Resources and Comments in Response to “Friend, Foe, or Fiasco”
The July 27, 2010 Alban Weekly (“Friend, Foe, or Fiasco,” excerpted from Bruce Epperly and Daryl Hollinger’s From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Worship and Music in the Small Church) stresses the importance of strong partnerships between pastors and music leaders, particularly in small churches. Such partnerships are fostered, say Epperly and Hollinger, by good communication; understanding strengths, weaknesses, and personality types; respecting each other’s roles in ministry; and a commitment to spiritual formation on the part of both pastors and church musicians.
Epperly and Hollinger conclude that “Creative worship calls us to be bold in creating healthy relationships between the pastor and church musician that are loving, supportive, full of open communication, and grounded in spirituality.”
If you have not yet read the article, please do so now.
What resources can support creative worship and the relationships that nurture it? In addition to the many items listed at the end of the article, we hope you’ll also take a look at the “Music” section of the Congregational Resource Guide. You might find Don Saliers’s Music and Theology especially helpful.
What are your stories and thoughts on this topic? And what resources do you suggest? We look forward to hearing from you!
I would also add that there needs to be a full and honest discussion about taste in music. Mutual openness of the pastor and music director to each other’s preferred styles of and taste in music is especially crucial when those two are from different backgrounds, experiences, ages or cultures.
They also must both remember that their tastes – whether alike or not – are not the end of the discussion. Pastors or musicians who think their personal preferences are the only proper type of music in a worship service may become obstacles to efforts to reach out to those with different tastes – especially those who aren’t in church yet.
As has been pointed out in several recent Alban articles, too often the church doesn’t go out into the ever-changing world to see what new thing God is up to, but stays the same and expects people to come and be like it has “always” been. Those in charge of worship planning should not fear new musical styles! As none other than Rick Warren says, ALL music is sacred – it’s the words that you have to watch.
Just read your article on pastor and the church musician, the organist for our little congregation has been the volunteer read that unpaid organist for over fifty years. She started as a teen. Through all the years including assorted health problems she has been a rock of fathful service. I have been the pastor for five years. I defer to her whenever possible, encourage her input at worship committee meetings, and see that she gets the worship folder before Sunday. She in turn respects thie somewhat retired pastor’s love of the casual, informal, and opps accidents happen approach to worship. We worship to make a connection with God in heart and mind that’s the purpose of the worship team to help people make that connection.
Terrific article. It coinsides with a conversation that is currently being held via email by the PAUMCS group. PAUMCS is Professional Association of United Methodist Church Secretaries. (www.PAUMCS.org). The current topic being discussed by PAUMCS is about “Praise bands”, job descriptions, guidelines, etc. The topic came about due to some concerns from church members about setting standards regarding quality of the performance of the musicians – recognizing that the home-folk may be accepting of the quality but needing to consider visitors and potential members searching for a church. The way the worship music is presented is a reflection of the whole church – especially the pastor and church leaders. I plan to pass this on to the PAUMCS group – just in case they don’t already receive your articles. Louella Hext
Pastor and musician will be helped by constant reference to the church’s mission or vision statement. That is easier still when the mission or vision statement is about one that is equally demanding of all members — namely to support the members in their daily living as Christians in each area of their dialy lives.
This comment encompasses both the present essay, “Friend, Foe or Fiasco”, and that of 12th July, “Why do we worship the way we have always worshipped, when people keep changing?”
The problem I find with the approach to worship in the earlier essay is that when we concentrate on providing, in our Sunday services, for the spiritual needs of the congregation, we are in danger of confusing the place of worship with the place of private prayer in the Christian life. For me worship is a public event. I like to use the word Liturgy, as it is used in the Eastern churches, to describe what is happening on a Sunday morning. Its original meaning was a public benefaction. Paul used the word liturgist to refer to what, in his day, was the equivalent of the IRS(Romans 13:6). I recently saw an inscription, on the library in Ephesus, in which the word was used in a context where it meant magistrate. Thus, for me, Liturgy is not only a communal rather than an individual experience: it is also a public event and experience which also has links with the secular world around.
For the last thirteen years of my ministry as Dean of the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, I was privileged to work with Patrick Wedd as Director of Music. Not only is he a fine musician: he has read deeply in both theology and liturgiology. Together with other colleagues both lay and ordained, paid and voluntary, we worked together as a team and had none of the nightmarish relationship problems between musicians and pastors which seem to plague so many communities. We had constant arranged and informal meetings which helped to build the team. But I believe that the main reason for our fruitful relationship was that we saw ourselves as, together, serving something beyond ourselves. In particular, we came to see liturgy as drama, a presentation of the Christian story in an ordered way through the Christian Year and through the Lectionary. Belonging to a Eucharistic tradition, we saw this as centred in the weekly enactment of the Lord’s Supper, encircled, through scripture reading and music, with an ongoing presentation of the story of Jesus and with an outer circle
of the Christian story from creation to re-creation. Understood in this way, we could see liturgy as having close contacts not only with the Synagogue and the early Christian house church, but also with the tradition of Greek drama in which the function of chorus and music was to meditate, reflect and expand on the words and actions of the protagonists on the stage. Thus choral motets, instrumental music and congregational hymn singing all serve to enhance the reading of scripture and the dramatic action (sometimes including liturgical dance) of the Eucharistic worship. The difference between liturgy and and most secular drama, is that there is no division between performers and audience. The Liturgical Drama is total drama. The function of the sermon is to interpret the drama and the story in a way which intersects with peoples’ lives and experience.
I believe there are a number of advantages in understanding liturgy in this way. It keeps the liturgical act as a public performance, not the private property and action of the faith community or its leadership. It thus has a missionary dimension, which was especially important for us in the city centre where a third of the congregation each Sunday were visitors to the city. It means that pastors, musicians, Bible readers, prayer leader and indeed the whole congregation could see themselves involved in an action which reached out beyond themselves to the world around. This understanding of liturgy as drama also provides for worship a point of contact with with secular life. From being an esoteric activity of a sui generis nature, found strange by most people (I speak here more of Canada and Europe), it becomes part of a genre of human activity which includes drama, literature, music, opera, film, television and so on, of which at least most people understand something. And finally, if we push the model further and see the Scriptures as script for a drama, it removes them from the rather sterile debates about the Bible versus science or literal reading versus historical criticism and helps us to see them as the narrative tradition of a community, which, when carefully studied and then skilfully presented in the liturgy, can still have power to shape lives and communities.
I believe that the work of providing for the spiritual nurture of the members of the congregation is better accomplished in group, or one on one, spiritual sharing, discussion and direction.
The results of my posting a challenge about praise bands on the PAUMCS email has been intersting. I have received several copies from several secretaries of guidelines and job descriptions for their praise bands. I will be compiling them into a single document and making them available upon request.
On the sub-heading of communication: I have been a secretary for 4 different churches and played piano for worship services and choir for over 40 years. In most of the churches the pastor selected the hymns to be sung by the congregation. Some pastors didn’t have the songs selected until Thursday or Friday and some had them selected 6 – 8 weeks in advance. It’s a little difficult for the choir director to select an anthem that complements the theme of the sermon if he/she doesn’t have that information. I saw a lot of tension between a choir director and pastor over that issue – plus others. It lasted only three years — he went to another church. You were on target about understanding the personalities of the people involved in assisting with worship. As a pianist (and working full time) – I need to have time to review the hymns, determine the intro and sometimes communicate with the organist about aspects of the music. Face-to-face communication is good – but there are so many other ways provide information to the people assisting with worship. And often – the fiasco happens due to lack of communication or from pastors “shooting from the hip” – not taking the time to think through all the aspects of the worship service – including the smallest details.
I believe in music as act of worship, not just a background for the worship service. Music can bring the spirit to the congregation just as well, or even better, than words. It is not a background, it is not a performance, it is a pure and direct communication.