Nothing New Under Heaven?

Every minister of music must deal with the battle of personal preferences when it comes to worship styles. But the worship style war is nothing new to the church.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote that he could not stand the music his children enjoyed. Bach wrote music mainly for churches in his time, and almost none of it is performed in modern churches except as part of a classical concert. He was not using the old traditional music, but his own, newly composed music.

George Frederic Handel never saw any of his music performed in a church because it was too contemporary and used opera-like techniques which were forbidden in church music. But today his “Hallelujah Chorus” is performed in churches around the world every Christmas.

Martin Luther believed that music should be written in a language that people could understand and that it should include new texts at a time when only scripture and Latin were used for church music. He was also an advocate for new forms of music. Hymns such as the Doxology were banned from churches in 1674 because the forms were too modern. We would not have “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” or other great traditional hymns from Germany if it were not for men like Luther insisting on new music sung in our own language.

John Calvin believed that the organ should not be allowed because it is never mentioned in the bible. He went so far as to lead mobs of people into churches where they poured a cement mixture down the pipes of the organs. While he was opposed to any music with new texts, he did support the creation of new tunes to fit the psalms. We would not have many of our well-known traditional tunes without men like Calvin pushing for contemporary sounds in music.

Many of our 1850s Gospel era hymns were originally not allowed in Southern Baptist churches because they came out of the Methodist Camp Revivals and were considered too rhythmic and energetic. Some pastors even taught that the songs were satanic because of their modern sound.

In the 1950s and 60s, churches battled over allowing those praise choruses by some new Gospel singer by the name of William Gaither. When youth camp songs such as the Gaither choruses and hymns like “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” or “Pass It On” where included in the 1976 Baptist Hymnal, many cried out that the liberals must have taken over the Southern Baptist Convention. And then the Contemporary Christian music era started in the 1980s and some believe it was the end of traditional church music.

Here we are in 2011 and the battle over personal preferences continues to splinter the church. Some people believe that one of the newest heresies in church music is the resurgence of hymn writing among contemporary Christian artists. Not only are they changing the tunes of our beloved old hymns, but they are also writing new texts and putting them to hymn-style tunes and expecting us to sing them in church. GASP!

Why is it so hard for us to put aside our own personal preferences for the glory of God and His kingdom? I shared this quote in an earlier post, “People will fight to death over their preferences while people all around them die and go to hell.” (Ed Stetzer, pastor/author. God knew we would have these battles over personal musical desires, that is why he commanded us to sing psalms (music based on scripture), hymns (traditional songs that teach our Christian heritage), and spiritual songs (modern music of our own age).

In the worship wars, God seems to advocate "all of the above" as the style that He expects from us. God created us to be creative people. How can we truly believe that God would want us to ignore the great hymns of the past or the new songs of our present? God takes pleasure in every style of music that is written to bring Him honor and praise. There are styles I do not like, but I understand that God may speak to or through someone using that style of music.

So even if they are hated by many in our current generation, I hope and pray that modern musicians continue to write new, current and contemporary styles of music that will be the traditional songs of a future generation. And I also pray that we continue to sing the psalms and hymns that have brought us to this point in our Christian lives. God commanded it, so let's just do it without complaining.