September provides a really good opportunity for some back-to-basics thinking on church music.
A Christian friend has reminded me recently of the importance of humility in my role as a church musician. This is always a work in progress for me and I’m slow to learn, but it has also reminded me that this is one of the most important attributes of any church musician. Jesus always lifts up the one who humbles him/herself in front of the Word of God, and brings down those who consider themselves above the need for his grace.
No longer performers
I was trained to be a performer, along with many other church musicians. Even in the churches where I conducted a choir or played the organ, music was so central that the gathering was more like an audience than a congregation. It is very hard for a performer to display an attitude of humility when the whole idea is to bring attention to the music and the musician.
Here’s the point then: as Christian church musicians, if we desire to honour God with the gifts that he has given us, we are no longer performers. We are servants of the Word of God, servants of the church family who sing with us, and servants of Jesus.
More than that, we only have the privilege of being servants because we have first been served by the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that we’re not primarily pianists, guitarists, bassoonists or trombonists. We’re sinners for whom Jesus left his throne in heaven so that we could be raised with him.
And here’s the big point for us pianists especially.
Our piano teachers taught us to interpret what’s been written on a page so that it sounds good for people listening. We perform for an audience, so that they appreciate the composer of the music and the interpretation of the music by the performer. That’s all fine in its place, but it’s nothing like what we’re supposed to be doing when we play the piano in church.
Help the people sing
Our job is to help people sing to Jesus together. We’re not performers playing for an audience – we’re servants helping people give voice to the praise of God. The people we’re serving don’t want to know what notes are written on the page in front of us. Our job is not to draw attention to the composer of the song. The congregation is also not interested whether we’re playing arpeggios or scales – they don’t need to know how clever the musicians are.
The congregation simply wants to know what the tune is, when to start singing, and when to stop singing. They also want us to keep time so that the whole thing doesn’t grind to a halt before the song is supposed to finish.
Some simple tips
• Keep the intro to a song to about four bars, and make sure that the rhythm is as clear as possible.
• Keep links between verses short too – one or two bars.
• If there’s an outro to the song, again one or two bars will do. The congregation want to sing to Jesus; they haven’t come to listen to us.
• Once everyone’s started singing, all you have to do is keep the song going rhythmically. You can play fistfuls of wrong notes, but if they’re in rhythm, then people don’t really notice – especially if they’re singing heartily. (NB this isn’t an excuse not to work hard at our music, as we’re working for the Lord!)
Of course, it’s a good thing to be able to bring special attention to certain truths and words through a carefully-crafted song arrangement, but the truths will do the work in peoples’ hearts, whether or not the music we produce is innovative or not - the power is in God’s Word, not our music. If the congregation isn’t able to sing the words, either because they don’t know when to come in, or because they don’t know the tune, or because they’re ‘captivated’ by our musical ‘brilliance’ then we’re not serving in the best way we can as musicians.
Humility is slightly easier for those who have less visible roles. The difficulty for musicians is that we’re involved with ‘humble service in the limelight’, so we need to work extra hard at the humble service and leave the limelight to Jesus.
