Captain Thin

A little over a week ago we were talking about how more and more young Evangelicals prefer to participate in liturgical forms of worship. Now Barna has come out with a new study that tells us what kinds of buildings Millennials prefer to worship in. And there seems to be a definite lean towards more reverent concepts of sacred space than some might expect.

“Many churches today are explicitly constructed not to look and feel too much like a religious place,” Barna notes, “a stark contrast to the ancient cathedrals and churches of old—the very design of which was intended to help people experience the divine. How does this design shift impact worshipers?”

Let’s summarize some of their findings briefly. Most people rejected large auditorium style sanctuaries in favour of smaller sanctuaries. The vast majority prefer altars with large Christian symbols (like a cross or crucifix) as opposed to plain altar pieces. Most prefer stained-glass windows (of varying elaborate natures) to plain-glass.

In the end, the majority described their “ideal” church with these words:

Community (as opposed to Privacy)
Classic (as opposed to Trendy)
Casual (as opposed to Dignified)
Sanctuary (as opposed to Auditorium)
Quiet (as opposed to Loud)
Modern (as opposed to Traditional)

While ‘Sanctuary,’ ‘classic’ and ‘quiet’ are more often associated with traditional church buildings, less than half of survey respondents preferred the word ‘traditional’ over ‘modern,’” Barna explains, noting a bit of a “cognitive dissonance” here among young adults interviewed in the survey. “Many of them aspire to a more traditional church experience, in a beautiful building steeped in history and religious symbolism, but they are more at ease in a modern space that feels more familiar than mysterious.”

Barna’s Clint Jenkins notes that “it’s tempting to oversimplify the relationship between Millennials and sacred space,” as if they were looking only for that which is new and chic. But in reality, “most Millennials don’t look for a church facility that caters to the whims of pop culture. They want a community that calls them to deeper meaning.”

Deeper meaning. That’s what we talked about in our previous post on Evangelicals gone liturgical. “Grandeur hooked me,” Kelsey May explains, “but it wasn’t what made me stay…. The aesthetic of traditional churches appeals to me, but the substance behind it anchors me.”

Let’s make sure we offer that substance in every aspect of our church-life. Be it in liturgy or church architecture, the point is not to provide aesthetic experiences that are beautiful merely for their own sake: they are to draw us into a deeper and richer relationship with the Christ who calls us together.

See Barna’s summary of their sacred space study here.

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HT to Gene Veith for bringing this study to my attention.

One subject that is particularly dear to my heart is worship theology. As a bit of an amateur song/hymnwriter myself, I tend to pay particular attention to the “worship wars” which have divided large parts of Christendom, especially in my own Lutheran heritage.

One of the most frequent – and, frankly, often justified – criticisms of contemporary worship music (even when used in a liturgical framework) is that so many of the songs are theological weak or even plain wrong. In a discussion of the interpretation of Colossians 3:16, the author of Lutheran Hymn Revival (who, by the by, is a rather excellent poet) expressed his frustration that so many of the new songs the church now sings “do not have God’s Word dwelling richly in it so that we might teach and admonish each other.” I agreed with his sentiments, but continued, “I see this not so much a failing of a particular literary or musical style; it is rather the failure of the church to raise up theologically astute songwriters.” As the discussion moved to another post (Worship Wars: Bridging the Divide), he echoed my sentiments, wondering why Lutherans were failing to take up the challenge of composing new theologically strong music:

I know that every now and then we get a Presbyterian or Baptist who writes “Lord, ‘Tis Not That I Did Choose Thee,” or “My Hope is Built on Nothing Else,” or “In Christ Alone,” but what does it say of us today that we cannot put together music and hymnody that is better than all that? What has happened to us and what is our problem? Doesn’t this show a spiritual dearth among us?

I had no easy answers at the time. I still do not. But I have more hope that Lutherans are beginning to take up the challenge. Recently the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod held its first ever Lutheran Songwriter’s Conference. Michael A. Schmid has an excellent reflection on the event in this month’s issue of WorshipConcord Journal. In his words, “the intent was to gather Lutheran songwriters, to encourage and equip them in their craft, to engage in substantive discussion about theology as it pertains to worship songwriting, and then to challenge them to apply their art to blessing the church with Lutheran worship songs.” Let us pray that this truly represents the first steps in a serious commitment to “commissioning and creatin… worship songs with authentic confessional theology.”

In the past decades, there have been few issues which have so split the Church as has that of worship. Traditionalists call for fealty to the historic liturgy, arguing that the form which has served the Church for so long is intrinsically good in and of itself. Its theological strength, and likewise the theological strength of hymns, stands in opposition to the frequent shallowness of contemporary worship songwriting and service patterns. Proponents of contemporary worship counter that their musical genres better meet members of our culture where they are, without alienating people unnecessarily – something traditional worship can undoubtedly do. As a companion who once accompanied me to my home church’s worship service (traditional, of course) afterwards confided to me, “I honestly kept thinking I was in the Church of Thor, what with all the chanting and ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s.” He had been unable to get past the surface appearance of the service to the Gospel message underneath; to him, that particular setting of the divine service had seemed no more relevant than did Norse mythology.

Of course, both sides make important points. Traditionalists rightly point out that our worship should not be shallow. Contemporary worship advocates are equally correct in reminding us that worship must be understandable to its participants. If each group would be willing to just quiet its pride for a moment and listen to the other, perhaps the debate would cease to be so venomous. And perhaps a more constructive approach to the discussion would be taken, where the benefits and drawbacks of each side were honestly weighed and considered… where the positive aspects of both sides would be adopted and the negative aspects diminished.

Some worship songwriters are attempting to do just that. Here, I want to identify two camps and their “new” approaches to worship music writing in particular. The first I shall call ‘rewriters’; the second has already been called by others ‘new hymnody’ or ‘modern hymn writing’.

‘Rewriters’ are distinguished by their practice of “rewriting” hymns. They keep the words but tend to fashion new musical settings for hymns. As Indelible Grace Music puts it, the goal is “not change for change’s sake, but to rekindle a love of hymns and invite many who never associate rich passion with hymns to actually read the words.” If I might state it in linguistic terminology, the songwriters ‘translate’ the songs into musical styles whose emotional connotations are better comprehensible to people today – people for whom traditional music styles represent another ‘language’ with which they are not familiar. The practice is not in actuality new; the church has always rewritten the music of hymns in every era. Every era, that is, except the current one. Rewriters are bringing back this great tradition to the Church. One other praiseworthy note? Rewriters are bringing back incredible hymns that in some cases have completely fallen out of use in the Church. For an example of rewriting, see Matthew Smith’s new musical version of Josiah Conder’s  1836 hymn “My Lord I Did Not Choose You”.

‘New Hymnody’ or ‘Modern Hymn Writing’ has similar sympathies with rewriters – and it’s not surprising therefore to find artists who fit both categories. New hymnody is the approach of songwriters who are attempting to write completely new pieces which reflect the theological richness of traditional hymns while utilizing contemporary literary and musical styles. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this genre is Keith Getty. Maintaining that “what we sing becomes the grammar of our belief,” Getty strives to write contemporary worship music that teaches us about our faith as much as it allows us to express that faith. Consider, for example, the theological depth of “In Christ Alone,” written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend. What traditionalist would consider this song ‘shallow’?

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all –
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid –
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine –
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death –
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till he returns or calls me home –
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

As we seek to create worship resources for the current era, perhaps we will consider the sterling examples of rewriters and modern hymn writers. Or, I suppose, we could just continue arguing from both sides of the worship debate – arguing how hymns are intrinsically better or contemporary songs intrinsically more relevant. For surely that will bring about the Church unity Christ desires.

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For more information on the songwriters referenced above, please visit the following websites:

Indelible Grace Music
Matthew Smith
Getty Music

Ever wonder what youth in the Lutheran church are thinking? Wonder no more. Back in June, Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod released the results of a survey they took at their 2007 National Youth Gathering. I’ve gathered a bit of the more interesting results below to consider. Some of it is encouraging. Some is simply concerning.

Personal Faith Life
When asked how much time they spent per week in personal Bible study and devotion, the largest response by far was “very little/almost never.” In fact, 47.6% of 18 year olds, 48.2% of 15 year olds, 51.4% of 16 year olds, 55.5% of 17 year olds and a disheartening 55.5% of 19 year olds checked that category. Another 29.7% to 40.5% chose the next lowest option: 30-60 minutes per week. 6.1% to 10% chose 61-120 minutes while only 1.7% to 4.4% checked more than 2 hours.

25.6% to 33.3% of teens responded they speak to parents/family about God and spiritual matters ‘often’. 41% to 46.8% said ‘sometimes’. 13.3 to 22.7% said ‘rarely’ while 5% to 7% said ‘never’.

Morality
Only 52.1% to 58.3% of teens agreed pre-marital sex was always wrong. An encouraging 77% of 15 year olds said they never engaged in sexual intercourse, but that number progressively drops to a dismal 48.3% among 19 year olds.

Only 58.7% to 67.2% were certain that homosexuality was a sin according to God’s Word and therefore wrong.

An encouraging 86.5% to 91.4% responded that they never do drugs. 64.2% to 79.3% insisted they had not once been drunk in the past 12 months.

69.1% to 70.3% believed abortion was definitely wrong and identified themselves as ‘pro-life’. 16.9 to 21.4% believed a woman should have the right to choose and identified themselves as ‘pro-choice’. 

Worship
17.3% to 24.9% preferred “traditional, liturgical worship, using hymns pretty much out of a hymnal.” 24.9% to 31.9% preferred “contemporary music with praise band usually singing praise choruses. Never out of a hymnal.” The largest category at 39.9% to 43.4% preferred “a mixture of old and new” while 8.3% to 11% were unsure what they preferred.

On the subject of church fellowship, a disappointing 18.3% to 23.3% believed “all religions are pretty much alike.” 15.3% to 22.3% believed Lutherans should associate only with other Lutherans. 47.8% to 58.3% affirmed belief in a larger catholic understanding of Christian unity.

Church Workers
On the issue of female ordination, 39.8% to 50% believed it was contrary to God’s Word. 21.1% to 30.6% believed the issue should continue to be studied and held up to God’s Word. 8.3% to 14.9% suggested the official LCMS position was definitely wrong, while 15% to 24.2% admitted they just didn’t know.

41.5% to 47.9% were “really not interested” in considering a career in professional church work. Another 18.3% to 23.4% had “never really thought about it.”

Home Congregation
Most teens considered their home congregation generally unwilling to consider any change even if “a good, new idea comes along.” 15.7% to 23.1% felt their home church “wouldn’t change a light bulb if they didn’t have to” while an additional 35.3% to 42.2% felt their home congregation was unsympathetic towards change but that “sometimes they can be convinced.”

Only 17.1% to 23.3% and 5% to 12.1% thought their home congregation was either “good or “excellent, respectively, involving youth in congregational decision making.
 

That’s just some of the numbers that caught my eye. It’s time to consider results like this to discern where we’re succeeding and where we’re failing, to re-evaluate methods which my be flawed and support methods which may be working.

Plenty to think about and plenty to pray about in any event. Read the full results of the survey at LCMS’ website.

I have often felt that I was born in the wrong time. Too late, in specific, for my sensibilities place me in an era long since past. And so I grieve my forbears, my deceased friends, though I never knew them save in their writings. It is not that I mourn their passings per se – they have reached what reward was their’s to gain. Rather, I hold this against them: that they have left me here alone, an alien in a foreign land.

It is a trying thing to be the survivor of some great tragedy. You become an object of curiosity, some oddity to be scrutinized upon a stage. You become some other Oedipus whose tragedy continuously unfolds for the viewing pleasure of others. You are many things. But you are not a “real” person. You are not a character whom the audience understands. They may pity you. But they cannot empathize with you. The Playwright has not written your part in that way.

To be fair, I am not the sole person afflicted with time-displacement. I have been so blessed as to chance upon a rather pleasant Mediaeval fellow and a charming Victorian gentleman as well. We are not all the same – I am more inclined, for example, to believe I hail from the days of the Reformation. But we three share an appreciation of each other, a recognition of the importance of history in the present, and a concern for matters of substance: the relationship of reality to language, the underlying meaning of literary discourse, the nature of the soul and Scripture and life and morality. We have asked whether a flower on some unknown planet is in danger of being eaten by an unmuzzled sheep, and we have stood in silence at the heaviness of the thought. We do not always agree on the answers to such questions; representatives of different times seldom do. But we are in accordance that the questions are important, if only because they remind us that there are things beyond ourselves and that despite this, we paradoxically still somehow share in their meaning as members of the same creation.

We are philosophers. We are poets. We are princes of great nations. But we are in exile. Our treasure and our peoples were lost generations before we took our thrones. And we remain stranded in this desperate world of the 21^st century.

The major decline of kingdoms such as our own began ages past, but it reached its crisis point in the 1900s. As the West gained wealth and technology unlike that ever before known, it began to be avaricious and slothful. And where two deadly sins burrow their way into the flesh of a society, they leave the sore gaping for the other five parasites to join them.

Today’s western world has devolved into a “country” of total individualism. People stress over personal fulfillment, seeking only to bring pleasure to themselves. And yet they somehow miss the only virtue to be found in an individualistic ideology – that of personal reflection and testing. On this front, they instead adopt the primary failings of communal ideology – that of mass ignorance. The West feels that certain questions, questions of substance, are better left unasked. Contemplating these issues would inevitably require them to evaluate their personal allegiances towards Hedonism. Not that they could name such a thing. To do so would already be to reflect, and that again brings up those needling, unsettling questions. “If I do not think about it,” they would contemplate (if they could contemplate), “then surely the concern cannot exist.” non cogito ergo non sunt.

I used to wonder whether my presence in this time was a bit of a divine joke, inflicted upon me by a well-meaning but unaware God. Of course, as a Reformation-era man, I could not entertain such heresy for long. Instead, I have seen my mind tuned from without to consider the purpose of the time-displaced in light of the concept of dignitarial visits. We are sent as ambassadors, to promote the interests of our nations to a people who do not know of them. We are emissaries bringing good news over time and space. We bring gifts for these people, if they will but receive them. And though I could not fathom so at the first, I have learned that the nation of the 20^th-21^st century also bears treasures of its own. For no country has been so forsaken by God as to be utterly barren. He has given us abundantly more than we could ever ask, and we are called to share amongst each other the blessings of our heavenly Father.

Hence my friendships with the Mediaevalist and the Victorian. We three desire to learn from each other. And we desire to share those good things God has given us with this world. But when people are so unwilling to remove the stoppers from their ears and the blockers from their eyes, the diplomatic mission we are on stands little chance of success.

You see, they have already declared war on the Past. And that leaves those of us who are time-displaced little more than their enemies.