Instruments in Church service

[appleman2006]

This is a subject that I have given a lot of thought to. And have come to some conclusions but not necessarily the correct ones.

First it is quite obvious from reading the comments on this thread that most people find what they grew up with and are familiar with to be the best, at least for them. That is not surprising.

Let me start by making an observation. It is my belief that you can largely break people into three groups when it comes to musical ability. There is the 10 percent that can hold a tune and even harmonise with very little training. It comes almost naturally to them. That is not to say that training will not make them even much better singers but they seem to have the basic gift almost from birth. Then there is another 10 percent that are by all accounts tone deaf. You could give them all kinds of training and at best they may be able to hold a simple tune if they are lucky. And then there is the other 80 percent.
This group if they are exposed to a fair amount of music can learn to hold a tune and if exposed to good harmonised singing they can even learn to harmonise. My opinion is that it is this group that benefits the most from being in an environment that has good accapella singing on a regular basis. Some of the advantages are obvious in that good singing can be participated in anywhere even when you do not happen to have instruments available.
Probably one of the most frequent comments we get when people attend our church is the great appreciation they have for the beautiful congregational music. This is especially the case of anyone that has a special understanding and appreciation of music.
Having said that I will add a few buts. One is that we as Anabaptists do not do praise music all that well. As someone said it tends to be more about the words than about the music and I am not sure that we are not missing something with that kind of emphasis all the time. Secondly I would say that as a rule while Mennonites generally have learned to do four part singing and harmonise very well, we often are extremely poor at the rhythm side of things. To the point where we really butcher songs at times. This is not always the case but it tends to be our weakness.
I will be honest in saying that for me it would be very hard to fit into a church where the majority of people did not sing well. The lack of beautiful harmony and rhythm become a major distraction for me and take away from my worship experience. But that is just me. And I certainly am conscious of the fact that groups of us have made almost a god out of our style of music to the point that it is not healthy and has had a major negative effect on the quality of our music over time. The advent of the music camps as well as a whole bunch of young men and women in our midst who are semi professional in their music gifts have arrived on the scene just barely in time IMO.

[RZehr]

And I certainly am conscious of the fact that groups of us have made almost a god out of our style of music to the point that it is not healthy and has had a major negative effect on the quality of our music over time. The advent of the music camps as well as a whole bunch of young men and women in our midst who are semi professional in their music gifts have arrived on the scene just barely in time IMO.

I may not be in the 10% who can't carry a tune but I'm probably close. Maybe in that 12% range. And I don't feel like I am the best qualified to discuss this thread topic.
For what have the semi professional music camp goers arrived just in time? It is these folks too who are accused of "making almost a god out of our style of music to the point that it is not healthy".

[appleman2006]

For what have the semi professional music camp goers arrived just in time? It is these folks too who are accused of "making almost a god out of our style of music to the point that it is not healthy".

I think they have arrived just in time in the sense that in the communities they are the most active in they have created a renewed interested in good music especially among our young people to the point where our singing in our churches has greatly improved. In my youth days it was all about not listening to certain styles of music and often a very negative approach to music in general. Some youth bought into it. Many did not. I see the positive approach as working much better.
And having the privilege of knowing many of these semi professional people personally I would say that they are certainly not guilty of making a god out of our style of music. Rather they are trying to work within the accepted limits of many of our people's understanding of good music and trying to get us to have a greater appreciation of the arts in general as a means of serving God for those that God has blessed with this special creative gift.

I have talked about this before. When will it be just as acceptable to have our people work just as hard to sing a perfect piece of music as it is to make a perfect piece of furniture? Why is the one done well seen as an act of pride whereas the other done well is simply expected. In fact to not do it well is a sign of sloppiness and carelessness. When you think about it, it really makes no sense. In fact the act of fine furniture making could be seen as feeding the whole accumulation thing far more than the proficiency of music ever could in my mind.

[KingdomBuilder]

Good posts, Appleman

[ohio jones]

Having said that I will add a few buts. One is that we as Anabaptists do not do praise music all that well. As someone said it tends to be more about the words than about the music and I am not sure that we are not missing something with that kind of emphasis all the time.

The late Sullymusic would have enjoyed this discussion. I recall his essay which touched on the distinction between worship music and other genres: Is the focus of the words on God and his acts and attributes, or is the focus on me and my experience and my relationship to him? When I looked through our hymnals from that frame of reference, I noticed that most of the songs we appropriated from the fundamentalist/evangelical mainstream starting about a century ago were "Me" songs (to its credit, the Mennonite Hymnal segregates many of these into a section in the 500s called Gospel Songs -- and we tend to sing those a LOT), whereas those from an earlier era (e.g. Watts and Wesley) were mostly "Him" songs.

I was also struck by how much of the recent Praise & Worship music movement really is "Him" songs, even if they are not Hymns.

Can we put too much emphasis on the words? Maybe, but we can also put too much emphasis on the music. They should complement each other. And while everyone should pay attention to the words, not everyone needs to know the mechanics of the music in order to participate fully in worship. And that should be the goal, whether we accomplish it with or without instruments.

[appleman2006]

Can we put too much emphasis on the words? Maybe, but we can also put too much emphasis on the music. They should complement each other. And while everyone should pay attention to the words, not everyone needs to know the mechanics of the music in order to participate fully in worship. And that should be the goal, whether we accomplish it with or without instruments.

Ah Sully. I miss that man. And yes I did think of him when I wrote that post.

I agree with the above statement. All I would say is that well written music sung well will actually bring out the meaning of the words in a way that adds rather than detracts from them.
And I do think the gospel song has a place. I am just not sure it belongs in the worship part of the service. Again I say that many of our churches do not do the worship part real well.