Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-3-26

I am going to share an old song, and its lyrics. Anyway it seems like an old song – 1979, which makes it seem like “Old Testament days” for me, because I am old. It was a Christian radio hit, Oh Buddha by the Imperials.

First, I will share a story that presents a slight intersection of mine with this great song.

When Oh Buddha was a hit on Christian radio, my wife and I attended a revival in Madison Square Garden in New York City. I believe it was R W Schambach, whose ministry I still revere; or Kenneth Copeland, whom I followed at the time. It was very well attended, and protesters were on the sidewalk outside the Garden.

Today, those protesters might be Black Lives Matter types, or feminists, or Muslim extremists; or (very likely in Manhattan at that time) militant Zionists. The small group of protesters rallied against the thrust of the revival inside the Garden. They chanted for Buddha, or Mohammad, or Reverend Sun-Myung Moon (“Universalist Church”), or an Eastern mystic via chants of Hare Krishna, or some arcane gods or “religions” of the time.

It was a modest and quiet demonstration. But the emerging crowd of revival-goers circled ‘round them and were not exactly arrogant… but however were confrontational. Someone started singing the contemporary radio hit, and scores joined in:

Well, old Buddha was a man And I’m sure that he meant well, But I pray for his disciples Lest they wind up in hell.

And I’m sure that old Mohammed Thought he knew the way, But it won’t be Hare Krishna We stand before on Judgment Day.

This was, as I said, a hit song in the Christian community of the day. Do you know it? Me, I see nothing wrong with its theology – for, despite its novelty-category aspects, it speaks Biblical truth, and Christ’s hard message. If we care about the souls of others, it is a doctrine we should follow. Peoples’ salvation is at stake.

The song was recorded by the Imperials, one of the legendary quartets of Christian music. It was founded by the great Jake Hess, whom I was privileged to know, when he left the Statesmen Quartet; and through the years its personnel included giants like Henry Slaughter, Gary McSpadden, Armond Morales, Jim Murray, Terry Blackwood, Larry Gatlin, Sherman Andrus, and Russ Taff. For a time the Imperials sang backup for Jimmy Dean and even for Elvis.

But on the evening I recall, the song was not sung as a novelty tune, but to attack. The group of revival attendees was mocking, not ministering. I felt moved to rebuke the crowd singing that song, but not self-righteously. (I mean my putative motivation, not theirs.) Our job as Christians – our duty, our command, in fact – is to persuade others to be strong in their faith… or that we be dedicated to sharing, encouraging acceptance, and fostering the embrace of the Gospel’s saving grace.

Jesus is the incarnation of God among mankind. He was sent to be our stand-in for the punishment we deserve – His plan that by believing in Him and His sufficient sacrifice, and that He rose from death and ascended to return to the Father – and we will therefore spend Eternity in Heaven.

To believe otherwise; that is, to let others believe that their idea of a new home in Glory, to Heaven forever, can be anyone’s random idea… is to consign those people to oblivion. Or to Hell. That is not indifference. It is not dismissive. It ought not to be done in mockery nor even in cruelty. Do you hate someone that much? Is ridicule more important than sympathy, than love?

I don’t hate anybody, So please don’t take me wrong. But there really is a message In this simple song.

You see, there’s only one way, Jesus, If eternal life is your goal And meditation of the mind Won’t save your soul!

As I said, I did not feel self-righteous that day, when rebuking the folks I had spent hours worshiping with. And I have the same impulse now; Christians should. Let us reach out – whenever we can, however we can, as often as we can – to those who don’t know the message of salvation!

And, by the way I plead to us all about this priority: It is not only Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or Confucians or mystics or agnostics or atheists we should care about. There are friends and neighbors and co-workers – people we know and see and talk to every day; maybe even relatives – who might not fully know the Truth; or have “backslidden” or fallen away. Yes, it is a common condition. Maybe folks who are seated in the next pew from you on Sundays!

Well, you can call yourself a Baptist, And not be born again. A Presbyterian or a Methodist And still die in your sin.

You can even be Pentecostal, Shout and dance and jump a pew! But if you hate your brother You won’t be one of the chosen few.

Because it won’t be a Baptist Who’s sitting on the throne; A Presbyterian or a Methodist Who’s calling us home.

And it won’t be a Pentecostal Who plays that trumpet tune, So let’s all just live for Jesus Because He’s coming back real soon!

Amen!

It won’t be old Buddha Who’s sitting on the throne, And it won’t be old Mohammed Who’s calling us home!

And it won’t be Hare Krishna Who plays that trumpet tune, And we’re going to see the Son, Not Reverend Moon.

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Click: Russ Taff – “Oh Buddha”

1-25-16

Last week’s essay on “worshiptainment,” Worship Music That Is Neither, excited quite a bit of notice and debate across the spectrum. It was picked up by many websites and newsletters, posted and re-posted on Facebook, and promises to be, I am told, the subject of sermons and small-group discussions.

In the essay I addressed the form of musical worship that has overtaken many mainstream-denomination, independent, and “mega” churches. Worshipers singing hymns have been replaced by performance musicians; organs and pianos by guitars and drums; hymnals and songbooks by words roughly projected on screens. Worshipers now are audiences. Congregational singing is optional, effectively discouraged.

I have been in uncountable churches where MCs tell everyone when to smile, when to clap, and to repeat “Good Morning!” if not yelled loudly enough. Dissent from such was the thrust of my essay.

The problem – my point – is that what is represented as free-form worship, in their own way, is more regimented than Medieval chants or sitting under Jonathan Edwards sermons. Congregants do not feel parts of a congregation, communicants cannot commune, and some people who go to church to find their still, small corner… find no corners. Some people yearn for church not for pep rallies, but needing to weep quiet, sincere tears; or to lay on their faces, as it were, at the altar. Not smile on cue, wave, and jump in place. To go out and face the world refreshed, not to see face-painters and cappuccino stands in the parking lot.

We should be discomfited by more than music and worship paradigms in large swaths of today’s church, however. A virtual Tower of Babel within the church it seems, but is not necessarily bad, nor unprecedented. In ancient times, the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity developed along local preferences and traditions. Resistance to Papal authority actually began centuries before Luther. During the height of the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and, yes, the Counter-Counter-Reformation, churches affixed themselves to varying worship modes.

… but, within Christendom, they were modes and styles – very seldom, aside from the role of the Pope, dissension about basic doctrine. Luther, in fact, did not want to leave the Catholic Church. J. S. Bach, the “Fifth Evangelist,’ hymnist of the Protestant Affirmation, was proudest among his 1800 works (approximately 1200 of which have survived) of his B-minor Mass – a Catholic mass.

And so forth. With few exceptions (Salem, the Inquisition) the internal battles of Christendom – the Thirty Years’ War; Tudors vs. Stuarts in England; the “Troubles” in Ireland – are tattooed with religious arguments and justifications in history books. But almost all of these were political or economic or military or geographical or personal wars, fought under the convenient banners of Christian exegeses.

I have been to Northern Ireland. I have spoken with many who survived the Troubles. Many who are now reconciled, many who buried relatives killed by those they now call friends. Virtually none fought over transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation, back in the day. People simply preferred to hate. Christ’s love covered all… when it was accepted.

My point is that all these groups, over history, that I have named (including the Orthodox communities, about we in the West know little) were remarkably similar in worship settings. The peripheral things (hate, politics, rivalries) clearly and ironically were separate from the central spiritual core.

That is, worship was to the same God, the same Savior, using the same Bible… and virtually the same worship. The early “Church Fathers” met, and prayed, and fashioned creeds – to codify the basics of Christian belief; to combat heresies, and to spread the Word. Similarly, they designed a template of worship – to, likewise, have the worship service address, in its part after part, the essentials of the faith.

There is a Logic to Liturgy.

Liturgy is the order of service, designed to address and remind worshipers of the essential doctrines of faith. You can listen to recordings of recreated services of the 5th-century churches, and identify the orders, and even the (translated) words of the service, if you were reared in a 20th-century liturgical church. The orders, words, chants, prayers, invocations, responses of the Catholic Mass of 500 years ago, are substantially as today (or pre-Vatican II); substantially as services in Lutheran, Anglican, and High Episcopal services.

I have visited churches throughout Europe where I did not know the local language, yet I knew the liturgical melodies, and the order within the services, as if I did. I knew what was being prayed, celebrated, petitioned. That is how it has been… and, I submit, should still be.

In liturgical churches these traditions survive, even if sometimes barely. In Evangelical churches, there might be free-form worship, but usually in a prescribed format each Sunday. Quakers have had their own traditions. And Pentecostals frequently invite the Holy Spirit to move over a service.

So, I understand, and I hope readers do, that my unease with contemporary worship music is not based on reactionary devotion to ancient and dry music (which traditional music of the church is not!). We see that, for 2000 years, Christians at all times and in all places have inherited and exercised the essence, if not the forms, of worship.

What is new in our times, in Post-Modern services, is content (or, today, the dearth of content) – has changed or disappeared in many churches. To many observers, it honors God less, and “self” more; it is less about the message of Jesus and more about the massage of ego.

I know the complaints about traditional church music, about liturgy. About dry sermons. About “everything from the book.” I know the complaints because I shared them. When I was young, I noticed that grownups in pews around me droned through the Settings – the printed orders of service. Those routines seldom changed; virtually only on Communion Sundays or a few holidays intruded.

Everyone could recite the long petitions in their sleep. I know. I saw it on Sunday mornings. I still can myself, never setting out to memorize the passages. Just like ministers and priests (you see it on TV, maybe when the Senate is called to order, or a president is buried) reading prayers. Shouldn’t they be familiar enough with God by now to pray extemporaneously?!?

So. I concluded, and many still might, to reject ordered tradition, to conclude that rites can become rituals can become rote. Empty repetition. Spiritually empty. Sure: that is the danger.

But, today, my argument is – and it has taken us a generation or two to recognize this – that spontaneity can grow just as empty.

“Free form worship” can become as programmed as printed liturgy.

“Forced spontaneity” is an oxymoron. It is what we bring, not what we receive, that makes for worship.

Contemporary “praise music,” un-programmed services, and the Post-Modern church can grow just as cold as anything. Colder, when Jesus is absent from the Focus as well as the Form.

If many parts of the contemporary church have morphed from hymns to concert performances, I fervently pray that those talented musicians simply would perform in concerts! Many of them do; more of them should. Worship in church is different than attending a concert, no offense meant. There is a Logic to Liturgy.

And there is a 2000-year-old tradition to resume.

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No organ, no church pews. But, performance that is inclusive. Worship and praise that worships the Lord and praises Him… and uplifts musical worshipers. The great gospel song of Fanny Crosby. Blind nearly since birth, she began writing hymns at age 40, and wrote approximately 8000 before she died. Her music has blessed worshipers in church… and concert-goers in great auditorium like London’s Royal Albert Hall. A BBC concert.

Click: To God Be the Glory