The Lost Tools of Singing - Part 2

Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow the great stories further up and further in in pursuit of the life of Christ. Welcome back. We have been talking about we songs, Brian Brown, Matthew Clark, Terry Moon. We have finished our longer

discussion about the way that those that that we songs connect us to God as in us. So we talked about how they connect us to him vertically, how they connect us to the people of God chronologically, and how they connect us to the people of God on on either side of us and, and around the world now. Horizontally. Horizontally and and that's of course, in the context of of Christian we songs, there are folk, we songs that have nothing

to do with any religion. There are we songs in other religions, but that's the the Christian version of them. Now we're going to do something that I think will be a little bit shorter conversation. And then it's to talk about a little bit of the how of it by looking at our second general principle, which is that we songs are written on purpose to give us a voice in God's story. In other words, to empower us to

sing. So the application of this will be a little bit different for, say, one of your songs for something that's written for individual voice.

And so I would value your perspective on this as we go. So, so I will, I'll, I'll, I'll give us the 33 principles again and we can talk through them. But some of the things that I will think of most directly are going to be for songs that are designed for corporate singing, designed for us to sing together. So there's a little bit of a different application for them in, in other contexts. So fair warning. OK, so we are on the first of

our three points point #4 total. And that is that a we song is

written for voice first, not the composer's favorite instrument. So it's purpose is to help you sing. It's purpose is not to be a hit on the radio. It's purpose is not to please a producer. It probably did if it got recorded, but that wasn't the primary reason it was getting created. The the melody is typically going to stay in or close to 1 octave and in a comfortable middle range. So it's not written for somebody with a super deep bass voice and

only they can go that low. It's not written for a super thin high counter tenor voice and only they can go that high. And it's not it's not there's not too much jumping all over the place. It doesn't require you to hit

notes only dolphins can hear, and it doesn't depend on having, I would say a full band or even 1 specific instrument to sound good. The instruments that are brought to the table either in a particular recording or in a particular live singing setting are there to accompany the choir, that is the people. Again, this is in the context of corporate singing. It's not the people singing along with whatever the band happens to be doing or feels

like doing, right? The the band is not accompanying the primary singer in the context of a corporate singing environment. All of them are accompanying whether it's a an organ or a piano or a full band or whatever they're they're accompanying the singers.

That is the the congregation, the group of people that's gathered there to sing. So that. I mean, I just eliminated almost all pop music, right? Not because pop music is bad, not because we hate pop music, but because they're. They're usually not wee songs. Yeah, or sometimes they can be. They just sort of accidentally

fell into being one. But someone that's writing a wee song on purpose is going to be thinking about it's it's written in a posture of hospitality for the normal singer's voice. I love that word. Yeah. Hospitality. OK, so you think about the that what it really means at its heart is making space, making space for someone else. And that's what a good We song does. Yeah. And, and there are a lot of really practical things like

you're talking about. Like I remember when I was leading worship that that was a sometimes I would change the melody. I will. Often times I would have to lower the key. Yeah. Or there would be songs that I would reject because the melody might maybe for 2/3 of the song,

the melody was in a normal range within that other third. It would it would go somewhere that only a professional singer could handle. And I'm going to lose everybody. Nobody's going to be able to participate.

And so, you know, it takes a lot of consideration to to pick the songs that are going to be most hospitable for these people because the point is not me performing a song that sounds cool from the front or wherever I am, but facilitating or making it easy for people to enter in. Yeah, I, I like what you said to Brian about the the band is not the primary thing and that the people sing, are just singing along with the band.

I like to say a lot to my team when we're preparing is that the primary instrument that we have at our worship is the voice of the people and we're accompanying them, really. Yeah. And, and it's one one of the challenges, and I've talked to a lot of contemporary worship leaders that have this problem. They'll try to say that to the congregation, but the songs that they are choosing and the type of music that they are using makes them out a liar really

hard, right? Like, hey, we're just here to accompany you now. Try to keep up while we sing something that wasn't written for you and that we're having a heck of a lot of fun playing without you and that you can't where you can't hear yourself sing because the amplification

is so is too right, right. So like this is this is the probably the closest we're going to get to entering into the worship wars in this in this conversation right where it's we're not having a conversation about what type of music is or what type of instrument is appropriate in church.

What we are doing though is, is, is saying that at a certain point, if 60708090 percent of your assumptions the the the instruments, the style of music, where the song came from production factory wise and how it's all executed. If, if, if almost all of that is coming from a pop music

perspective, you are going to have to do some really heavy lifting to foster good congregational singing because you're fighting against the form you have chosen every step of the way. So you're talking about the you're talking about the Prince, the poll behind this, not like rules about and you can't use that instrument because I think if you read Psalm 150, you, you have to kind of come to the

conclusion that, OK, there really is no instrument that's off limits that cannot be used in worship. It will OK. Put that little cartoon thing that makes like a It's not Control the line, Sir, I. Would be very reluctant to bring a bagpipe in to the building, but but you know we're. There's a cultural context piece, right? Part of the argument that for more contemporary instruments is is is the cultural context piece, right? Oh, this is how everyone relates

to music. Now. But if what you are bringing in with those styles, with those instruments, with the actual songs is a set of assumptions, including congregational assumptions about what that music is for and who's supposed to sing it and how they're supposed to sing it, again, you're you're, you're swimming up straight. You're making it hard to to foster a we song environment fun to do what we're talking about here, which is giving people a voice in God's story.

Again, that's not to say plenty of those songs aren't beautiful. That's not to say there is an incredible execution of a lot of them that. But we are saying if your goal is to give people a voice in God's story, when you're doing an entire genre of music that's not written for the human voice 1st and has all the assumptions, a different set of assumptions

going into it. Everybody involved is is actually swimming upstream if when it comes to the goal of us developing our ability to lift our voices to God. Yeah, and I think hospitality is a great term. And maybe, you know, that day of worship leader, if you might think of it in terms of like a musical host and someone who is, you know, if you come into my house and it's the first time you're in my house, I'm going to say like the kitchen is here, the bathroom is through that door.

Make yourself at home. Here's where the glasses are,

here's where the drinks are. You know, I'm, I'm helping you navigate something that is unfamiliar to you. And, and I want to do that. Well, I want to be a very considerate, thoughtful host who is paying attention to. If the melody is so weird that you can't follow it, what can I do to to make sure that you have you, you know, that you can be at home here, you know, and that may take some process, but it also I have to be deliberate about hosting it's.

Not just saying that now you all I want. I can't hear you all. You got to sing. And so thinking about different traditions, I was thinking about sometimes you might have a Cantor who who's sings something or even in the African American church, how a lot of times songs

have a sort of host. Yeah. Who sings a line the next the line that you're about to sing. Yeah. And he sings it. Show you how. Kind of at the end of the last line before the next line and he says Amazing Grace, how sweet the sun. And then you sing amazing. And then so he he sets you up every time. And that's an act of hospitality. Yeah. Because he's saying we're about to sing this. Let me sing it real quick and now you can do it. Yeah.

And. Or in one of my favorite bands and college, because I got into international student ministry and there were a lot of folks from India where I was. And we brought in this band called Aradhana, which is a word that just means worship in Hindi. And a lot of those songs, they were coming from a totally different tradition, totally different historical musical background, but they were Christian.

And the way that those songs were structured was, was often different. You'd, you, a lot of times you'd have a sort of Cantor sing a verse that you sort of listened to and then there was a chorus that everybody would join in on. That was more, it was pretty simple and repetitive and, and everybody kind of knew that that worked that way.

You know I. I would love to see us do more of that, more songs that that kind of split the difference between congregational singing and like in a story or a ballad song by a singer-songwriter. Where we did this a little bit at our and Psalms Fall Feast this past weekend time of recording the where you might have essentially A storyteller that is singing the verses and then a refrain, then everybody sings together. We don't do a ton of that.

Which is kind of a liturgical calling response. Kind of. A thing. Yeah. That's I I would love to see the Psalms sung that way, you know, with an, a refrain that people could join in on. I think there's a lot of possibilities there. But what I was thinking about when you were talking about hospitality, Matthew, and about welcoming people in and people that come from different backgrounds is that if I'm hosting someone at my table, I'm, I'm going to have a seat for everybody, you know?

And I want everybody to join in and be able to be part of the feast. And it doesn't mean you can't do complex things. And it doesn't mean that I can

only invite people who already know how to do all this. Yeah. It means that like you, I might be asking you to enter into something that doesn't feel super comfortable. But I want you to know or familiar, but I want you to know, like, I'm going to take good care of you. I'm going to help you find your way through this thing. And. That's. Really what you just said is so important because because it's another area where the singing topic mirrors spiritual disciplines topic.

There's there's, there's so much about being Christian that doesn't come naturally to us that we have to learn that is hard. That is, that is unpleasant because it is hard initially. And there's so many, so many doctrines that we just shy away from because they make us uncomfortable. And then we choose churches that reinforce what we already believe about those doctrines and, and we're. Missing so much. But but at this, but the premise of our relationship with God is

that he is calling us, meeting us where we are, but calling us out of who we are to who he is making us to be. We have to be willing to take those steps of courage. Likewise, if we take this approach to music where I'm just going to go with what I already like, well, I'm going to choose a church whose music reminds me most of when I was young and singing enthusiastically, right? Whether that's 90s Christian pop

or whether that's you too. If I choose a church, musically speaking, however, that is going to take me further up and further in. I may have some things to learn along the way, and a good church is going to equip me to learn those things along the way with their. Hospitality, yeah. And that might mean that you giving people permission to maybe say like, you can sit this one out and just listen, let let us sing this one over you.

And as you get the hang of it, you know, you can do there are lots of ways to be considerate of people and and not make them feel like less than not make them feel stupid for not being able to participate because that that doesn't help any to belittle people. But but to say it's OK, if there's a bit of a learning curve, it's probably, it may be worth it, you know? And encouraging people also to

recognize that my favorite songs are not the only songs we're going to sing, right? Right. There are other four other people, a song that I may not particularly like that really means a lot to that other person. So as an act of hospitality, I'm willing to sing that for them. Well, it's like eating dinner with with people and like we're hopefully we can find something that everybody likes to eat. But if I'm in a family long term, you know, like I don't love fish that much, but you

know, maybe Brian loves fish. And so like, I can eat fish today, like with Brian, because I want to eat dinner with Brian more than I want to eat the thing that I want to eat. Right there you go. That's. Great. Well said. Yeah. And so there, this is a tricky 1. They're written for voice first, just because I think one of the things we're hitting a lot along the way here is just that a lot of grace is in order and a lot of hospitality is in order at every step in the process.

Because there's almost no music today that is written for the human voice first. Almost none either, in the sense that it was written for my favorite instrument to begin with. You know, there are there are tons of pop stars that came up with, you know, guitar first. There are others like Rachel Platten or Billy Joel that came up with piano 1st. And it affects how they sing and it affects what types of melodies they write. And you can tell like you can like, I have a piano background.

I can nearly always tell, even if someone's playing guitar, that they were a pianist first. Yeah. But this this voice first thing, even if they did read it mostly

with from that perspective of how am I going to say it? That's not the same thing as reading it from the perspective of how is everyone going to sing it And it and it can't depend on this is a crucial thing. If you want people to be able to sing to God without all the smoke and mirrors, without all the production value that you have in your sanctuary, you have to be able to create music that does not require them.

So I'll give you an example. I told Terry this one the other day, see if I can turn around without knocking everything over. But so we were we were all here

the other day. And, and, and Terry, you and I were talking about this. And so this is by Keith and Kristen Getty, who write lots of great we songs and who are central players in the revival of hymnity. And I'm very grateful for so much of what they've done. But they wrote a song called Christus Victor, which I love. I I really like this song. I want to just play through it real quick though. And I want to show you something so it goes almost high king of the ages.

Great. I am God of wonders. By the blood you have redeemed us. Let us through. Mighty waters our strength, our song, our sure salvation power to the Lamb upon the throne with. Blasting. On the glory power from the battle you. Have won. It goes on from there. Very. Rousing chorus, very rousing, yes. And it does not work without a very loud piano, very loud electric guitar or a full band because you have that know where it goes.

Oh sure, salvation and then you need something to go bomb or it

doesn't work. Yeah. So that is a great we song from all the perspectives of the first three things that we talked about connecting us to God, connecting us to the people of God, chronologically connecting us to each other. It's great. It goes, it goes through the Trinity, it goes through past, present and future of the Christian story. It's great from that perspective and it's a great melody. Yeah. However, it has this particular weakness on this particular point.

You better have a good piano player that day. I can't have eight people in my living room. We just got this piano as a gift from a generous friend a few weeks ago. We lived in this house for five years with no piano before that. If I had eight people and let's Sing, no one would have suggested that song because we don't have something to go bomb. Right, right, right. Nobody gets lost at that moment. Yep.

So, you know, so in the in, in church history, the very first instruments were people singing just acapella. That was Christian worship for centuries, honestly. But you know what the best instrument is, the very best instrument to accompany human singing is an instrument that sounds a lot like voices already. And that's an organ. Yeah, if you've ever been in A room. Where, Matthew, you and you and

I experienced this this summer when Amber played. When you hear the room filled up with the sound of an organ, it's amazing because it fills the room without drowning you out. It's not about volume, it's about space filling the space with sound. And it gives you this feeling that I can just add my voice to this, you know, mighty sound. It's really a supportive kind of instrument.

And if you've never heard an organ like, like, we're not talking about like the circus organ that I've, I've been, I've, I've, I've, well, I've been, I've been in a couple churches where the organ, that's what it sounded like they're. Yeah. And it was like, yeah, OK. You read somewhere the churches were supposed to have an organ. And this is what she bought and but no, the the the the huge, incredibly expensive pipe organ thing.

So like probably everyone listening to this is seen Sound of Music. How do you solve a problem like Maria the wedding March. That's the kind of organ. We're talking about yes. OK, Yeah, Yeah. Well, guess what? I just saw in the news just yesterday that a an organ has been unearthed from the 11th century. People think it's the oldest Christian organ in existence. It was used in an Abbey in Jerusalem. It made with. It was made with bronze pipes, all different sizes.

Some of them were named what notes they were playing. And when The Crusaders were worried about the the Muslim armies invading Jerusalem, they took that organ, they carried it to Bethlehem and they buried it so that it could be preserved. And it's just been discovered. They've re put it back together and it's beautiful sound. Beautiful sound these bronze pipes make. Yeah, that's. That's an amazing. Story.

An ancient instrument. So this the, the second-half of of this, if it's, if it's written for, for, for voice first in the sense that it's designed to equip you to sing well, the second point for this conversation and the 5th total

point in our we songs conversation is a Foster's confidence. That's the best way that I can think of to summarize something that's a little more complex, which is that it's, it's reasonably intuitive to learn and remember. And typically, melodically speaking, once you've heard the first verse, you've heard the whole song so that you can focus on the words and singing

confidently and loudly. So I'll give you some of this might sound obvious, but, and I want to throw a bone to something that you at least alluded to earlier that we didn't touch on in too much detail, which is simply that sometimes we do have to learn things. And, and, and, and you have to recognize, hey, there are songs in our there are songs in some of these hymnals where you're

like, that's unsingable. Well, it, it might feel unsingable to us. It may not have felt, it might have, but it might not have felt unsingable to someone in these 1600s when it was written where the all the live entertainment was singing to each other. Yeah, right. Like if you sing a lot, you will eventually branch out into singing in parts and you will eventually set branch out into singing rounds. You will start doing more with your voice as you get more comfortable with your voice in a

communal setting. So just having said that, keeping in mind that something that will foster confidence for a typical 21st century American evangelical churchgoer today might be different than fostering confidence for another person somewhere else in the world right now or the American evangelical 50 years ago and so on. So but then I'll give you an example of what I'm of the opposite of what I'm talking about.

All pop songs and almost all songs sung in corporate worship in American churches that descend from sort of the pop pedigree are what I will I will pejoratively call them karaoke songs. OK, so, so for so and they, and and so they go like this. Verse one, chorus one, musical interlude, verse 2, chorus 2 with some of the words different from chorus one, maybe verse 3, chorus 3, longer musical

interlude, guitar solo, bridge. Completely new tune that came out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything that's that's preceded as far as me, the casual listener knows. Key change, chorus 5, chorus 6, chorus 1 again, I'm confused now, right? That's like 9 different times that you ambushed the singers, right? All of that is a totally legit pop song. All of that is a totally legit folk song. All of that is a totally legit any kind of song.

You're trying to build a musical narrative, you're trying to tell a story. You're like, that's completely. Interesting. But if I have to remember and geez, some of my favorite, even some of my favorite hymns do this. Oh, that's right.

This is the this is the time around on the chorus where we change that one word to that other thing instead. So what what that dynamic does in a worship song for everything other than the like 3 or 4 concrete like favorites for your congregation? Is it? It tells everyone in the room be quiet because you might embarrass yourself. I'm singing loudly and strongly verse one, chorus 1 and I start loudly into verse 2. Except I forgot there was a musical interlude.

There. And I was the only one who did it right, so I didn't get that from anywhere. I just started noticing it over time. Like, I'm looking around, the confident singers that know all the songs, They're fine. The 2/3 of the congregation, that's not those people. They look hesitant. They look tentative. They're scared of what's going

to happen next. By contrast, we had staff and board dinner right here a few days ago, and we all decided that before we ate, as part of our prayer, we would sing holy, holy, holy. Now, did we all know all the words? No, right. Like what we got to the we got to, you know, verse 3 and some people started going, is that verse 3 or verse four? OK, fair enough. But once we sang that first tune

but first verse, we all knew it, right? There wasn't a doubt. There was no we didn't have to wonder, is the pianist going to do something funky before verse 2? We didn't have to worry about is the is the tune different? Did the words change? I know musically speaking, I know the whole song after I've heard the verse, the first verse, and now I can just lose myself in what I am actually. Singing right, Right.

Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if if there might be a little push back to say, like, part of the difficulty of that is that we live in a time now where the ability to write and record and distribute and and hear and find out about songs that are coming from right, all over the place just makes it more difficult for any given song to become very, very familiar. Yeah. You know, so we, we have new songs coming at us all the time.

Yeah. And so, you know, because I remember again, when I was leading worship, there would be, you know, about every week somebody would say, oh, can we sing this song? And I'd be like I've never. Heard on the radio I've. Never heard of that song. OK, I got to go learn it and now it's a brand new song. And so I think I think probably the further back in time you go, you would have communities that would know a sort of set of songs or a little. And of course that's why we have

a hymnals. But that's got to be one of the things that contributes to that. And not just because actually I think that the sort of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge verse, chorus is actually a very natural form that I think because you see it so occurring so frequently, I think it's actually a form that we gravitate towards. One of the things I struggle with is a lot of times melodies and I think there is a such thing as just a good melody and

a bad melody. And like so you get a lot of times melodies that are not intuitive or they're not, they're very unnatural. They're just not good melodies. And so they might be very weird or, and you really got to like contort yourself to you get to that melody or rhythms or, you

know, they're just ways that if you're not looking at it and you don't like me, I don't read music. So if you've got a strange rhythmic thing, like we were dealing with some of that in the pub songs the other night and

what we were doing was written on the paper felt really unnatural to me. And so you have to learn those things and it could be really difficult, but there are ways as a songwriter that you can, well, you can create situations for yourself where in the songwriting process you're actually submitting those songs to people and saying, OK, what trips you up? Like, right, but you want to know the stuff that doesn't work. And if people are like this part where it goes up here, like, I

can't do that. And he's like, OK, well, I need to rework the melody there or I couldn't follow this rhythmic thing or I got really confused, or this lyric doesn't even make sense. I don't know what you're talking about, You know? So you'd really need accountability. Whereas if you're just writing and you know, individualistically or a pop song, like you're going to get feedback from your producer and your the people you're working with, but but to a different

end. Whereas in this context, how can we be most considerate so that people, and you're talking about confidence as well think, I think unfortunately, we, we live in a, a culture that the church is one of the only places where we still do this kind of thing. And it's like this bastion of corporate singing, unless you love this particular band and you go to that concert. But that's not what we're doing

in corporate singing. And so I think in general, people aren't confident about singing with people, not because sometimes maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the music, but it's part of kind of where we are culturally. That's unfortunate, but we do want to make a place where they can congregate and find out that they can do it and discover like, oh, this is something people do. Yes, actually you were made for this. So I just heard two things that I want your opinion on as a

music director. One is the notion of a body of songs that everybody knows, right?

And the other is the notion of of a type of singing that people have been equipped to do. Because one of the things that I've noticed on that second point is, yeah, the church is pretty much the only place where we get together and sing anymore. But in the church, the vast majority of the time, we just sort of launch into it as though

that's normal for everyone. And it's not right where you almost it it, it's almost like when you join, when you become a Christian, we should give you singing lessons. Like, hey, we're going to do this thing that's weird. You've never done this anywhere else. Could we let let's explain to you how this works? What if a small group was just about that? Yeah. So they so those are two things, A whole bunch of songs that everybody knows.

Not really a thing. A whole bunch of type of singing everybody knows how to do. Also not really a thing. What's how do you think about those things as a music director? Oh man, well, one thing that I love to do is you're right. We're, we're as a church, we're trying to find the songs that are our songs, like our body of songs that describe who we are at this time and place. And so that means I'm going to limit myself. We're going to be limiting. We're not going to sing every

song there is out there. And we're not going to be trying to be, you know, keep up with the whatever the newest thing is by bringing that into the church. I guess I would say probably 90% when I'm choosing songs for a service. 90% is songs we already know. Maybe one song. You can build those in Gret, you

know. One song is new and I'll try to put it in a place where the congregation doesn't feel like they have to sing necessarily, like during communion where they're walking up front anyway and they can listen to it and kind of get accustomed to it then. Then maybe the next time I'll bring it and I'll put it in a different spot in the service. She just made a sneaky argument for communion every week. Oh yeah.

Oh, yeah. I also love it when I feel like the congregation does know this song to save a verse where we deliberately drop all the instruments out and let them hear themselves singing. I really think that's important because people can they discover, Oh my gosh, this sounds great. I sound good. You know, which is really sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.

That's really interesting because another thing I've, I've, I've seen church bands do sometimes is if they feel like this is like the, this is like this, the, the quiet verse before we go crazy on the last key change or something, they'll have some of the instruments drop out or everybody will sing or we'll start playing quieter and the lead vocalist will start singing quieter. And in, in my opinion, that doesn't work very well in a congregational singing because

now everyone panics. It's another ambush. Everybody's like, I got to think quieter or someone might hear me. And now it sounds like everything's whispering, which. But. But a very different thing happens when you just cut the instruments entirely. There's that little moment of panic, but then the confident singers launch into it. And then everybody goes, OK, I can hide in that mix. It's all right. And, and then.

Yeah, you so often, not always, but more often than not, you hear that this really powerful and empowering thing. Oh, we can sing. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, it's, it's developing a culture that's kind of what you're talking about, developing a culture where people, you're continually reminding yourselves and each other that this is for everyone. This is not just for the the,

you know, the few. I, I think you refer to this a little bit ago, Matthew, that we live in a culture where we don't have singing together very much except when we come to church. We also have a culture where people are listening to perfect recordings of someone who's done 20 takes of something, you know, to get it just exactly right. And then they have this feeling that will, unless I can do that, I Can't Sing. You know, I'm not born with that.

Well, the reality is no one is born with that. I saw a great, great video of Ed Sheeran a few days ago with where he just played it on his phone on a talk show, a

recording of himself singing a certain a certain number of years before. And. And then he's how people always tell me you're so talented and isn't this is what I sounded like before I worked my butt off and studied a craft for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, so, so, OK, so we've talked about singing being a spiritual discipline. I'm, I really want to explore that thought a little bit in my own mind. I mean, not maybe not all right now, but OK. Well, so we learned to pray

together, right? As a congregation. Lord, teach us to pray. The Lord's Prayer, he gave us that as a prayer to teach us how to pray. We do it together. We say it corporately. So in the same way, we need songs that we are, our songs that we sing together, you know? On that note, a couple of thoughts that to just sort of tack on to things both of you have said in the last few minutes. 1 is I hear you on the form thing, like first chorus, first chorus bridge.

Like that's a familiar form. And, and I'm not discounting that I would distinguish that sum from like verse one chorus one verse 2 chorus. Two, you talked about the chorus having different. Everything, everything's

changing all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas yeah like a lot of the old hymns don't have choruses at at all and they get sometimes can feel a little bit unnatural, which is why usually very bad songwriters feel compulsive needs to write choruses for them that are not nearly as good as the original melodies.

But and frequently we when we have songs that are kind of a little bit like that, we often will get to the place where there's the instrumental, you know, interlude and we'll just go, we're just going to cross that out right there and move right to the next verse, you know, because it works better

for the congregation. So. So there's that form thing, but then but also the the, the weird assumption of the dynamic that that you guys have described where where we're constantly trying to keep up with basically kept up, keep up with the radio. The expectations, that's. An interesting thing to try to keep up with.

Right. Like, oh, the the the radio stations, many of which are not even Christian owned anymore, are going to drive our congregational singing, including the substance of it. I think there's a, there's a great argument to be made for approaching the songs that your congregation wants to be our songs from a posture of, well, this, this isn't, we shouldn't have theologians and pastors over here and worship leaders. Who's the random guy who plays a

guitar over here? This person needs to be a theologian too. And he needs to be in dialogue with the the pastor so that you're thinking about what are the songs that represent who we are, that represent what we believe. And if there's a shortage of a particular kind of one, maybe we need to write them. And that song might never make it big on the radio, and it might never be sung by anyone else outside our congregation, but it's ours. Yeah, I love that.

That and then as a sort of counterpoint to that, a cheater way to go into sort of split. The difference is what you said about prayers. There are so many famous prayers that have been said and sung by Christians over the centuries, the doxology being a really obvious 1. So you can grab on to some of those that are pretty universal and then you can go anywhere in the world and find that, oh,

they're singing that too. Or there's an old prayer and you feel like there isn't a good melody for it in a contemporary context. So we're going to be the church that writes that melody so we can sing it. And then we find ourselves in this church from another denomination in another part of the country or another part of the world, and they're singing a different tune. But we know those words. So I so we don't feel othered even though we don't know the tune.

Yeah, we're not trying to be somebody else. We're trying to express who we are in the story. And you kind of get the universality of the church and the particularity of our church in literally the same breath.

That's fun, yes. Yeah. So go ahead. Well, there's something else that occurs to me. I was thinking we just had our long expected feast, our Tolkien themed, you know, Anselm conference. And one of the things I was looking at in the talk that I did were songs and music throughout Lord of the Rings. In a section of the talk, I was like, let's just look at some different kinds of songs in this story. There are so many different

things that are addressed. There's like a song about hot bath, like enjoying a hot bath, which, you know, like is a human experience, right? But it's also this great gift from God. Oh, water. Hot is a noble thing. And, but, and there are songs that are laments, there are songs that are kind of prophetic. There are songs that are funeral

songs. There are songs that help you remember your history as a people and preserve the lore and the wisdom of the ages so that you can, you can carry on on the shoulders of giants. You know, there's so many like songs can do so many different things. And so like, one of the things that's exciting to be about to me about music is that you can have so many different kinds of

songs. And I was thinking of settings for maybe like Jack Redford, who's going to set something that is going to really be sung like an art song. It's going to be sung on my behalf. I'm really not expected to sing along, but that's still a my. Heart can sing. My heart can sing and it can be kind of an intercession. It can do a lot of things.

And the the purpose of that particular kind of song may not be congregational participation, but it's still a component of the church's life, just like the Hot Water song is, you know?

But yeah, if we're talking about building confidence or if we're talking about writing songs specifically for people to enter into, I think it's just helpful to to really be specific about that context and say, right, we're talking about these kinds of songs and how can we, how can we do that really well so that the body is built up. Yeah, yeah, well said.

And then you mentioned way earlier in the conversation the the value of knowing the lore, so to speak, being being conversant in scriptural imagery. You know what metaphors. Does does. That the scriptures use when they talk about God or the people of God or the the symbols or touch points in creation or touch points in the stories of the church.

It it lowers the volume a lot, lowers the pressure a lot on you to come up with completely new and different and brilliant things all the time because you can write a song that. That. Fundamentally does one thing, one goal that you're setting out to accomplish, but employs so many familiar little references along the way.

Kind of like you mentioned earlier with Blues rock and, and and and then some of the musical devices right to to someone who has been, who is being shaped by the songs and the stories of God's people, that song is just exploding with meaning for them. From Oh my gosh, yes, the the Blues in the gospel culture of music is that's a unique thing for our American, you know, time yeah, expresses who a lot of who we are. Well, I'll, well, I'll toss in our last one because it's the

least complicated and maybe it jogs something, the last point. So it's written for voice first. It fosters confidence and it is despite this accessibility it offers depth. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So you don't need the PhD in theology or history to understand it, but you can hear it for the millionth time and get and still get something fresh out of it. Yeah. Oh, well, you know, that's ain't that's, that's been going on since the beginning of the church right there.

There was a, I'm not going to be able to tell you his name, but there was a famous, very famous preacher who was known for his wordsmithing, you know, his ability to very communicate very well theology. And what he decided was that the most effective way to communicate that theology that he wanted his congregation to know was to write hymns.

So that's what he's really known for today is the 1000 of, you know, hymns that he wrote because music has the ability to, like, lodge in our mind, in our heart. So if you want words to be stuck there, just sing them. Yeah. Well, and singing works things into us and it inculcates things like in a particular way. Yeah. Now a lot of people think that if we, you know, our belief, our, our faith, our, you know, our, Yeah, what we believe will come out in what we sing, which

I think is true. But I really think it's more important to view it the other way around. How we sing, what we sing, is actually part of what forms us and shapes us as people. So we really want to have songs that have depth, that are true, that where we're repeating to ourselves the truths that we really want to be formed by.

Yeah, and I think part of the hospitality, part of the skill of wherever, whoever's making the songs, wherever they're coming from, is I got for me. I came up with a gettable digable and gettable diggable is like kind of a, it's kind of like a way of judging a song as I'm writing it. Yeah. I'm saying, OK, is this gettable or do you have to, like, have read these five books? Yeah. In the end, what the heck I'm saying, Yeah. Is it gettable?

4 quartets would not pass muster on this one, right? Yeah, and that stuff ought to be made too. But in this context, is it gettable? Can people enter into it and it but is it also diggable? Is it so superficial or so abstract or so uninteresting that you can't, you know, And some of my favorite songwriters can pull that off really well, where you can listen to the song the first time and you can get it and you can enter into it, and then you can notice something on the 10th time that

you. Didn't notice the first time. Or you could go look into something. I like that kind of thing. I like shooting for that, trying, trying to get get to that. And you and you tend to hit that in your songs. And, and, and Andrew Peterson, nearly all, I would say nearly all of Andrew Peterson's songs are, are we songs. So they're not mostly not written for congregational singing, but they're all we songs.

They connect you to God. They connect you to each other and the universality of human experience. They, they connect you to a sense of memory. And there's, there's going to be references and, and they're all within an octave and they're all really musically intuitive and they make sense. And, and and there's just so much depth. If you, if you don't know the references that he's making, they're good enough on their own

that you go, oh, that's beautiful. It's going to stick with me forever. And if you do know the references, you just go, oh, chef's kiss, right. Yeah, yeah. That's good songwriting. I think another element of good songwriting is does the melody fit the words? Like, is it a melody that that makes the words come alive? You know, it's not like you're not gonna sing really happy words with a really dirty kind of melody.

Right, so joyful, joyful is a great melody for those words, right, because it's there's this perfect. Melting. Yes, and this is where the we, we, we harp on this with our arts Guild so much. But you want the, your craft to elevate over time and your theology and your depths and richness and maturity of your spiritual life to mature to, to grow over time with it so they can kind of keep pace with each other. Because then you know, oh, I'm writing.

They asked me to write a, a song for the Gloria or for whatever. I know what this is for. I I understand what's going on here. I think sometimes we it takes a lot of attentiveness to a song to. I think a lot of times songs get included in services that aren't congregational songs because because somebody just hasn't noticed the difference, that somebody hasn't said, oh, this is a cool song. I like the way this song makes

me feel. Wouldn't it be cool if we sang this together, but then noticing like, yeah, but actually, if you have, if songs can do a whole range of things so you can validly have many different kinds of songs for different occasions, you've got to pay attention and say like, is that what this song is? Does it? Is it doing that? Serving this. And so I really, I can't just put any song in there. I need to put the song, the kinds of songs that fit this

occasion. And that was kind of like Grace, Haman said. She mentioned Temperance and this was a cool point from her talk that stuck with me because she said, you know something like abstinence or feasting. It's not one or the other, it depends on the context. And the time. And the time, what does this particular time call for? What is most fitting and appropriate in this context, in this time?

And it doesn't mean that's not a good song or there's something wrong with it, but it means what we're doing right now at this time isn't that. Yeah. Well, and now at that point you're back to the very beginning of our conversation and the point you made about sacred and profane art or the the very first talk that I ever gave for as leader of the Ansem Society at an Ansem event was at one of our conferences. And it was just, I think it was

maybe 10 minutes. It was a little break out and just and and it was that was one of the points that I made that like you got to understand, I use this term sacred and common art, right, right. So that people didn't get hung up on profane, but but in both in in both cases that, hey, it's this song over here is to facilitate corporate worship, which means this, this and this and requires this, this and this

and necessitates forms that look like this, this and this. And then over here you have common art, which is everything else. And this is really good for approaching the throne room of God. And this is really good with discipleship and struggle and, and reconciling myself to the fact that I don't feel worthy to approach the throne room of God right now. And we need them both, but we have to be able to pay attention to what we're trying to. Yeah, do.

And as soon as you get rid of the categories, as soon as you get rid of the categories, that's where you start to get messed up. Because now you're creating common art, like a story, and you feel like you have to shoehorn Jesus into it at every time. And you have music over here that's being sung in a church that doesn't belong in a church wasn't written for one. And you're, you're hurting both. But it's only because you're, you're not paying attention to where they belong, right?

You're putting pressure on yourself for the piece of art to do something it wasn't designed to do. Right. Pay attention to where you are, what the time calls for. I went to the restroom a minute ago and you have a little sign in your bathroom. This is the bathroom. What does it say the bathroom? This bathroom is for singing this. Bathroom is for singing, you know so. Acoustics in there, right? So, you know, that's what's the right thing for this place. This time.

It's like, well, you should probably sing the, the the water hot song, you know, the bathe bath song from Tolkien. But and I also thought of mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice. It's like, hey, maybe don't sing the most cheerful, happy song, you know, if if the context and the time calls for grieving with that person. Yeah. And we've got songs for that. Right. Yeah, whatever.

One Sunday, after one of our members of our congregation had died, we switched and decided to sing Be Still My Soul. Aw. Man, you know, the next week I was was good. Yeah, yeah. And, and I think it was Athanasius who wrote extensively about the Psalm, the value of the Psalms for for this, it's like the Psalms between the lot of them that every single Psalm doesn't try to do every single thing right. But across the corpus of the Psalms, it covers every bit of

the range of the human psyche. Yes. And we, yeah, we need our our corporate song, our other corporate songs to have more of a range too. Yeah. Any last thoughts from And you, Terry? I feel like we've couldn't like jump in on each other the last couple. Of years. Yeah. No, I think this has been an awesome conversation.

I've actually learned a lot that I'm going to take away and do some ruminating over to help me in, you know, with what I'm what I'm my task is. But I, I would really, I would really love to hear Matthew sing his song that he wrote about the, the what we're all going to do someday together. I would too. Yeah, so this is the last song in from a trilogy of albums and the well trilogy. And the the whole idea is that what is God? What has God's ultimate desire for the world been and for us?

And what is this sort of tell us or the, the destiny of humanity that God dreamt of before he made us in my understanding of that is that it is to be with and to be like Jesus, like we are headed toward the one who he is the first born from among the dead. And he's the he's the paradigm, you know, he's the one that, and and that includes the unveiling

of the face. That means we're going to see God face to face, but it's going to be kind of a mutual unveiling because the bride will also be unveiled.

And when we see him seeing us, we will finally become all that God dreamt of us and desired for us to be. And kind of defining the idea of dream as a desire that love brings to be. So he's working all things to this end. To those who call on his name, they can be there in front of his face and become come home and become ourselves. But that means but that's also a

corporate identity, right? It's. It's not just that I get to be who I want to be or think I should be. It's that I become who I am in the bride as the bride, as a member of the bride, you know?

And the funny before you saying like, I just want to throw this on a pile that, that I, I don't know if this is, is universal or not, but I, I, I know for me as as a man, those those corporate calls in songs speak to me. There's something about being called into being part of something bigger that speaks to me. And there's something about sort of following a great captain and and there's a great line in the silver chair where Eustis just says I am the King's man and

that that's that's a really powerful line for me. And when, when all of our songs follow a certain type of of relational paradigm and don't leave room for that, it diminishes not my voice in the sense of here or me, but in the sense of it makes me less called in to sing. And I've met another, a number of, of men that are like that as well. And give me, give me this greater thing to be called in to give me a captain to follow. Give me a king to serve and get paint me this picture of of

where this is all going. So, Matthew, paint me this picture, Yes. Well, I got to say it. Also, you saying that reminds me of Fermere in the In the Houses of Healing and Lord of the Rings when Aragorn, he actually sneaks in because he's not ready to claim the kingship in front of everybody, but he sneaks in to help out. And Faramir is in this deep, the black sleep, you know, the black breath has got him and Faramir calls him out of that the depths

of that death. And and when he wakes it, just reading it makes me cry because he says, I heard you calling what is what is my King's bidding? You know, what would you have me do? And it's just incredibly beautiful. That whole chapter is. And then when Aragorn answers, he says, Of course, our Lord, for who would lie idle when the king has returned? Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So we have that, We have that charge, that call, and the King is calling us and the the kind of the bridge of this starts out and says this is a call for the holy Saints. Keep watch through the night, bravely bearing the pain. Go gently now where the river goes, whisper soft where the primrose grows. For the years have passed like the morning mist, every winter waste by the spring sun kissed, Every veil has been removed and

the face of God revealed. And when you see him seeing you, you'll be the dream of God made true. Remember how we were older than now? The Lord has made us young again. And if we weep at all, it's of a different kind when the beauty wells up in the eyes and shines, because every veil has. Been removed. And the face of God revealed. And when you see him seeing you, you'll be the dream of God made

true. This is a call for the holy Saints. Keep watch through the night, briefly bearing the pain, while the dragon grins. All fire faint. The breath of God shall extinguish him, so hold on to the hope that took hold of you. Though you sleep for a time, you will wake in truth. Though these nightmare hooves beat through this midnight dream, they will break when the dawn rins this world that it seems, and the rider arrives on a white War Horse to reclaim

everything that was lost. In the war you will hear his name like a trumpet blast. Every lover will sing. He is come at last, And the dream of God will be all that remains. When the bride looks with love on the Lamb was slain. Because every veil has been removed and the face of God revealed, and when you see him seeing you, you'll be the dream of God made true. Awesome like that. Thanks. Yes. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you both.

Yeah, you're. Spending this much time talking about this and for those of you listening, if you are a if you make music in any way, write more we songs or seek them out and popularize them and help other people sing that. Share them with us. And yeah, and if you want to, if you want to be a part of something like that and don't know where to start now, just contact us on our website at anselmsociety.org cuz we're starting stuff like that.

Till next time. The Imagination Redeemed podcast is a production of the Anselm Society. It's easy to see this world as disenchanted and to give up hope that there's more. But you were made to see the world with the eyes of heaven and to live a bountiful life that participates in the life of God like in the great stories. To help make this show possible, go to anselmsociety.org/podcast

25 and make a donation. The Anselm Society is a place where you can come in and experience that beauty, joyful celebration, and ancient wisdom and go out renewed, bringing that life to your vocation, home, and church. Learn more at anselmsociety.org and join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the Christian imagination together.