Repost: Great Songs of Me and Honest Hymns

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Tim Archer

Great Songs of MeA few years ago, for a sermon, I came up with a list of hymns for the egotist. Here are some of the ones I thought of:

  • How Great I Art
  • Now I Lift My Name on High
  • I Exalt Me
  • I Need Me Every Hour
  • I Love Me Lord
  • Just As I Want
  • Just a Little Talk With Myself
  • O, To Be Like Me
  • Praise Me! Praise Me!
  • There is None Like Me
  • Let Me Have My Way With Me
  • Have Mine Own Way

This of course plays off of an old list of “honest songs” that has made it around the Internet:

  • A Comfy Mattress Is Our God
  • Above Average is Thy Faithfulness
  • All Hail the Influence of Jesus’ Name
  • Amazing Grace, How Interesting the Sound
  • Be Thou My Hobby
  • Blessed Hunch
  • Blest Be the Tie That Doesn’t Cramp My Style
  • Fill My Spoon, Lord
  • Go Tell It on the Speed Bump
  • God of Taste, and God of Stories
  • He’s Quite a Bit to Me
  • I Lay My Inappropriate Behavior on Jesus
  • I Love to Talk About Telling the Story
  • I Surrender Some
  • I’m Fairly Certain That My Redeemer Lives
  • It Is My Secret What God Can Do
  • Joyful, Joyful, We Kinda Like Thee
  • Just As I Pretend to Be
  • Lift Every Voice and Intellectualize
  • My Faith Looks Around for Thee
  • My Hope is Built on Nothing Much
  • O, God, Our Enabler in Ages Past
  • Oh, for a Couple of Tongues to Sing
  • Oh, How I Like Jesus
  • Pillow of Ages, Fluffed for Me
  • Praise God From Whom All Affirmations Flow
  • Self-Esteem to the World! The Lord is Come
  • Sit Up, Sit Up for Jesus
  • Special, Special, Special
  • Spirit of the Living God, Fall Somewhere Near Me
  • Stick Nearby, It’s Getting Dark Outside
  • Sweet Five Minutes of Prayer
  • Take My Life and Let Me Be
  • There Is Scattered Cloudiness in My Soul Today
  • There Shall Be Sprinkles of Blessings
  • We Are Milling Around in the Light of God
  • We Give Thee but Still Think We Own
  • What an Acquaintance We Have in Jesus
  • When Peace, Like a Trickle
  • When the Saints Go Sneaking In
  • Where He Leads Me, I Will Consider Following

Want to add to the list?

Posted in Humor | Tagged | 3 Comments

Singing: My personal history

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Tim Archer

I grew up with a cappella singing. At some point in my youth, I became aware that “we didn’t” and “they did,” and I became quite proud of that fact.

I’ve planted a cappella churches, though one of the groups went through serious debate on the matter. In my work, I work with some who have strong feelings against the use of instruments and others who feel it’s not a salvation issue. I worship at a church that uses no instruments and has no intentions of doing so soon.

I have no desire to be part of a church that uses instruments. I grew up preferring a cappella music, and that hasn’t changed.

Because I know that personal history and preferences can affect these discussions, I thought it would be helpful if I shared that. Feel free to lay out your own experiences, as some of you already have.

Posted in Music, Singing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Scripture and our druthers

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Tim Archer

There’s a saying I’ve heard attributed to Dr. Jack Lewis. He was speaking about an individual in the church and said something to the effect of: “He has a hard time differentiating between what the Bible says and his personal preferences.” I don’t know the original context or even the reliability of the attribution, but I’d say that statement sums up a lot of the discussion on church music.

If we want to clap while singing, we can find scriptural support. If we like the way we feel when singing with instruments, we can find biblical evidence as to why they should be used. If we don’t like modern praise songs, we attack their theology. In other words, if you don’t agree with me, you’re disagreeing with God.

If we don’t turn to the Scriptures, we make “objective” statements that support our views. Singing without instruments promotes unity. Singing with instruments attracts non-churched people. Singing too many new songs will cause some of the old-timers to leave. Singing too many old songs will cause the young people to leave. In other words, if you don’t agree with me, you don’t care about people.

We can find scholarly studies that support our views. Anecdotal evidence from growing churches (or dying churches!). We can point to faraway lands where they’ve done what we like and, behold!, their churches have achieved a utopian bliss.

Most of it’s hogwash. It’s a focusing on externals rather than internals. It’s ignoring all that the Bible says about what makes for true worship and what makes for vain worship. If you can’t worship God without an instrument, you can’t worship him with one. If you can’t be edified by singing Isaac Watts, you’ll eventually find that Casting Crowns leaves you cold as well. If people come to your church because of your praise band, they’ll leave when the church down the street has a better one.

Worship is about the heart. And a big sign of a heart not right with God is the unwillingness to consider your brother’s needs ahead of your own, your brother’s preferences instead of your own.

I recently read a quote that said church leaders should aim to have one hundred percent of the people happy eighty percent of the time. If that’s true, we need to be ready to not get our way twenty percent of the time. (And the “stronger brother” should expect to give in more often than that!) Are you ready to not be satisfied one fifth of the time?

It’s time to take the “I feel”s and “I like”s and put them in a drawer. It’s time to seek what’s best for the body as a whole.

(I know “druthers” goes back further, but I picked the word up from the musical L’il Abner. There’s a song called “If I Had My Druthers”)

Posted in Music, Singing, Worship | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Singing: All or nothing?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Tim Archer

Wow! If you haven’t read yesterday’s post, don’t bother. Just skip down to the comments section. Some brilliant insights there, plus a sharing of experiences from different viewpoints.

I realize that I’ve embraced the tar baby. I’ve jumped into this with a few things in mind and am now seeing so many more issues that need to be addressed. Some would organize and plan out where they’re going from here; I’ll just keep writing and see where we end up.

One concept that came out in yesterday’s comments was the difference between performance-oriented worship and participative worship. Is it mutual edification or are their gifted people whose role is to edify the rest of the body during the assembly? Is it okay at times to sit and listen or should everyone be a part?

We need to recognize that this is not a black/white issue. There’s an entire spectrum out there. On one end, you have the “high church” model, where many functions in worship can only be performed by people ordained for that task. On the other end, you have the “unprogrammed” meetings of Friends (Quakers — They call this “expectant waiting”). There are congregations where only those approved by the church may lead singing, direct prayers, wait on the table, etc. There are other congregations where everyone is expected to come prepared to do something.

I could go on, but I hope you see what I mean. There aren’t just two approaches to this question, nor three or four. There is a whole gamut of responses. However, we can focus in on one thing: some feel that it is imperative that every member be active in singing or they will not have worshiped.

So here’s another set of questions: should a congregation have the goal of 100% audience participation in singing? Is it sinful to be present and not sing? Should the goal of the church be edification through song, even if that means limiting the participation of some members and emphasizing the participation of others?

Posted in Music, Singing | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Singing through the worship wrangling

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Tim Archer

One of the silliest phrases that came into vogue the last few decades was the term “worship wars.” There have been people at times in history who have been killed for choosing to worship a certain way. Those are worship wars. Ours have been worship wrangling, at best.

In our fellowship, one of the key areas of struggle has been over instruments. That is, can we use them. A number of congregations have chosen to add instruments to their singing.

From my limited observation, I see a funny thing happening. What was brought in as a “tasteful accompaniment” tends to become the center of attention. The lightly strummed guitar and gentle flute give way to the full-out praise band that “rocks the sanctuary.” That’s interesting to me, because that’s been a major battleground in churches that were already using instruments. They’ve struggled over musical accompaniment of singing vs. vocal accompaniment of instruments playing. Best I can figure, those in our brotherhood that have chosen to go the instrument have sided themselves with the “progressives” in other churches.

There are churches that have used instruments for many years that haven’t moved past a piano accompanying the congregation. Why do you think our churches tend to jump from “no instruments” to “full instrumentation” so quickly? It’s hard for me to see how this can do anything but hurt congregational singing. Am I off base? Have you seen churches with loud “praise bands” that still had strong congregational singing?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Music, Singing | Tagged , , | 16 Comments