Worship bands strike a discordant note
by Julian Mann, TCW:
[…] I do not believe that the members of the worship band at the convention were wanting to draw attention to their own performances. I believe they wanted to enable the corporate worship of their Lord and God in song. But their voices and instruments were so dominant that I could hardly hear myself sing. The noise from the other people looking up at the screens was a low murmur. I could just about hear the pastor standing next to me belting out the words.
As I glanced around the tent I noticed that some people were not singing at all. All the worship songs were modern. There were no well-known evangelical hymns from the 18th or 19th centuries.
The experience resonated with an article I read by Mike Raiter on the Australian Gospel Coalition website in 2018 when I was still a Church of England vicar, ‘The slow killing of congregational singing’. I wrote about it here.
Raiter, director of the Centre for Biblical Preaching in Melbourne, began by observing that 50 years ago choirs ruled the church, usually supported by a very loud organ. When the choir was large, they ‘drowned out the singing of the congregation’. He continued: ‘Here’s the irony: we then replaced the choirs with song leaders . . . Over time the number of song leaders grew and grew until they became as big as a choir. Then we gave the song leaders full-volume microphones and electrical instruments, and many became performers. When the music team was large and the microphones were turned up they drowned out the congregation. So, sadly, the very people appointed to help the congregation sing actually smothered congregational singing.’
Raiter lamented: ‘Paul tells us in Ephesians that we should be “speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (5:19). Similarly, in Colossians we are exhorted to “teach and admonish one another with all wisdom with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (3:16). Singing is a corporate activity with a dual focus. We sing “to one another” and we sing “to God”. But now in many (most?) churches we are sung to by the musicians.’
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