First, my disclaimer: I know very little about this genre. Mostly, I want to list the elements that Mr. Scheer thinks are important in the current era, that of "Emerging Worship," and some of the musicians that are prominent. And mostly, the information here presented is from the notes that I took at Mr. Scheer's workshop. Anything useful is his; the mistakes and misjudgments are all mine. [My comments are in italics]
A much better presentation of these ideas can be found in the essay that Mr. Scheer contributed to the book "New Songs of Celebration Render: Congregational Song for the Twenty-First Century," edited by C. Michael Hawn, published by GIA Publications, Chicago, 2013. I purchased a copy of this book on the last day of the conference and it looks to be very interesting (I have not had time yet to read it). The book traces seven "streams" of congregational song as we move into this century, with Praise and Worship being one of the seven. Mr. Scheer's essay is found at pp. 173-206.
Three Fundamental Traits:
- P&W music is a product of American Evangelicalism, but has affected others, including Roman Catholics and the mainstream Protestant denominations
- The aesthetic is drawn from pop culture. It tends to track pop culture with a time lag of five to twenty years. The desire is to please and attract nonbelievers by speaking their musical language. Music is always a vehicle for evangelism. It is youth oriented because pop culture is youth oriented, aimed at age 18-24.
- There is a strong personal and ecstatic spiritual orientation, with roots in Wesleyan Holiness and the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements.
Precursors and Scripture Song (1971-77)
Mr. Scheer outlined several precursors to the movement, especially William Booth and the Salvation Army bands; the frontier revivals, camp meetings, [and urban revivalism - C. Finney, D.L. Moody, and the musicians associated with them such as Ira Sankey] ; African American music [spirituals, but especially gospel music. Also "white" Gospel music belongs here - e.g. Fanny Crosby, William Doane, many others]; the mid-twentieth century evangelical movements such as the Billy Graham crusades, Youth for Christ; youth musicals; the "Jesus People" of the 1960's and early 70's.
The early "Scripture Song" movement is well illustrated by Karen Lafferty's song "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." [We sang this one today at the contemporary service]. These are guitar songs, quoting Scripture for their texts [almost always King James version], using three to six guitar chords.
Important in the early stages was Calvary Chapel and its pastor, Chuck Smith. As Wikipedia recounts it, "Smith's daughter introduced him to her boyfriend John Higgins, Jr., a former hippie who had become a Christian and who went on to lead the largest Jesus Freak movement in history, the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers." With Smith's support, the musical side of the Jesus Freak movement led to "Jesus music"
and Christian Rock Concerts. The music label "Maranatha! Music" was formed to publish and distribute these songs [and make a lot of money on them. The resulting "Christian music industry" pretty much absorbed all of this music and its musicians. This is a theme that recurs several times in the history of this genre; every new creative impulse is soon commercialized.]
Praise Chorus (1978-92)
The Jesus People grew up and became Boomers, and wanted a "contemporary" style of worship with "their" music. From this period come what Scheer called the "classic praise choruses." A typical song is "Sanctuary" by Randy Scruggs and John Thompson, copyright 1982, with the first line "Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary."
[Although it is over thirty years old, it is still sung at gatherings such as our diocesan youth "Happenings," and was one of the songs chosen by our high school musicians for Youth Sunday in our parish this spring.]
The CCM, or "Christian Contemporary Music" movement fits here. Just as "Maranatha! Music" was the key publisher for the Scripture Song period, "Integrity (Hosanna!)" is the main publisher in this period. [Partly from dealing with these publishers and their music, I have gotten to where I am very suspicious of any corporate name that includes an exclamation point. Just saying.]
The music gets professionalized, often with big triumphalistic orchestrations. The style is no longer simply one or two singers with guitars. It is smooth light-rock pop. Most importantly, it is now a fixed style. As Mr. Scheer said, it is immediately identifiable -- "Oh yeah. That's my mom's church." In other words, it is the church music of the Boomer generation.
Praise and Worship (1993-1998)
CCM reached a point of crisis with Amy Grant, "the queen of Christian pop." Her album "Heart in Motion" (1991) was a crossover into secular pop, and offended many of her fans, as did certain aspects of Ms. Grant's personal life during this period. For example, as Mr. Scheer cited, she was portrayed on a music video as dancing with a man who was not her husband. And later, she divorced her Christian songwriter husband Gary Chapman and married mainstream country musician Vince Gill. None of this set well with CCM fans. [One of my choir parents at that time had a genuine spiritual crisis over this; she felt deeply betrayed by Ms. Grant's move out of the CCM subculture into the secular world and especially by her divorce. This choir mother was not alone; it was an important moment for a lot of evangelicals who had immersed themselves in this genre of music.]
More broadly, it was becoming clear that CCM had become reflective of its big corporate ownership and the values that went with it -- primarily making lots of money and delivering product to consumers.
As Mr. Scheer said, "Praise and Worship ('P&W') stepped in to fill the gap."
Some names here are Hillsong and their musician Darlene Zschech;
Delirious? [yes, the question mark is part of the band's name. It is almost as bad as the 1970's and 80's exclamation points]
Also the Vineyard movement should be mentioned, with their founding pastor John Wimber. Their music is characterized by its very intimate nature, what Mr. Scheer called "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs. It tends to be in a Celine Dion style.
Emerging Worship (1999 to the present)
Once again, the previous era's music has now become The Establishment. By now, we have the children of the Boomers. If they have grown up in evangelical megachurches, they have never sung hymns. Boomers mostly want to be entertained; their children want to participate. Boomers threw away everything that was before 1960; their children are sometimes looking for something that has some history and substance, and especially for something that is not so commercialized. They are more attracted to elements of traditional liturgy, though often in new guises. Where the Boomers liked to build "worship centers" that looked like shopping malls, entirely devoid of trappings such as crosses and icons, their children are much less comfortable worshipping in such spaces. The new generation complained that their parents' music was "too slick, too happy, and too tame." [I think that Mr. Scheer was painting with a broad brush in these aspects, and I get a little nervous when one characterizes people by their generation. But there is probably a good bit of truth in these generalizations, and they correspond to what I have seen, so long as one remembers that there are many exceptions to these generalized statements in every generation. I am one of them, I hope. But I think that the characterization of the older P&W music is very accurate: "too slick, too happy, and too tame."]
A couple of names:
SonicFlood
Passion Conferences
and the "re-tuned movement" that I mentioned last week; we had a song festival of some of their music at the Hymn Society conference. Mr. Scheer was one of the leaders of that festival. They are looking to old hymn texts (mostly 18th and 19th century) and setting them in a current musical language.
Also this (their concert at the Ryman Auditorum)
Besides the songs, I think the clips of some of the songwriters starting at 54 minutes into the video are good: they talk about why these hymn texts are important.
"Hymns don't water down reality... We do ourselves, our communities, our families, our friends, and the world a disservice when we don't sit in reality."----------
"These hymns seem to have a lasting impact, where they go deeper and deeper into my heart. They become richer and fuller with each life experience, whether it's a hard and sorrowful time or a joyful time."
"I have literally sat in church services singing these songs, singing these hymns, and feeling my sanity restored."
I will leave it here. This is not "my music." But I want to know about it. Perhaps it is best to end by quoting the final paragraph of Mr. Scheer's essay (p. 201):
Praise & worship is a little less than the worship utopia proponents predicted, but a little better than the erosion of foundations that detractors expected. Time will winnow the wheat from the chaff.Some of my readers know a lot more about this music than I do; please comment and suggest further directions to explore.
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2 comments:
This is a very interesting essay, Andrew. I would have liked to hear this presentation.
I've never tried to categorize the different streams of contemporary Christian music like this, but the chronological categorizations make sense to me. THere are a couple of comments I'd make.
First, 'The desire is to please and attract nonbelievers by speaking their musical language. Music is always a vehicle for evangelism'. Well, yes, but this is only partially true. This isn't the only motivation. There are also people who are already believers and for whom traditional church music is a foreign culture. They have a desire to praise and worship God in styles of music that they identify with. Singing traditional hymns for them feels a bit like English speakers always being asked to worship God with hymns and prayers written in German.
Second, there;s a gradual blurring of the lines between performance and worship. Most contemporary worship music involves a band up front giving what looks to me like a performance. But they, and their 'audience', don't see it that way; to them, it's a form of worship.
And this leads me to point three. My youngest daughter is in her late twenties, and for her, worship music written in the 1970s and 1980s is just as old fashioned and foreign as the hymns of Wesley and Newton (in fact she likes the hymns of Wesley and Newton better). But the most interesting thing about her generation is that, for them, the experience of community singing in general is almost unknown. for them, the most common experience of community singing is when they attend a rock concert and sing along with the band on stage. So for them, theres nothing strange about worship songs in church which are dominated by the band up front, and in which people just sing along with the band. It seems very strange and foreign to me, because I grew up singing hymns and choruses in church, in which the musicians played a supporting role, not a lead role, but to my daughter's generation, this feels entirely normal.
Fr. Tim, thank you for commenting on this, especially your third point. That is very interesting.
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