Turning the Beat Around

Today’s title? Sorry about that ... it just worked. And yep, that’s right: now you’re going to have Vickie Sue Robinson’s 1976 disco anthem in your brain all day. My bad.

Disco’s not my taste either. In fact, as a leftover child of the New Wave era, I’ve always thought it was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. But that’s not going to help you with Vickie today. Like it or not, she’s going to be in your head.

You can thank me later.

Burning Down the House

No, I’m not going to break into the Talking Heads’ 1983 pop hit.

I’m tempted, but I’m not going to. You really don’t want to hear me do that.

But nothing raises the temperature in a local congregation faster than any suggestion we change the music. Countless battles have been fought, and whole congregations have divided over that sort of thing.

That’s really a pity.

(Re)Making Music

I’ve heard it said that the quickest way to split a congregation is to change the hymnbook or repaint the walls.

Well, I have no feel for interior decorating, so that second one’s not going to be a problem for me. But like most people, I have more definite tastes when it comes to music. Some of the songs that my local church sings, I love; others, I confess, make me cringe.

Time to Face the Music

Did you know that some famous pop songs are about to go bottoms-up?

Yep, it’s true. Our culture has changed so rapidly in the last couple of decades that some tunes simply don’t make sense anymore.

Back in the ’70s we had Jim Croce’s “Operator”. We don’t even know what one of those is today. A little later, we had Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” and the Boomtown Rats’ lyrical reference to a telex machine. (Now, there’s an obscure one!) More recently, we stepped up to Maroon 5’s “Payphone”, or Brand New’s “Mixtape” (apparently not so brand new after all). Or what about all the references to pagers and beepers in ’90s rap songs? Gone and forgotten.

Horrific Hymnology

A year or so ago I wrote three posts on music (you can find them here, here and here). My point — then and now — was that we all have a responsibility to be discerning and to choose our music based on biblical principles rather than personal preference. And so that I would not be taking that responsibility away from anyone, I talked about the key principles rather than particulars of which musical pieces might be indicted or approved by a discerning observer.

Moreover, if anyone did not agree with me about their selections for congregational singing, I did not want to pass any judgment on them. After all, we all stand or fall to our own Master. So if the hymns and songs somebody else’s congregation wants to sing don’t square with the sort of list I would choose, I say, “No hard feelings.” I am not the last word in musical orthodoxy.

Time to Face the Music

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Horrific Hymnology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Turning the Beat Around

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Horrific Hymnology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Does it Build?

These could probably
go anytime too ...

Earlier this year I sat in a small local church full of nice, friendly people who had come to hear what turned out to be a pretty decent, relevant and biblical message from a visiting preacher. It was an inner-city congregation on a typical Sunday morning.

Prior to introducing the speaker, the man designated to open the meeting led the congregation in a hymn. We opened beat-up, dog-eared hardcover hymnals to the hymn number he gave us.

Together we sang the hymn that follows.

Turning the Beat Around

A more current version of this post is available here.

Burning Down the House

The most recent version of this post is available here.

(Re)Making Music

The most recent version of this post is available here.

In Need of Analysis: What Makes a Good Hymn?

It’s a question about which I have lots of ideas and few definitive answers.

Instinctively I am drawn to lyrical authenticity, biblical content, three to four verses max (or my voice wears out) and a decent melody, not so quick or difficult that the average person can’t sing it. That’s important, I think. Take On Me, for instance, is a pretty pop song by the Norwegian band a-ha, with a soaring chorus. As the melody of a hymn it would be excruciating.

I dislike dirges and choruses that sound cheesy or dated to me. I dislike anything trite. If it sounds like a sales pitch, a pep rally, or frivolous, I’d rather not, thanks.

In Need of Analysis: Does it Build?

Earlier this year I sat in a small local church full of nice, friendly people who had come to hear what turned out to be a pretty decent, relevant and biblical message from a visiting preacher. Prior to introducing the speaker, the man designated to open the meeting led the congregation in a hymn. We opened beat-up, dog-eared hardcover hymnals to the hymn number he gave us and together we sang the following:

“Brightly beams our Father’s mercy,
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

Dark the night of sin has settled,
Loud the angry billows roar;
Eager eyes are watching, longing,
For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp, my brother;
Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
In the darkness may be lost.”

Say what? “Trim my feeble lamp”? Trim your own feeble lamp, pal! It was actually the second time we’d sung this hymn in the four weeks I’d been dropping in to that particular church.