A few days ago I commented on my concerns about the handling of the Bible in churches and the problems associated with merely displaying passages on a screen or notice sheet. An interesting conversation ensued, but with the usual ‘either-or’ assumptions about what I was querying. Yes, different people need different approaches, but questions remain about the use of the text itself in public worship and what effect the medium has on the message itself.
This morning I was with friends in an urban church in a tough area of South London – a church that has grown in just over three years from an average congregation of 15 to one of around 80. This morning the congregation was over 80 and multiethnic – a wonderful place in which the church is growing a worshipping and serving community. When I licensed the vicar there I had no idea if it would work or not – and I feared the challenge and stress might damage the vicar. This morning I felt very close to tears witnessing such an encouraging community worshipping and belonging together, reaching out in welcome to newcomers.
During the service I was reflecting further on the phrase I used in my earlier post: ‘liturgical osmosis’. I had questioned whether people learn the faith (and the Bible) merely by absorbing some of it during disconnected services, but without realising it. I was urging a more serious approach – after all, I would be rightly suspicious if my children went to school and the teacher simply hoped that something of a disconnected discourse might either accidentally or incidentally enable the child to learn – for example – to read or count or learn grammar. We expect teachers to take ‘learning’ seriously and teach in such a way as to make learning more rather than less likely.
However, I want to redress the balance a little by urging that ‘liturgical osmosis’ be taken as seriously as other forms of ‘deliberate’ learning/teaching. We are constantly absorbing not only sensations and feelings, but ideas and constructs that impact on and shape our mindset and, therefore, our behaviour.
For example, this morning we sang that unfortunate song, O let the love of God enfold you. Why unfortunate? The chorus line asks God to ‘come and fill your lambs’ – but doesn’t say what with. Sage and onion stuffing?! It is a very odd line to sing without feeling weird. So, why do we keep singing it – especially when the post-resurrection Jesus enjoins Peter to ‘feed’ and ‘tend my lambs/sheep (John 21), but not to ‘fill’ them?
Perhaps a better example of what I am saying can be seen in the great Easter song we used to sing a lot in my church when I was a vicar in Rothley, Leicestershire: Graham Kendrick‘s In the tomb so cold they laid him. The first verse goes like this:
In the tomb so cold they laid him, death its victim claimed; powers of hell, they could not hold him – back to life he came.
Nothing wrong with that, you might think. Except, of course, that Jesus did not come back to life. As Paul puts it, ‘God raised Christ from the dead’. But if you keep singing about ‘coming back to life’, it isn’t too long before you are thinking at a subliminal level that when we die we simply come back to life. We don’t. Christian hope/trust is rooted not in an outcome, but in a person: that if God raised Christ from death, so will he raise us also. The rest is detail.
As Tom Wright has noted many times, Christians are really confused about death, resurrection, heaven, ‘spirituality’ and the cosmos, etc and slightly dodgy songs don’t help. Wesley noted that we learn our theology from what we sing rather than from what we read or hear in a sermon. Or, to put it more bluntly: sing rubbish and you’ll believe rubbish.
So, those who are responsible for leading worship carry a great weight of responsibility in terms of both content (theology) and form (the choice of medium). Perhaps more is going on than sometimes the quick choice of songs or hymns might suggest.
In other words, the content of what we believe/assume is shaped by what we red/sing/hear/imbibe – which means that the message cannot be divorced from the various media in which it is represented.
June 21, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I agree with Wesley’s assertion that you quote about us learning our theology from what we sing – especially in churches with extended times of sung worship. I also agree with you and Tom Wright about Christians (and non-Christians) being confused about death and resurrection – reading ‘Surprised by Hope’ did give me one of those moments when it’s as if the light has suddenly been turned on.
However tying these strands together, it seems that even Charles Wesley was confused about life after death – look at ‘Love Divine’; all is well until verse 3 “Finish then Thy new creation…” – fine; however in the second half of the verse he starts:
“Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place…”
Where has the new creation gone here?
Yes – let’s examine the theology contained in our hymnody carefully – but it’s not just some contemporary writers that appear confused!
June 21, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Absolutely right. I didn’t think I had suggested that it is only contemporary writers that appear confused. Some older hymns are bonkers, but get sung a lot!
June 21, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Thank you very much for this post and I totally agree. I’m currently writing my Masters dissertation on Christian song and one of my contentions (though only really in the introduction) is that we learn more from Christian song than from what we hear in a sermon – mostly because learning by ‘doing’ is generally more effective than learning by ‘listening’. Anyway, if you are able to let me know where I can find that quote from Wesley it would certainly be useful to include in my introduction! Many thanks.
June 22, 2009 at 2:48 pm
While I am in general agreement with what is being said in this and +Nick’s last post I wonder if we are making category mistakes. On one hand I assume that one of the purposes of the BCP was to teach [common] good doctrine by rote to a population that was often illiterate; and one of my backgrounds would tend to pick over every line of everything for any hint of ‘compromise’; so, I would be one to ensure that we read the Word of God and sing ‘truth’ [yes, I use 'modern' era language to make the point that liturgical osmosis is a reality!].
On the other hand, one of our roles as communicators is to enable people to easily listen to us and to the message, so we might have considerable latitude with sermons, discussions and songs to express the essence of a point, not its totality; surely in the anglican church [and I suspect all others as well] that we have to overlook nit-picking each other’s faith and its expressions; and our pews are filled with people of very differnt learning styles.
And with what is God going to fill his lambs? The previous verse states…
‘O let the Son of God enfold you
With His Spirit and His love …
And His Spirit like a dove
Will descend upon your life and
make you whole’
So, yes, let’s get it right, but let’s be communicators with freedom of expression! One of our skills as leaders is to know our people – and if most of mine are reeading their Bibles every day and attending weekly discussion groups, the wordng of a song is then a forum for discussion. However, if my collegues are slipshod about scripture or doctrine, they will grow ignorant congregations.
June 23, 2009 at 9:11 am
Yes, looking at all the various failings of the church in teaching the faith, it’s a miracle any of us ever become informed, thoughtful Christians at all!
Oh, hang on …..
Although I would identify myself as an evangelical, it seems to me that the Christian faith is often much more attractive to outsiders in terms of our orthopraxy – right action – than our orthodoxy. Francis Young’s excellent book on the creeds explains this much better than I could.
So what we believe is important, but my personal experience (which I don’t think is unusual) of coming to faith as an adult is that what drew me in was not primarily intellectual but experiential.
St Francis’ often misused exhortation to ‘use words where necessary’ when preaching the Gospel is a reminder that people are convinced by what we are, not what we say.
Of course it does matter what we teach and how we teach it – St Francis is sadly often used to support a lack of coherent teaching, which is wrong because our right action has to be based on our journey as disciples, and of course learning from the Bible and tradition are a vital foundation for that.
I do cringe at the words of some hymns – both ancient and modern – and sometimes at the content of sermons too. The value of having a set liturgy is that whatever is sung or preached, the repeated content of the liturgy is not reliant on the views of whoever is running the service that day.
June 23, 2009 at 12:15 pm
My thanks, too, for this post. It’s the stuff that makes people cringe, catholic, evangelical and all shades in between (see Pam, above) that is so disturbing, for if it makes Christians cringe what’s it doing to the wider constituency? Yes: thank God for liturgy – that temperate guide that is the fruit of “what has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”. It’s hard to know how hymnody could be brought under that kind of “conciliar” agreement. Meanwhile your “Why do we keep singing it?” is perhaps THE question that all churches should be asking of themselves all of the time, whatever the “it” is!
June 24, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I think there is a real hunger in the emerging generation for intellectual discussions in churches.
Many would have gone to university, where the emphasis is on open discussion of the topic with people being able to ask questions and challenge.
including this form of teaching/learning in our churches would see an increase in the understanding of people’s own faith but also more younger people coming to church.
June 26, 2009 at 9:08 am
Even more worrying is some of the stuff we feed to children in the name of worship! It’s perhaps no wonder that if fed with a diet of ‘Whoopy do Jesus jumped right out the tomb’ because it has a lively tune, that when they start asking questions and pondering what Christians really believe, they have no foundations to build on.
I’m not suggesting that boppy tunes or bouncy choruses are banned, but that we help those tasked with the nurture of children’s faith think about what they are teaching immplicitly through song.
September 18, 2011 at 12:51 pm
I just happened upon this thread over 2yrs after it first began, while searching the net for the song, ‘let the Son of God enfold you…’ While not disputing that a number of songs in the church today don’t help right understanding of the truth of God, I don’t think this particular song falls into that category.
The grouse here with the song appears to be that it does not tell us what we want God to fill His lambs with. The answer is right there if only we’d look with more open minds. We are asking God to fill us with Himself!