Report from the Field: New City Music Conference

I  recently returned from an eleven-day singing tour of the South with my head full of tunes and ideas about congregational singing. This is all part of my semester-long study leave from Ashland University and research for THE BOOK.

When I tell people about the book -- “It’s going to be about congregational singing, church and reconciling communities.”-- I tend to get a polite look of disinterest. It is as if I am saying, “I am writing a book on knitting and theology.”

So it was with great relief that I found that at the New City Music Conference in Chattanooga my sentence-long book proposal was met with understanding and interest.

What is the New City Music Conference? This will take a bit of explanation.

New City is a church founded in Chattanooga in the 1970s by Randy Nabors, a white conservative Presbyterian pastor with assistance from James Ward, a talented young musician. An urban ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America, New City has become the flagship of a small but vibrant multicultural worship movement in this predominantly white and southern denomination. This single congregation has become the hub of the New City Network: a loose connection of urban congregations interested in “cross cultural ministry.” From my observation, this seems to  include congregations that are deliberately trying to be multiracial as well as congregations ministering to particular refugee communities.

The Conference Choir practice with Jim Ward-- New City's
musical godfather--on keys. This is the first time I have sung
gospel music from a score -- it was tricky -- a lot of syncopation
and repeats

These churches have developed an ethos of worship music that attempts to be an authentic expression of the particular congregation’s ethnic sensibilities. Every couple of years, musicians from the New City Network gather together to share their songs and worship together and I was lucky enough to be there this summer.

I sang in Spanish, Swahili, French, and English. 

I had wonderful conversations with many musicians.

I am still processing the experience.

You can find many offerings from the conference over at the New City Music website -- it is well worth exploring.

Here is one sample -- a blues lament written for the conference by Kirk Ward. Kirk (son of James Ward) is a musician at New City Fellowship - University City in St Louis. He has written about this song over on his blog "Worship in the City." The lead sheet is available here.

Hymns from School

In this recent piece on NPR,  Brian Eno (Roxy Music and U2 producer) makes a case for the importance of a capella singing. He observes that it has "civilizational benefits" 

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

He thinks this is so important that he states,

that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you. 

What is odd is that I grew up in a British educational system that had congregational singing at the start of everyday in our school assemblies--I am sure Brian Eno probably did too. We sang a bunch of Victorian and Edwardian hymns as well as the hymns of the folk revival in the state and private schools I attended.  We had all the militaristic imagery that helped build a bygone empire (Stand Up, Stand up for Jesus, Onward Christian Soldiers) as well as the strange hymns to British nationalism which simultaneously filled Kitchener's Army and seemed to mourn the terrible losses of the First World War (Jerusalem, I Vow to Thee My Country).   We also sang of other people's wars (The Battle Hymn of the Republic) as well as sustained fantasy violence (the hobgoblin and foul fiends of To be a Pilgrim).

We sang of God's creation with Victorian sentimentality (All Things Bright and Beautiful). We observed the sacred and academic year; I particularly remember the advent hymns (O Come, O Come Emmanuel, Hills of the North Rejoice) though Easter was well represented as it fell during the school year (There is a Green Hill Far Away, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross). We asked for forgiveness from our "foolish ways," in Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. And we sang our liberal Protestant concerns in Sydney Carter's When I Needed a Neighbor (were you there?) and for a good work ethic in Lord of All Hopefulness. 

Many hymns used at school accrued alternative lyrics ranging from silly ("Most highly flavored gravy, Gloria!") to the pornographic (no repeatable examples).

Even if Eno seems unaware that group singing used to be a regular part of the school day, given my passion for group singing and the fact that I am now seeking to research and write on the subject, I would have to agree with him and say this was the most important thing that school did for me.

Let the Fieldwork Begin!

With the end of the school year, I am excited to have a semester of study leave from Ashland University. This is being supplemented by a writing grant from the Virginia Seminar in Lived Theology. All of this means that for the next year I will be hunkering down to research and write a book on congregational singing, church and reconciling communities.

Isaac Wardell of Bifrost Arts.

This week I have been in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Isaac Wardell, the founder of Bifrost Arts, was kind enough to let me interview him and ask him all kinds of questions about his passion for encouraging congregations to sing. There is a great article about Wardel's work called "Bifrost: Enriching the Church and Engaging the World. . . Through Singing." You can see from the title why I am interested learning more from him. He has written a set of Sunday School materials on corporate worship -- I recommend you download a free copy of his Liturgy, Music and Space. 

This morning my family attended Trinity Presbyterian Church and heard the fruit of  the congregation's labors. In the resonant modern sanctuary the worship team led the large congregation with its volume set at the acoustic level of the 9ft Baldwin grand piano.

At the service I participated in this morning at Trinity, the connection between the sacramental life of the body and congregation's singing was very strong. We welcomed the newly baptized into the Church with  a cappella singing (Amazing Grace) and as we moved forward to share in the sacrement of the Lord's Supper  the band dropped away again as we sang "I Love You Lord."

In the article about Bifrost I already mentioned, the minister of Trinity Pres, Greg Thompson, reflects on Isaac Wardell's influence and hints at the sacramental character and function of singing. Thompson explains that Wardell is moving the congregation "toward greater congregational engagement, which is to say, lots of people really, really singing. I have been amazed as I have seen everyone from children to Chinese students to Boomer conservatives gathered around not just the same table but around the same songs—and singing.”

Let the fieldwork begin--I will be traveling to Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi over the next few months as well as to churches closer to home in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. I'll keep y'all posted.

Singing makes atheist "church" work

I was interested to read this article in the British newspaper The Guardian about an atheist church service in London. Atheists want community and something to do on a Sunday morning. After experiencing the  service, a couple of curious atheists from High Wycombe told the reporter:

"Some of the things I thought really wouldn't work, like the singing, were really good. Normally I hate singing."
Churches do a lot of what they do "because it works", he notes, "Atheists make a mistake to look at church and throw it all out just because they don't believe in God."

And what did they sing together? "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen and "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder.

7000 White Men Singing

Over on his wall, my facebook friend Rev. Ligon Duncan announced the release of a new album of congregational singing.

On November 27, 2012 Sovereign Grace Music will release Together for the Gospel Live II, the second live recording of the singing at Together for the Gospel.
In April of 2010 and 2012, thousands gathered in Louisville, KY, to participate in the Together for the Gospel conference. This album contains 16 of the songs they sang, led by Bob Kauflin on piano.
Go here for ALBUM INFORMATION: http://sovereigngracemusic.org/Albums/Together_for_the_Gospel_Live_II

The Together for the Gospel conference is a gathering of conservative (mostly white) evangelical pastors. They are committed to all sorts of things. Its web site has eighteen articles of "Affirmations & Denials." Among them is the affirmation that, "the teaching office of the Church is assigned only to those men who are called of God in fulfillment of the biblical teachings." If you want to know what this doctrinal position sounds like, listen to this YouTube clip.
The worship leader, Bob Kauflin, explains over on Sovereign Grace Music's website:

While we can glorify God through a variety of musical instruments, we’re commanded over 50 times in Scripture to sing God’s praise. So we left the electric guitars, drums, and basses at home for this project.

While I love this commitment to congregational singing, I can't help thinking that the guitars, drums and basses were not all that was left behind at home. 

I am not trying to score a cheap point here--this group of men make a remarkable sound and from the conference organizers' point of view, this is what seven thousand pastors should sound like. But when I listen to it as congregational singing, the absence of women's voices is deeply disturbing.

I have just finished mixing Red Team's new album and so I am perhaps particularly attuned to hearing all the voices. In the process of mixing the album I learned something new. On one track I had my children sing. They are just two small voices in a multi-tracked crowd of 50 voices. However, the timbre of children's voices cuts through the mix and completely changes the sound. The inclusion of just one voice can change the sound of a large group.

If congregational singing is "a sounding image of the unified church" as theologian Steven Guthrie claims, then I prefer my congregational singing to include everything that has breath praising the Lord. Perhaps it is a good exercise to listen out for the voices we can't hear singing in the sanctuary on Sunday morning. This musical concern might lead us to some significant ecclesial soul-searching.

Science and Group Singing

I am never sure quite what to do with neuroscientists who make claims about singing--I am not in a position to evaluate their research. However, it doesn't surprise me that there may be some biological reasons why singing makes you feel good, after all musicians have known this for millennia.

A couple of reports on recent scientific papers that turned up on the blogosphere are interesting. An evolutionary psychologists from Magdalen College, Oxford, claims that group singing releases endorphines that promote group harmony. This led me to a report of a German study conducted in 2010 of a bunch of four-year olds and the effect of group singing on their interaction with each other. "Children who had sung and marched together were more likely to help one another pick up marbles.

From Memory to Imagination

I am tucking into a fascinating book published last month by Eerdmans, From Memory to Imagination:Reforming the Church's Music by C. Randall Bradley, the director of the church music program at Baylor University.

The book is loaded with subheadings-- in some chapters nearly every paragraph has its own heading. This certainly makes it easy to skim!
Bradley is calling for churches in their response to the current crisis in church music not to retreat to their memory of a simpler time -- rather to dare to imagine the new future for church music and worship. In the process, Bradley has some interesting things to say about singing (emphasis added):

When we sing with a group, we are joining our instrument with those of others; it is an act of intimacy. Our breathing becomes synchronized with the breathing of others, and a physical conformity ensues that is unlike that of any other human activity. The sheer power of dozens or hundreds of human bodies forgoing their own preferred breathing patterns to reconcile with others is a striking picture of community and of the  power of group singing (174).

This gives me a new insight into how congregational singing is a practice that is both the Church's testimony of God's reconciling power and also a practice which requires reconciliation.