dialogue
with the the pastor so that you're thinking about what are
the songs that represent who we are, that represent what we
believe. And if there's a shortage of a
particular kind of one, maybe we need to write them.
And that song might never make it big on the radio, and it
might never be sung by anyone else outside our congregation,
but it's ours. Yeah, I love that.
That and then as a sort of counterpoint to that, a cheater
way to go into sort of split. The difference is what you said
about prayers. There are so many famous prayers
that have been said and sung by Christians over the centuries,
the doxology being a really obvious 1.
So you can grab on to some of those that are pretty universal
and then you can go anywhere in the world and find that, oh,
they're singing that too. Or there's an old prayer and you
feel like there isn't a good melody for it in a contemporary
context. So we're going to be the church
that writes that melody so we can sing it.
And then we find ourselves in this church from another
denomination in another part of the country or another part of
the world, and they're singing a different tune.
But we know those words. So I so we don't feel othered
even though we don't know the tune.
Yeah, we're not trying to be somebody else.
We're trying to express who we are in the story.
And you kind of get the universality of the church and
the particularity of our church in literally the same breath.
That's fun, yes. Yeah.
So go ahead. Well, there's something else
that occurs to me. I was thinking we just had our
long expected feast, our Tolkien themed, you know, Anselm
conference. And one of the things I was
looking at in the talk that I did were songs and music
throughout Lord of the Rings. In a section of the talk, I was
like, let's just look at some different kinds of songs in this
story. There are so many different
things that are addressed. There's like a song about hot
bath, like enjoying a hot bath, which, you know, like is a human
experience, right? But it's also this great gift
from God. Oh, water.
Hot is a noble thing. And, but, and there are songs
that are laments, there are songs that are kind of
prophetic. There are songs that are funeral
songs. There are songs that help you
remember your history as a people and preserve the lore and
the wisdom of the ages so that you can, you can carry on on the
shoulders of giants. You know, there's so many like
songs can do so many different things.
And so like, one of the things that's exciting to be about to
me about music is that you can have so many different kinds of
songs. And I was thinking of settings
for maybe like Jack Redford, who's going to set something
that is going to really be sung like an art song.
It's going to be sung on my behalf.
I'm really not expected to sing along, but that's still a my.
Heart can sing. My heart can sing and it can be
kind of an intercession. It can do a lot of things.
And the the purpose of that particular kind of song may not
be congregational participation, but it's still a component of
the church's life, just like the Hot Water song is, you know?
But yeah, if we're talking about building confidence or if we're
talking about writing songs specifically for people to enter
into, I think it's just helpful to to really be specific about
that context and say, right, we're talking about these kinds
of songs and how can we, how can we do that really well so that
the body is built up. Yeah, yeah, well said.
And then you mentioned way earlier in the conversation the
the value of knowing the lore, so to speak, being being
conversant in scriptural imagery.
You know what metaphors. Does does.
That the scriptures use when they talk about God or the
people of God or the the symbols or touch points in creation or
touch points in the stories of the church.
It it lowers the volume a lot, lowers the pressure a lot on you
to come up with completely new and different and brilliant
things all the time because you can write a song that.
That. Fundamentally does one thing,
one goal that you're setting out to accomplish, but employs so
many familiar little references along the way.
Kind of like you mentioned earlier with Blues rock and, and
and and then some of the musical devices right to to someone who
has been, who is being shaped by the songs and the stories of
God's people, that song is just exploding with meaning for them.
From Oh my gosh, yes, the the Blues in the gospel culture of
music is that's a unique thing for our American, you know, time
yeah, expresses who a lot of who we are.
Well, I'll, well, I'll toss in our last one because it's the
least complicated and maybe it jogs something, the last point.
So it's written for voice first. It fosters confidence and it is
despite this accessibility it offers depth.
Oh, yeah. Thank you.
Yeah. So you don't need the PhD in
theology or history to understand it, but you can hear
it for the millionth time and get and still get something
fresh out of it. Yeah.
Oh, well, you know, that's ain't that's, that's been going on
since the beginning of the church right there.
There was a, I'm not going to be able to tell you his name, but
there was a famous, very famous preacher who was known for his
wordsmithing, you know, his ability to very communicate very
well theology. And what he decided was that the
most effective way to communicate that theology that
he wanted his congregation to know was to write hymns.
So that's what he's really known for today is the 1000 of, you
know, hymns that he wrote because music has the ability
to, like, lodge in our mind, in our heart.
So if you want words to be stuck there, just sing them.
Yeah. Well, and singing works things
into us and it inculcates things like in a particular way.
Yeah. Now a lot of people think that
if we, you know, our belief, our, our faith, our, you know,
our, Yeah, what we believe will come out in what we sing, which
I think is true. But I really think it's more
important to view it the other way around.
How we sing, what we sing, is actually part of what forms us
and shapes us as people. So we really want to have songs
that have depth, that are true, that where we're repeating to
ourselves the truths that we really want to be formed by.
Yeah, and I think part of the hospitality, part of the skill
of wherever, whoever's making the songs, wherever they're
coming from, is I got for me. I came up with a gettable
digable and gettable diggable is like kind of a, it's kind of
like a way of judging a song as I'm writing it.
Yeah. I'm saying, OK, is this gettable
or do you have to, like, have read these five books?
Yeah. In the end, what the heck I'm
saying, Yeah. Is it gettable?
4 quartets would not pass muster on this one, right?
Yeah, and that stuff ought to be made too.
But in this context, is it gettable?
Can people enter into it and it but is it also diggable?
Is it so superficial or so abstract or so uninteresting
that you can't, you know, And some of my favorite songwriters
can pull that off really well, where you can listen to the song
the first time and you can get it and you can enter into it,
and then you can notice something on the 10th time that
you. Didn't notice the first time.
Or you could go look into something.
I like that kind of thing. I like shooting for that,
trying, trying to get get to that.
And you and you tend to hit that in your songs.
And, and, and Andrew Peterson, nearly all, I would say nearly
all of Andrew Peterson's songs are, are we songs.
So they're not mostly not written for congregational
singing, but they're all we songs.
They connect you to God. They connect you to each other
and the universality of human experience.
They, they connect you to a sense of memory.
And there's, there's going to be references and, and they're all
within an octave and they're all really musically intuitive and
they make sense. And, and and there's just so
much depth. If you, if you don't know the
references that he's making, they're good enough on their own
that you go, oh, that's beautiful.
It's going to stick with me forever.
And if you do know the references, you just go, oh,
chef's kiss, right. Yeah, yeah.
That's good songwriting. I think another element of good
songwriting is does the melody fit the words?
Like, is it a melody that that makes the words come alive?
You know, it's not like you're not gonna sing really happy
words with a really dirty kind of melody.
Right, so joyful, joyful is a great melody for those words,
right, because it's there's this perfect.
Melting. Yes, and this is where the we,
we, we harp on this with our arts Guild so much.
But you want the, your craft to elevate over time and your
theology and your depths and richness and maturity of your
spiritual life to mature to, to grow over time with it so they
can kind of keep pace with each other.
Because then you know, oh, I'm writing.
They asked me to write a, a song for the Gloria or for whatever.
I know what this is for. I I understand what's going on
here. I think sometimes we it takes a
lot of attentiveness to a song to.
I think a lot of times songs get included in services that aren't
congregational songs because because somebody just hasn't
noticed the difference, that somebody hasn't said, oh, this
is a cool song. I like the way this song makes
me feel. Wouldn't it be cool if we sang
this together, but then noticing like, yeah, but actually, if you
have, if songs can do a whole range of things so you can
validly have many different kinds of songs for different
occasions, you've got to pay attention and say like, is that
what this song is? Does it?
Is it doing that? Serving this.
And so I really, I can't just put any song in there.
I need to put the song, the kinds of songs that fit this
occasion. And that was kind of like Grace,
Haman said. She mentioned Temperance and
this was a cool point from her talk that stuck with me because
she said, you know something like abstinence or feasting.
It's not one or the other, it depends on the context.
And the time. And the time, what does this
particular time call for? What is most fitting and
appropriate in this context, in this time?
And it doesn't mean that's not a good song or there's something
wrong with it, but it means what we're doing right now at this
time isn't that. Yeah.
Well, and now at that point you're back to the very
beginning of our conversation and the point you made about
sacred and profane art or the the very first talk that I ever
gave for as leader of the Ansem Society at an Ansem event was at
one of our conferences. And it was just, I think it was
maybe 10 minutes. It was a little break out and
just and and it was that was one of the points that I made that
like you got to understand, I use this term sacred and common
art, right, right. So that people didn't get hung
up on profane, but but in both in in both cases that, hey, it's
this song over here is to facilitate corporate worship,
which means this, this and this and requires this, this and this
and necessitates forms that look like this, this and this.
And then over here you have common art, which is everything
else. And this is really good for
approaching the throne room of God.
And this is really good with discipleship and struggle and,
and reconciling myself to the fact that I don't feel worthy to
approach the throne room of God right now.
And we need them both, but we have to be able to pay attention
to what we're trying to. Yeah, do.
And as soon as you get rid of the categories, as soon as you
get rid of the categories, that's where you start to get
messed up. Because now you're creating
common art, like a story, and you feel like you have to
shoehorn Jesus into it at every time.
And you have music over here that's being sung in a church
that doesn't belong in a church wasn't written for one.
And you're, you're hurting both. But it's only because you're,
you're not paying attention to where they belong, right?
You're putting pressure on yourself for the piece of art to
do something it wasn't designed to do.
Right. Pay attention to where you are,
what the time calls for. I went to the restroom a minute
ago and you have a little sign in your bathroom.
This is the bathroom. What does it say the bathroom?
This bathroom is for singing this.
Bathroom is for singing, you know so.
Acoustics in there, right? So, you know, that's what's the
right thing for this place. This time.
It's like, well, you should probably sing the, the the water
hot song, you know, the bathe bath song from Tolkien.
But and I also thought of mourn with those who mourn, rejoice
with those who rejoice. It's like, hey, maybe don't sing
the most cheerful, happy song, you know, if if the context and
the time calls for grieving with that person.
Yeah. And we've got songs for that.
Right. Yeah, whatever.
One Sunday, after one of our members of our congregation had
died, we switched and decided to sing Be Still My Soul.
Aw. Man, you know, the next week I
was was good. Yeah, yeah.
And, and I think it was Athanasius who wrote extensively
about the Psalm, the value of the Psalms for for this, it's
like the Psalms between the lot of them that every single Psalm
doesn't try to do every single thing right.
But across the corpus of the Psalms, it covers every bit of
the range of the human psyche. Yes.
And we, yeah, we need our our corporate song, our other
corporate songs to have more of a range too.
Yeah. Any last thoughts from And you,
Terry? I feel like we've couldn't like
jump in on each other the last couple.
Of years. Yeah.
No, I think this has been an awesome conversation.
I've actually learned a lot that I'm going to take away and do
some ruminating over to help me in, you know, with what I'm what
I'm my task is. But I, I would really, I would
really love to hear Matthew sing his song that he wrote about
the, the what we're all going to do someday together.
I would too. Yeah, so this is the last song
in from a trilogy of albums and the well trilogy.
And the the whole idea is that what is God?
What has God's ultimate desire for the world been and for us?
And what is this sort of tell us or the, the destiny of humanity
that God dreamt of before he made us in my understanding of
that is that it is to be with and to be like Jesus, like we
are headed toward the one who he is the first born from among the
dead. And he's the he's the paradigm,
you know, he's the one that, and and that includes the unveiling
of the face. That means we're going to see
God face to face, but it's going to be kind of a mutual unveiling
because the bride will also be unveiled.
And when we see him seeing us, we will finally become all that
God dreamt of us and desired for us to be.
And kind of defining the idea of dream as a desire that love
brings to be. So he's working all things to
this end. To those who call on his name,
they can be there in front of his face and become come home
and become ourselves. But that means but that's also a
corporate identity, right? It's.
It's not just that I get to be who I want to be or think I
should be. It's that I become who I am in
the bride as the bride, as a member of the bride, you know?
And the funny before you saying like, I just want to throw this
on a pile that, that I, I don't know if this is, is universal or
not, but I, I, I know for me as as a man, those those corporate
calls in songs speak to me. There's something about being
called into being part of something bigger that speaks to
me. And there's something about sort
of following a great captain and and there's a great line in the
silver chair where Eustis just says I am the King's man and
that that's that's a really powerful line for me.
And when, when all of our songs follow a certain type of of
relational paradigm and don't leave room for that, it
diminishes not my voice in the sense of here or me, but in the
sense of it makes me less called in to sing.
And I've met another, a number of, of men that are like that as
well. And give me, give me this
greater thing to be called in to give me a captain to follow.
Give me a king to serve and get paint me this picture of of
where this is all going. So, Matthew, paint me this
picture, Yes. Well, I got to say it.
Also, you saying that reminds me of Fermere in the In the Houses
of Healing and Lord of the Rings when Aragorn, he actually sneaks
in because he's not ready to claim the kingship in front of
everybody, but he sneaks in to help out.
And Faramir is in this deep, the black sleep, you know, the black
breath has got him and Faramir calls him out of that the depths
of that death. And and when he wakes it, just
reading it makes me cry because he says, I heard you calling
what is what is my King's bidding?
You know, what would you have me do?
And it's just incredibly beautiful.
That whole chapter is. And then when Aragorn answers,
he says, Of course, our Lord, for who would lie idle when the
king has returned? Yeah, yeah.
Awesome. So we have that, We have that
charge, that call, and the King is calling us and the the kind
of the bridge of this starts out and says this is a call for the
holy Saints. Keep watch through the night,
bravely bearing the pain. Go gently now where the river
goes, whisper soft where the primrose grows.
For the years have passed like the morning mist, every winter
waste by the spring sun kissed, Every veil has been removed and
the face of God revealed. And when you see him seeing you,
you'll be the dream of God made true.
Remember how we were older than now?
The Lord has made us young again.
And if we weep at all, it's of a different kind when the beauty
wells up in the eyes and shines, because every veil has.
Been removed. And the face of God revealed.
And when you see him seeing you, you'll be the dream of God made
true. This is a call for the holy
Saints. Keep watch through the night,
briefly bearing the pain, while the dragon grins.
All fire faint. The breath of God shall
extinguish him, so hold on to the hope that took hold of you.
Though you sleep for a time, you will wake in truth.
Though these nightmare hooves beat through this midnight
dream, they will break when the dawn rins this world that it
seems, and the rider arrives on a white War Horse to reclaim
everything that was lost. In the war you will hear his
name like a trumpet blast. Every lover will sing.
He is come at last, And the dream of God will be all that
remains. When the bride looks with love
on the Lamb was slain. Because every veil has been
removed and the face of God revealed, and when you see him
seeing you, you'll be the dream of God made true.
Awesome like that. Thanks.
Yes. Thank you.
Beautiful. Thank you both.
Yeah, you're. Spending this much time talking
about this and for those of you listening, if you are a if you
make music in any way, write more we songs or seek them out
and popularize them and help other people sing that.
Share them with us. And yeah, and if you want to, if
you want to be a part of something like that and don't
know where to start now, just contact us on our website at
anselmsociety.org cuz we're starting stuff like that.
Till next time. The Imagination Redeemed podcast
is a production of the Anselm Society.
It's easy to see this world as disenchanted and to give up hope
that there's more. But you were made to see the
world with the eyes of heaven and to live a bountiful life
that participates in the life of God like in the great stories.
To help make this show possible, go to anselmsociety.org/podcast
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Learn more at anselmsociety.org and join us next time as we
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