Worship and Preaching

“Rosetta Stone, My Lawn Mower Manual, & Congregational Worship”

Last Sunday our family was out of town so we visited a church.  It is a church in the same denomination as the congregation that I pastor.  It is located in the same state.  We are even part of the same district.  But, as with anything we experience for the first time, there were some things that were very different between our churches.

I noticed the size difference.  The church we visited on Sunday is probably on the verge of what we’d call a “mega church” or as a friend of mine describes it, a “Wal-Mart church:  they’re a big box”.  They offer a wide variety of opportunities and ministries and appear to do them quite well. Our church is more of a “Cheers” church:  where everybody knows your name.  We don’t offer nearly as many ministries but there is a high level of intimacy between the people who worship at our church.  We visited the big church for the first time and nobody knew it except for us.  That wouldn’t be possible in our church.

Part of the way into the music portion of the service I noticed some songs we sing at our church.  It felt particularly good to hear and sing those songs because the first few songs in the service were songs I didn’t know.  All of the words to the songs were projected on screens.  We had no music to read; no way to know how long to hold notes and words; no way to know when the melody went up or down.  Since that experience I’ve been reflecting back on the methodology I used for navigating the new musical terrain of those unfamiliar songs. 

First, I’d watch the words.  Second, I’d listen to see if I could find patterns or paths that seemed to tell me where we were going next with regard to the melody.   Third, if they sang the song enough times or enough verses to the song, then I could begin to venture out onto the highway of congregational singing and see if I might be able to join along.  If the melody didn’t make sense to me or they only sang it once or twice, the whole enterprise might be over before I had a chance to give it an educated try.

As I left I wondered: is this normal?  How do visitors navigate this new experience?  What percentage of people in attendance was actually choosing not to sing?  (In my informal estimate in this service, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70% who were standing by silently staring at the platform, or the screen, or looking around.)  It wasn’t congregational singing.  Such an event can quickly become congregational watching, congregational listening or congregational staring.  (I know from experience that we have some of “those” people in our services each week too.  But we work to include people in worship, not create bystanders.)  What can be done to invite and include people in congregational singing?

Music On a Page:  Who Needs It?

I recently read an excerpt from Thomas Symmes’ The Reasonableness of Regular Singing in which he made the argument that the “rhythm and pitch” in congregational singing needs be “governed by musical notation”1; we need to see the notes on the page. I have to admit when I first read his treatise I thought, “This is just the complaining of an old crabby guy who wants it the way it has always been”; a person set in their ways who doesn’t want to change.  It reminded me of the “old people” who used to complain about “words on the wall” that were being added to our service and hymnals which were being ignored.  I used to think it was simply a matter of taste or style and that one was equal to the next.  But after my experience as a visiting worshiper, wishing to have more information about songs which were new to me, I was starting to change my perspective.  I wanted to be able to learn those songs quickly so I could participate in worship.  And I want to be able to help those who attend the services at the church where I pastor to be able to do the same.

Rosetta Stone, Suzuki Method, & Words on a Screen

Have you ever asked yourself, “How do people learn new songs?”   What aids or hinders their efforts?  And if congregational singing can play a significant role in spiritual and faith community formation, what happens if the majority of the community is not participating?  Are there ways we can help more to participate?  I began asking myself some other questions and attempting to answer them.

How do children learn to sing hymns?  Probably in a way similar to the way they learn to speak a language or play an instrument or play a sport:  largely by doing it initially and only secondarily by dissecting, reading, or studying the theory behind it.

Do adults learn the same way children do?  Probably not.  My guess is that adults tend to focus more upon theory and reading notes in music or, in the case of doing something physical, studying and practicing movements rather than just jumping in and doing it.  Notice the plethora of golf videos that teach you how to swing. 

For a child to learn to play a game, often we simply put a kid and equipment together and watch what they do.  Or a child watches an adult using that same equipment and then seeks to mimic what the saw. 

Maybe the way we learn other things gives insight to the way we learn to sing as a congregation.  Rosetta Stone (in language) and the Suzuki method2 (in music) are based upon the idea people learn well from hearing and seeing and then doing or copying what they saw or heard.

I think this is a great option for people who are ready to dive in and begin to immerse themselves in a new language or instrument.  If you can come home from your first lesson and play a song you like or push away from the computer and ask a useful question in Portuguese, it can be a real encouragement to a new student. 

On their website, Rosetta Stone claims that you’ll “Understand from the very first lesson, start speaking your new language.”  How similar is that to what we want for people who are new to the Church?  Don’t we desire for them to be able to take part of the Gospel story home with them in song or sermon or scripture and interact with it? The Rosetta website also quotes CNN which praises the method by saying it is “The gold standard of computer-based language learning.”  If they are really that good at educating people in a whole new language might they have something to teach us about how to form and shape disciples of Jesus?

I contrast that with all of the time spent “conjugating verbs” in the very early days of learning a language.  Are verb conjugations important?  Of course they are.  (“I will go to the bathroom” is vastly different than “I just went to the bathroom”.)  But do we have to know all of the tenses before we can say a little something? Rosetta Stone and the Suzuki method suggest it is possible to learn some useful things pretty quickly and see some payoff right away without having to spend hours and hours on scales or verb conjugations prior to experiencing the actual act of speaking a new language or playing a new instrument.

So what does all of this have to do with congregational worship?  It suggests that for some people, the best way to learn a song may be to “hear” the song (think words projected onto a screen) rather than “read” it (think notes in a hymnal). This would seem to be true for people who don’t know how to read notes or who have never experienced “reading music”.  Or it may be helpful for people who encounter a song they can pick up quickly and are in an environment where the melody comes naturally to them.  (The Suzuki Method spends considerable time talking about the environment in which the learning is taking place.  Churches may want to ask themselves what we can do to provide an environment that encourages participation.)  However this is probably not the only model we need to think about when we are studying congregational singing.

My Lawn Mower Manual and My Hymnal

There are certainly a number of people who have the ability to read music.  There are certainly people who have a personality types that would like to “see” what they’re being asked to try to sing.   If you don’t feel confident with the song you’ve been given, or the group you’re with, or the exercise of singing (how many places do we actually sing out loud in front of others?), then you may feel like you want every tool you can find.  One of those tools is music on a page.

The Rosetta Stone and, particularly, the Suzuki Method are geared toward the way children learn.   Adults do not necessarily learn the same way children do.  I know I have different experiences trying to learn as an adult than I did learning when I was a child. 

The muscle memory involved in learning an instrument as an adult shows changes have occurred in my learning style when compared to my muscle memory learning an instrument when I was much younger.  This comparison suggests I need to “read” it more now than I used to.  (I can still remember piano pieces I learned 30 years ago.  I can not remember piano or guitar [an instrument I learned as an adult] pieces I learned only days or weeks or months ago to the same degree.)

I recently purchased a new lawn mower.  The salesman at the store made it sound like it was all really pretty intuitive and wouldn’t take much to figure out.  For someone who is mechanically minded, that might be true.  But as I opened the box up and found myself confused by which pair of wing nuts went into which set of holes, I realized I was going to need a little affirmation that I was putting this thing together correctly.   So I reached for the owner’s manual. 

Now I have to confess that I don’t like reading manuals of any sort.  They are usually written from the perspective of engineers or lawyers and I fancy myself more of a musician and mystic.  But in that moment and in that activity I needed what the manual offered so I gladly reached for it, slogged my way through it, and was mowing my lawn within a few minutes (once I looked at the manual again and realized I had to connect the spark plug!).  Sometimes we need things in writing.  Some of us prefer it that way.

Lessons from the “Usual Singing versus Regular Singing” Controversy

One of the characteristics of each issue the Church faces in congregational worship that strikes me is how “nothing is new under the sun”.  So often we can say, “We’ve been here before.”  Knowing our Church History can provide some insight into this issue for us today as well.  

Linda R. Ruggles, Lecturer in History at The University of Maryland University College published a paper entitled, “The Regular Singing Controversy”.  In this paper she describes ways of singing that are not so different than our “hymnal versus songs projected on the wall” options. A reading of her paper gives several useful pieces of information.

The “Usual Way” of singing was “a capella” and was lead by a “precentor who set the tune by singing or reading each line of a psalm, which the congregation then repeated.”   Sounds a little bit like songs projected on the wall.  If you don’t already know the words and the tune, you are dependent upon the one(s) leading to give you something that is repeatable.  Ruggles continues,

(The Usual Way) “…was used especially in churches where psalm books and tune books were not generally available, and was common both in America and England.  The practice was given official sanction in England, where Parliament, in the Ordinance of 1644 (regarding details of the worship service) specified its use in congregations which had members who were not able to read, until such time as they became literate.3 

This method was not looked at in its time as a preferred option.  Instead, it was more of a concession to the fact that many worshipers could not read and needed help to participate in congregational singing.  It "was to have been a temporary practice, used by necessity until the problems of illiteracy and shortage of psalm books were resolved.”

Initially, many preferred the practice of “Regular Singing” where the worshipers had books that gave each person a song and notes.  They argued that the Regular Way

    “encouraged unity among the members of a congregation, with everyone     following the same discipline in worship. Without the Rule the singing ‘would be     a confused Noise, & not Singing. Let the Rule be wholly laid aside, and we shall     be like a Ship in the Sea, without Compass or Rudder, or any means to guide her towards a Haven, tossed hither and thither."    
   
Ruggles fast-forwards us to the end of this period, stating, “There was no final resolution to the debate of Regular Singing versus the Usual Way.  Individual congregations contested the merits and demerits of both and eventually decided the issue by vote within each congregation.”  Sounds a little like the hymnal versus the “songs on the wall” solution:   let everyone figure it out for themselves.

So, what might be applicable to our time from the “Usual Singing Versus Regular Singing Controversy”?  First, we need to recognize that while the pendulum in congregational singing seems to have swung away from hymnals toward projection of songs on walls, this move has happened before and may not be the final death note for hymnals.

Second, we should remember that one of the key parts to “Usual Singing” (the forerunner to projected songs) was that hymn tunes should be familiar.   How often do we select a song that the newer members of our congregation or visitors do not recognize and have trouble picking up because it doesn’t “sing itself”?  If the melody is not easy to sing, maybe we should not be singing it as a congregation.

Third, there is a reason hymnals became so popular.  Before we discard them and walk away from them, we should make every effort to cull the practice from the last several hundred years and not throw away the wisdom of the preceding generations.  It took an act of Parliament to make the switch from one style to the next!  Apparently someone was convinced there was some value in it.

Fourth, we must remember that the Church is made up of multiple parts and personalities.  No one style of congregational singing will effectively meet the needs of spiritual formation for any or all of us.

Conclusion

I think of my lawn mower manual from time to time as I consider the hymnal in our church.  I know there are some who can step right in and mow the lawn or sing the songs without them.  Words projected on the screen are enough for them.  They often even prefer it that way.  And that’s great. 

But more than occasionally there are people who really need what the mower manual or the hymnal offers.  And we might want to rethink asking people to come and try to be spiritually formed and encouraged and convicted and challenged without ever putting any of the notes on a page.  In the same way, I would ask my lawn mower manufacturer to reconsider if they ever shipped a product without a manual.

As a piano teacher, I ask older students or the parents of younger students about their goals in our lessons.  One of my standard questions is, “Do you want to be able to play by ear or to read music?”  (Essentially, do you want to do this with or without music?)  Usually they desire to be able to do both.  They seek to be well-rounded, balanced, and to have competence in both areas.  I think there is wisdom in such a response.  And I think that same sort of wisdom should inform how we address the various means of offering songs and hymns for congregational worship to the people of God.

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1  David Music, Hymnology:  A  Collection of Source Readings, (Scarecrow Publishers, 1996), 179.

2  http://suzukiassociation.org/teachers/twinkler/.  The idea behind Suzuki is “the fact that children the world over learn to speak their native language with ease”.  Important factors in Suzuki method for learning include among other characteristics:  early beginning, repetition, encouragement, learning with others, and delayed reading.  The “repetition,” “delayed reading” and “encouragement” would seem to correlate with much of what takes place in our culture with regard to congregational singing.  An article that summarized both the philosophy and the critique of the method can be found at http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm6-1/suzuki-en.html.

3  http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/fall97/sing.html on the Archiving Early America website.