Reasons to Sing!

This year I am blessed to work with a small choir of 18 junior high school students in our day school. They are a talented group of treble singers, who do a nice job of singing SSA repertoire - both accompanied and a cappella. They are the smaller of our two junior high choirs (the other has 22 voices singing 2-part mixed), yet forms the backbone of the group when we combine the two choirs to sing SAB/SAC repertoire. As an example of this group's talent, they are having little trouble taking on René Clausen's Psalm 100 - a piece usually sung by high school and college choirs.

The music is all fine and good, but I especially enjoy working with these kids because of their spiritual maturity. I've worked with hundreds of children their age over their years, but have yet to have a group that would come up with the following list for their "reasons to sing":

*To raise spirits.
*Sustain culture.
*Bring people together.
*Sustain them on their journey.
*Have an impact on their lives.

These are pretty good goals for any Lutheran church choir to have. The raising of spirits evokes the Sursum Corda of the liturgy: "Lift up your hearts!" As the choir assists the Office of the Holy Ministry, how wonderful it is for them to have the attitude of this holy exhortation.

Sustaining culture shows how much these kids love their church. They know that their church is something special, and that they have received an authentic tradition of worship in the music of our Lutheran family. Whether they are singing a chorale, Bach, Bouman, or a contemporary psalm setting from Liturgy Solutions, they are part of a living heritage - and love it.

"Bringing People Together" might be the goal of any choral organization, but in this context we are talking about something more than "building community". The Lutheran Church choir "builds communion" by magnifying God's Word. Through this Word we proclaim, the choir becomes a tool of the Holy Spirit, as He calls, gathers, and enlightens the Church, the "ecclesia", the "called out ones". This happened today as we sang "Listen! God is Calling", and proclaimed the Lord's forgiveness, comfort, and joy.

This Word we sing "sustains people on their journey" as the Word we sing stays with them throughout the week. The Psalm antiphons we sing often stay in people's minds and hearts, as often do words from hymn stanzas or motets or preludes we sing. Working with pastors who cherish the lectionary and coordinate themes with the cantor, the choir is often able to reinforce the preaching, that people may gladly hear and learn it.

And then there is the "impact" we have on people's lives. At first I chaffed at little at that one, because "impact" is a word often used by entertainment evangelists and can reflect a consumerist attitude on the part of the hearers. But we understand that we are delivering the real "impact" that God has for our lives: the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. The Gospel makes all the difference in our lives, and so we rejoice that we can use the gift of music to proclaim that same Gospel, that those who hear our song may know the comfort, hope, and cheer Christ freely gives to us from the cross.

And so this is what happens when we sing of Jesus, the Christ, whose Word is our very song: the faithful are gathered, spirits are raised, our communion is nurtured, faith is increased, and lives are changed, all through the power of the Gospel.

No wonder we want to sing!

ABLAZE (TM) is an Anomaly

I know what the ABLAZE (TM) movement is all about. I lived in the church growth movement for many years and am aware that ABLAZE (TM) is a pseudo-Lutheran manifestation of the very same synergistic impulses that the church growth movement bears. Essentially, the real definition is this: the Holy Spirit is hamstrung unless we do things right in our churches. If we’re not friendly enough to visitors, the Holy Spirit is hamstrung–– He can’t do His work. If our pastor is too theologically “deep” in his sermons, if he does not “meet people where they are,” the Holy Spirit is hamstrung. If the music is not relevant or entertaining enough even though the texts set forth the Word of the Gospel in clear and understandable language, the Holy Spirit is flummoxed. So, we are asked to be more relevant, interactive, casual, contemporary and all the rest. The poor Holy Spirit needs our help.

As repugnant as that is to me personally, I will say this. My church is actually an “ablaze” church! We hold the Divine Service every week. We baptized more than 6 young people last month. We are about to begin administering communion to kids that may be 7 or 8 years of age (or younger). The pastor offers private absolution. He provides catechesis for adults and children.

Additionally, we have picnics where the entire community is invited to attend. We’re holding an “Oktoberfest” next month. Local businesses are donating gift certificates for that event to benefit our parish. We have special Sundays with added music where the community is invited. The pastor is engaged with the town administration and other clergy. The parishioners serve the elderly in the apartment complex next door. We welcome visitors. We have a coffee hour where our visitors are welcome to attend. We participate in what is called an “Epiphany Walk” –– a community event where people stroll from one church to another over the course of an evening for little prayer services at each parish. When they come to ours, they hear Lutheran teaching and listen to Lutheran music. For all of these events, I would like to place an ABLAZE (TM) logo on the bulletin or announcement flyer, etc, and send it to my district office. What if I produced a Bach Cantata concert at my church? I could do that. Would this not be considered valid by the Synod as an ABLAZE (TM) initiative? Why should we not get funds to do that? After all, Bach sets forth the Gospel very clearly in all of his cantatas, right? And we would get attendance at such an event. I could slap an ABLAZE (TM) logo on the concert program and send that to the district office. And I could go on and on.

I have said all this and yet, my parish practices closed communion. We sing Divine Service 3 every week. We use LSB and sing substantive hymns from our Lutheran heritage. My pastor wears a chasuble every week. He chants the liturgy everywhere the rubrics suggest. He genuflects at the altar. He elevates the host and chalice. We’re also a small parish. We’re in New York State, where most people would have to look up the word Lutheran in the dictionary to find out what it means–– and they still would not really know.

Is there any valid reason why the LC–MS would consider us anything less than “ablaze” for the Gospel? Since when are all the things I listed not concerned with Gospel proclamation? Do they not serve our neighbor and ingratiate our community? Do we not welcome our visitors? Are we not ministering to our people and our little township? Of course we are! Are not your churches similar to mine? I know what ABLAZE (TM) is really about in the minds of the Synodical bureaucrats. I get that they have drunk the cool aid of the church growth movement. But honestly, if they were honest, our church (and probably yours also) is just as "ablaze" for the gospel as any one of their model churches–– I would argue, even more!

"Life * and then you die.......?"

A pastor I once worked for used the following statement to sum up (in his opinion) the nature of Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, “Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me?" His assessment was as follows: “This hymn basically says, 'life sucks*, then you die, but you get to go to heaven so it’s all OK.'” After my complete shock and utter disappointment that a Lutheran pastor could speak so superficially about this great hymn, I really got to thinking even more deeply about what this hymn means.

We’re studying the book of Job in Bible class at my parish. There’s a great deal of richness in that book, but I want to focus on one thing: God sends suffering. God uses suffering. The problem is that we want to know how and why he does it. Therefore, we offer excuses for God, telling the sufferer that everything will work out just fine and that God works all for good. In reality, though, we do not know how God will use that suffering, do we? The only thing we know is that he sends our trials, pain, and crosses. He does so for his own reasons to help up grow and trust in him. I think this to be a very valuable thing for all people to know. Hymns like, “Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me?” express this very notion. There’s a lot of richness in the hymn but spend a little time contemplating the second and third stanzas:

1. Why should cross and trial grieve me?
Christ is near
With his cheer;
They will not defeat me.
Who can rob me of the heaven
That God’s Son
For me won
When his life was given?

2. When life’s troubles rise to meet me,
Though their weight
May be great
They will not defeat me.
God, my loving shepherd sends them;
He who knows
All my woes
Knows how best to end them.

3. God gives me my days of gladness,
And I will
Trust Him still
When He sends me sadness.
God is good; His love attends me
Day by day,
Come what may,
Guides me and defends me.

4. From God’s joy can nothing sever,
For I am
His dear lamb,
He, my Shepherd ever.
I am his because He gave me
His own blood
For my good
By His death to save me.

5. Now in Christ, death cannot slay me,
Though it might,
Day and night,
Trouble and dismay me.
Christ has made my death a portal
From the strife
Of this life
To His joy immortal!

The pastor I mentioned earlier, at core, really has contempt for the theology of the cross and for his peoples’ need to understand it. This hymn would be forever banned from use at that parish because of its serious text (however comforting it may be) and because of its musical “remoteness,” even though it is no more remote that any other hymn in the hymnal.

I contend that our people need to sing hymns like this one. If they do not know any really strong theology of the cross hymns, this should be first on the list. How it will aid them in their lives, only God will know. But we are told to consider it joy when we encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of our faith produces endurance. Knowing this hymn will go a long way to helping us find that joy.

*Putting the best construction on things, we are confident that the pastor used this colloquialism in the athletic sense of "suck wind" (as in "easily winded/out of shape"), rather than something else.

Lutheran Identity in Worship

We hear a lot of criticism in our confessional Lutheran corners about contemporary worship trends–– and there is a lot to criticize! But I’d like to spend a moment talking about good old traditional Lutheran Worship practices and why, I, as a former evangelical protestant (essentially Baptist), ran away from those worship practices.

• The Liturgy – The Liturgy speaks of Christ and gives us God’s own words that we might speak them back to Him. We learn the parlance of faith and the rhythm of our spiritual lives from the liturgy, i.e., remember our baptism, confess our sins, receive the gracious gifts of God in His absolution, His word and His holy supper. We repeat the words of the liturgy, without modifying them or making them more “relevant.” This is so that throughout our lives and the end of our days we will not forget them. We use ceremony, ritual and reverence in the Liturgy because our Lord comes to us in his veritable body and blood. This is not a figurative visitation. It’s not wishful thinking. It is real, bodily and spiritual at the same time. I wonder how many Christians, if they really understood this would find it necessary to alter their casual, cool, and cutting edge worship. Somehow reverence seems to be the natural response to “God with us.”

• Hymns and music – Our hymns too, give us Christ and teach us about sin, grace, and the baptismal life. In Confessional Lutheranism, there are certain important doctrines that are not as readily focused upon in other denominations: the theology of the cross (as opposed to a theology of glory), original sin, a particularly Lutheran breed of Christology and a distinctively Lutheran sacramentology. We also have a very well honed understanding of justification and the role of works in the life of faith. These are doctrines that are found in every denomination but Lutherans have always understood them in very specific ways. Our hymns tend to reflect very well the historic, classical teaching of the faith. This is what Luther intended and it is what makes the Lutheran heritage unique amongst Christian expressions.

When I finally came to Lutheranism, I learned quickly that Lutherans read scripture differently than evangelical protestants. It took a little more time to understand the nuances of that and I am still learning. But I do know this: Our hymns express our heritage and reflect what the confessions teach. Using hymnody from other protestant sources, e.g. Watts, Wesley. etc. is fine, but we must recognize that these poets did not write with the same sacramental and Christological orientation of Luther, Gerhardt, Starke and a host of other Lutheran poets. Some of our Lutherans are interested in singing favorite old standards that come squarely from the protestant hymn repertoire. Fine, but if that diet is too heavy, we will miss the distinctively Lutheran sacramental, confessional, and Christological identity so richly present throughout the Lutheran hymn corpus.

Worship the "Waffle House Way"

This morning I had breakfast at Waffle House. I hadn't been there in a few years, due to a couple of bad experiences, but one of their restaurants was right across the street from our hotel, and the parking lot was full of local plates, so my son & I took a chance and went in. We had a great breakfast, in a clean restaurant full of friendly workers. It brought back fond memories of my youth, when I used to cook at a Waffle House and learned the importance of doing things "The Waffle House Way".

Those who currently run the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod could benefit from considering the benefits of "The Waffle House Way". They should be open to this, acutally, because they are much enamored of the "church growth movement" and tend to appreciate corporate lingo. They may not be so crass as to speak of "market share", but the overall emphasis on "growing the church" using marketing, mission, and "outreach" techniques means synod & district officials and reports usually have much more talk about marketing strategies than, say, justification or the sacraments.

So let's take a look at what the brand "LCMS" means to folks as if LCMS were in the restaurant business. Working with the "church growth" analogies like this can actually be quite instructive.

First, what LCMS is doing now obscures what the "brand" LCMS means. The Ablaze! initiative, with its focus on adding new "products" such as new worship formats, new worship soundtracks, house churches/small groups, thrift shops, day care centers, and "intentional conversation teams", has resulted in a church body that trumpets not what it is supposedly about - Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins - but rather extols new "add-ons". This would be fine up to a point if there were consistency and if everything flowed from the Divine Serivce (for example, for decades we were known for having an excellent parochial school system, centered on the teaching of Christian doctrine). But the emphasis on various local congregational "ministries" rather than the Lord's Ministry makes it hard for the LCMS to maintain a cohesive identity. And, few people go to a restaurant for the side dishes on any regular basis. (I'm reminded of the old Wendy's ads from the 80's, which asked, "Where's the beef?")

And the problem is even worse than that. For the situation today is not that everyone is selling, say, waffles, but then adding additional but varying "sides" to their menus - which does make sense when the "sides" vary according to regional taste. No, what we have are some churches serving chicken while others serve fish and others serve beef. Our congregations have become like chocolates in Forrest Gump's box: "You never know which one you are going to get!"

Now I can hear the mission execs saying: "But, Cantor, these things are all adiaphora! What's important is the Gospel, and all this is about the Gospel!" Well, leaving aside for a moment the argument that much of what is being promoted is not about the Gospel, let's just assume that it is and again look at this from Waffle House's perspective. If a bunch of WH's were selling fish and another bunch were selling chickens it wouldn't matter if some were still selling waffles. There is absolutely NO WAY the company would say "But, people, these things don't matter. What's important is the protein. All of our restaurants are in the nutrition business and they all sell protein - just different kinds."

Some of the adiaphora that divides us is indeed adiaphora, and so cannot really be condemned. But are we really about promoting our church when we allow such diversity? Wouldn't it be better for people to know what to expect when they see the letters LCMS on a church sign? Certainly the Lutheran fathers and the founders of the LCMS thought so. Luther argued for regional uniformity (so presumably different 'side dishes' in one region verses another were fine); the LCMS constitution prescribes that all congregations adopt "exclusive use" of orthodox liturgies, hymnals, and agendae. Walther wrote about how the hymnal was "a flag by which an orthodox congregation is recognized."

Those who attended our grandfathers' church didn't have Waffle Houses to go to after the Divine Service. But they had the common horse sense to know the importance of a Waffle House doing things "The Waffle House Way". May we again have bishops and overseers in the church who appreciate who we really are and who we are supposed to be. And may we return promoting our congregations accordingly.

We've Got Issues!

We just wanted to let you know that Cantor Magness is on Issues, Etc. this week. Todd Wilken will be interviewing Phillip on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at 3:30pm to continue their conversation about worship. Not a good time for you? No problem: just go to the site and download the podcasts.

Cantor Magness promises that he will not be referring to himself in the third person on the program.

Sing the Faith Indeed!

Last year, CPH published a set of songs I composed for singing Luther's small catechism. The collection is titled, appropriately, Sing the Faith, and it is available as a songbook and also as a CD. The reason I like the title of this collection of songs so much is because it points to how the songs sing about the objective faith by which we are saved, known by theologians as the "fides quae", as opposed to the experiential songs that subjectively express personal experiences of saving faith, otherwise known as the "fides qua". For further edification on this difference, Pastor Klemet Preus recently wrote an excellent article over at the "Johnny Steadfast" website (Brothers of John the Steadfast) discussing the distinction between fides quae and fides qua.

These terms have many implications beyond worship. But like most everything doctrinal, the distinctives of 'fides quae' and 'fides qua' have enormous implications on the Divine Service. I believe these distinctions take us to the heart of the "worship wars" in our churches.

Over the years, as I have worked with amateur musicians who want to "do" contemporary worship and talked with parishioners who thirst for "real contemporary worship" (as opposed to a modern-sounding Divine Service with orthodox hymnody, led by piano, keyboards, guitars, & woodwinds), I have noted consistently that they are all about expressing the fides qua and think music is basically for that purpose alone. I've concluded that at its core, expressing one's "fides qua" is what the 'praise movement' is all about. This is why the texts of almost all the songs in the 'contemporary worship' repertoire lean in direction of expressing one's faith experience and/or the individual's personal devotion to God. By contrast, the great chorales and most of the appointed liturgical texts from Scripture sing the fides quae.

In plainer English, pop praise sings about saving faith, while traditional Lutheran music sings of the faith by which we are saved. This is why there is conflict even when traditioanl music is done creatively and well with the most modern instrumentations, rhythms, and harmonies. You see, the sturdy, objective character of our music just doesn't "move" those who just want to sing about "the faith within their heart". They want to sing about the faith they have (fides qua), not the faith by which we are saved (fides quae). And those musics have differing characteristsics no matter what genre in which they are composed.

Now certainly there is room for fides qua expressions in hymnody. I happen to think that a certain amount of it is essential. Great hymn writers like Gerhardt do a great job of incorporating the subjective experience alongside the objective truth extolled and confessed in our hymnody. Faith moves us to sing and it is salutary to extol one's heartfelt adoration of our Lord. But the music of fides qua alone can't sing faith into other people's hearts, because it doesn't "sing the story of God's love and proclaim His faithfulness." (Ps. 89:1) So its use for corporate worship is especially limited because it doesn't allow us to "address one another" and build each other up as Eph 5:19 and Col 3:16 instruct us to do with our music.

I have found it helpful in the Lord's ministry to encourage people to use THE as much as possible instead of MY when they talk about expressing faith. Sure, it's not wrong to sing a simple song of praise. There's certainly room for Psalm 150 expressions in the church. But we have a whole psalter of faith to sing about, and the riches of God's grace far surpass our own personal experiences of it, however inspiring they may be at times.

Ironically, those who promote the fides qua repertoire of contemporary worship often claim that such music is necessary in the Divine Service for the sake of "outreach". Yet there is often very little that is overtly Christian in these subjective songs of praise. So how can it truly be evangelical? Listening to someone sing about their great love for God can certainly make an impression, but, at the end of the day, the impression is going to be about the singer. The truly evangelical music is the song that sings not of the singer's faith, but rather the music that sings THE faith. Only through fides quae proclamation can music magnify the Word and thereby sing faith into people's hearts.

So how much fides quae is in your congregation's song? Let us all - pastors and laymen; teachers, musicians, and poets; members of Voters' Assemblies, worship committees, and Ministry Councils - do what we can to encourage one another to sing THE faith.