Category: Liturgy

Simple Musical Settings of the Communion Liturgy

This year for Advent at my church we’re going to be singing these new settings of the communion liturgy that I wrote. Since Advent is a short season, there’s not much time to teach/learn new melodies for familiar liturgy, so I went with a simple melody that can hopefully be picked up pretty quickly. In many spots it’s just a repeated 1-2-3-4-5 musical scale.

Here’s a video showing how they go.

And here are the chord charts and lead sheets.

Nerdy liturgical note: There are two versions of the “memorial acclamation” in that video and in the PDF of chord charts/lead sheets. The first one is “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”. In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, that’s used in “prayer A”. The second one, “We remember His death, we proclaim His resurrection, we await His coming in glory” is used in prayer B, often used in seasons like Lent or Advent and that’s the one we’ll be singing at my church for the next four Sundays.

What Liturgy Should (And Shouldn’t) Aim To Do

My very earliest memories of corporate worship are from the small Episcopal church my dad pastored in Clewiston, Florida, from the time I was born until I was three years old. I have fuzzy memories of the smells, the baptismal font, the rows of wooden pews, and everyone standing up and holding books in their hands. I mostly drew in coloring books and/or ate Cheerios.

When I was a teenager, God’s call on me to serve the Church as a worship leader became increasingly clear. Since that time, I’ve only ever served in liturgical Anglican churches, with the same kinds of smells, baptismal fonts, wooden pews, and books in people’s hands. And while a lot has changed in the way corporate worship looks and sounds, the liturgy has mostly remained the same. There have been revisions here and there, different rites, liturgies from other parts of the world, and certainly many controversies, but by and large, the liturgy that guides the weekly worship of my particular branch of the protestant Church looks remarkably similar to how it did decades ago.

Liturgy has become more popular in recent years, so much so that now even many of my Baptist and non-denominational friends openly embrace the word, want to employ various liturgical elements in their services, and see its value. I think we all recognize that every church has a liturgy, after all. From the highest of high churches to the lowest of low churches, we have patterns, routines, traditions, and ways of doing things that end up becoming our liturgy. With that recognition comes a right and good (I just threw in a liturgical phrase for my Anglican nerd friends) desire to make sure our liturgy is intentional, rooted, pastoral, biblical, and effective in shaping people week after week with the good news of the Gospel through its pattern, structure, and substance.

For those of us who employ elements of a more traditional liturgy in our services, it’s worth asking the question from time to time, what should our liturgy aim to do? And on the flip side, what should our liturgy NOT aim to do?

On the positive side, a more traditional liturgy should aim to do a number of things:

Keep us rooted. Psalm 145:4 says “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” By sharing a liturgy that stretches back hundreds of years, we allow generations that have gone before us to commend God’s work and mighty acts to us now.

Keep us telling a story. It’s tempting for pastors and/or worship leaders to get stuck on their own hobby horses, their own favorite topics, and their own musical styles. A more traditional liturgy can keep us in the habit of telling a story when we gather, with a robust diet of Scripture, creeds, and prayers.

Keep us responding. We hear who God is, and we respond in confession. We hear that we are forgiven in Christ, and we respond with praise. We hear God’s his Word, and we respond in proclaiming what we believe. We hear the story of our redemption, and we respond with thanksgiving. The whole service is a dance of revelation and response, and revelation and response again.

Keep us focused on Jesus. The best thing liturgy can do is point us away from ourselves and to the glory of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. For example, the Church Year itself, from Advent to Pentecost, annually walks us through the story of God’s redemptive plan through Jesus’ coming, living, dying, rising, ascending, and sending of His Spirit. For a forgetful people who are prone to wander, the insistence of liturgy to point us to Jesus is a great gift.

But on the flip side, there are a number of things liturgies of any kind shouldn’t aim to do.

Impress God. This should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyways: our liturgy does not impress God. The beauty of our worship, excellence of our music, smells of our incense, or modernity of our technology does not impress God. We do not employ liturgy to impress God, we employ liturgy because it’s a gift from God to help us worship God. We worship God, not liturgy. God accepts our praise through Christ, not through a formulation of beautiful words.

Impress people. Liturgy is the plate, but God is the feast. It would be ridiculous for me to ask guests at my home to eat the plate on which I serve them their food. It’s similarly ridiculous for us to ask worshippers to be impressed with our liturgy. When our liturgy becomes the feast, we’ve got it all wrong. God is the feast, and we feast upon him in his Word. Liturgy is just another tool to help people “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” God’s living and active Scripture.

Impart faith. Saying the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed will not impart faith upon those who recite it. Saying ancient prayers will not cause a person to mean them. Listening to the words explaining the meaning behind communion will not bring a person to put their trust in Jesus. Over time, these liturgical elements may certainly help a person make sense of their faith, learn some helpful patterns of prayer, and understand what communion is all about. But liturgy should never be expected to impart faith upon people simply by being included in a service for years in a row.

Enliven stale services. The old saying goes “the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart”. That goes for worship services too. Simply tinkering with different factors – like musical styles, service times, set design, and liturgy – will not enliven stale services. Those factors are all very much secondary. The factor of first importance is the heart. The human heart is only ever truly satisfied by the One for whom it was created to glorify and enjoy. We start with the heart: helping people see, savor, sing, and celebrate the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to us even more clearly.

Then our liturgy will be seen in its proper place: as a tool that we can use as much or as lightly as needed, keeping the main thing the main thing, serving those people in our pews every Sunday, even the little kids with their coloring books and Cheerios.

The Embrace of Musical Convergence (And Its Implications for Traditional Church Choirs)

Convergence

There are three common music models in western/protestant/liturgical churches these days:

1. The traditional model. The music is almost exclusively classical, and any contemporary elements are on the fringes.

2. The contemporary model. The music is almost exclusively modern, and any traditional elements are on the fringes.

3. The ping-pong model. There’s a traditional side and a contemporary side. Each side gets its turn, at its own service, or with its own songs, and there isn’t a whole lot of unity or cooperation.

Is it possible for a church with a history of a traditional music program (choir, organ, hymnals, handbells, etc.) to embrace modern forms of music (bands, vocalists, projected lyrics, “worship teams”, etc.) without the traditional music dying as a result?

Yes, it is possible. And that’s what my church, our congregation, our choir, our instrumentalists, and I are pursuing these days.

We’re pursuing a fourth model, which is called “convergence”. Maybe you call it “blended”. It allows for vibrant traditional music, and vibrant contemporary music, and it puts them together in one combined expression. Choir plus singers. Organ plus band. Traditional plus contemporary. 6th century plus 21st century. Liturgy plus spontaneity. We can play ping-pong when it’s called for, but we play together most of the time.

This “convergence” model accomplishes several things:
1. It’s faithful to our past
2. It builds a bridge to the future, and to those from outside our traditions
3. It’s a picture of the body (independence and interdepence)
4. It’s alive and messy and risky and new and exciting
5. It’s about addition, not about subtraction

Most importantly,

6. It demonstrates our unity in Christ

What does this model mean for a traditional church choir?

This model embraces the choir and calls them further up and further in. Is it different? Yes. Is it the traditional model? No. Is it calling more or less out of the choir than before? More!

In this model of musical “convergence”, being a member of the choir is not just about singing the anthem. It’s about singing and leading all of the songs in a service from beginning to end. From the call to worship to the final hymn. Every note of every song being an opportunity for the choir to fulfill a worship leading role, a congregational-singing-cultivating role, a visible role, an audible role, and a pastoral role. From challenging repertoire, to simple liturgical responses, to contemporary songs that will only (and should only) be in our repertoire for shorter seasons, the choir is being called to be an integral worship leading presence on all of it.

Here’s the kicker about “convergence”:

The addition of new things does not mean the subtraction of older things.

The experimentation with new forms does not mean the elimination of older forms. The birth of new songs does not mean the death of old songs. New singers and musicians on the platform don’t mean the replacement of other singers and musicians. We must force ourselves to think in terms of addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division.

The motto of “convergence” is “More! Older! Newer! All of it!” It’s leaning into what God’s doing, it’s being willing to be messy and make mistakes, and it’s trusting that the foundations are strong enough to handle adding some new structures. This isn’t demolition, it’s expansion. There aren’t any wrecking balls in sight, only more bricks.

And the Cornerstone isn’t going anywhere.

Classical musicians need not run in fear at the sight of an electric guitar. A drummer need not be banished to the youth room, hidden behind plexiglass, and surrounded by foam. Traditional choral repertoire need not be thrown into the trash can. There has to be a way for musical convergence to work. It can work when we love one another, when we keep the congregation singing along, when we exalt Christ above all things and above all preferences, and when we’re willing to take risks in an atmosphere permeated with God’s grace.

Here’s to keeping on trying to make musical convergence work!

Seminar on Thinking Surgically While Leading Liturgically

About a year ago I shared some thoughts in several posts (part one, two, three, four, and five) on the topic of how to use music as a tool, in the context of a more formal liturgical service, to lead vibrant worship. Liturgy doesn’t have to be a force of lethargy.

I was honored to be asked by Bob Kauflin to teach a seminar on this topic at the 2011 WorshipGod conference this past August in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I had been attending those conferences since 2002, and had been profoundly shaped and molded as a worship leader by them, so it was a real privilege to be able to give something back.

If you’d like to listen to or download the audio of this seminar (for free!) click here. And if you’d like the outline for this seminar, you can get that here.

And all the other seminar and main session messages are downloadable (again, for free) here.

Leading Worship at Weddings – Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I shared some tips about leading worship at weddings. For me, it’s a relatively normal thing to have worship songs at a wedding, and my post assumed it was normal to you too. But I received an email from someone with a question about this, which showed me that it might not be such a normal thing to people after all. He said:

Hey man I’m getting married this fall. Until you mentioned it, I never heard of singing WORSHIP SONGS at a wedding – like for the congregation. Never heard of that. Can you describe that a little more? Like give an example of a couple songs that are “wedding appropriate.” How does it fit into the ceremony? 

Thanks man! I kinda like this idea…. 

Here’s a bit of what I shared in reply.
Some wedding ceremonies are short, sweet, and to the point. You’re there to see the bride walk up the aisle, hear the preacher say some nice words, maybe hear a ballad of some sort, hear the bride and groom say their vows, see them kiss, and see them walk down the aisle as a married couple. 20 minutes and you’re done. The real party (the reception) can now begin! Not much room for worship songs in there.
There are benefits to that kind of wedding ceremony. But the two main negatives that I can see are that (1) it makes the bride the center of the universe and (2) it’s not a worship service.
I’m of the mind that a wedding should be a worship service, and that Jesus should be the center of it. This makes it a bit longer, makes non-Christian friends/family feel a bit more uncomfortable, and adds new questions/needs to a couple’s already long list.
In the Anglican church, here’s how this looks. (You can see the liturgy here.)
Pre-service:
Instrumental music is played while the guests arrive and are seated.
Procession:
When the bride enters, the people stand, and a more robust (and brief) musical piece is played until she reaches the front
Opening words:
The pastor address the congregation and the couple. He explains that God established the covenant of marriage, that it signifies the union between Christ and his church, that it is meant to last through prosperity and adversity, if God wills it to produce children, and not be entered into lightly or unadvisedly. He then gives the congregation and the couple one last chance to name any reason why the marriage should not go forward. (This is always a fun moment.)
Declaration of consent:
The pastor asks the bride and groom if they will have each other to be their spouse for the rest of their lives. He then asks the congregation if they will support the couple.
Songs of praise:
It is here where a time of worship can be included. The wedding party can step down from the platform and stand in the front row while the bride and groom either step to the side or also down from the platform. It can be just one song, or several, whatever works best. I would recommend familiar, truth-filled songs. This is a great way to preach the gospel to your non-Christian friends and family. What are they going to do? Walk out of your wedding?
The ministry of the word:
2 or 3 scripture readings are presented by family members. You can do special or congregational songs in between them if you’d like, or if you think this is a better place than after the declaration of consent.
The homily
A fancy word for “short sermon”.
The marriage:
The man and woman exchange their vows. Then they exchange rings. Then the pastor joins their hands together and prays a blessing over them, ending with “Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder”.
Prayers:
The very first thing that happens after the couple is married is not a kiss or a song or a party – but a prayer. This is symbolic. Usually the Lord’s prayer is prayed (unless the service ends with communion, in which case it’s omitted), before moving on to a time of prayer that either the pastor can lead, or friends and family can lead. In some wedding, parents and siblings will come up and lay hands on the couple.
The blessing:
The husband and wife kneel, and the pastor prays a final prayer of blessing. Then the couple may kiss, the congregation usually celebrates, the music kicks up, and the couple and the wedding party process back down the aisle and the service is over.
If you want to include communion in your service, it would happen here. Instead of processing down the aisle, there would be what we call “the passing of the peace”, a special song, then a time of communion. This is another place where songs of praise can be sung.
The result is a longer, more complicated wedding ceremony. But hopefully it helps set a tone for your wedding day, your marriage, and your family, that God’s glory is the priority, and Jesus is the center, even on the most important day of your life.