Church Music and the Closing of the Mind

I was reminded today that the modern church is not good for our children. Maybe that's a bit too strong. The modern church is not the best for our children because Modernity is not the best for our children. In my choir class this morning I introduced an arrangement of "Be Thou My Vision." It's written in three voices (SAB) with the soprano voice carrying, you guessed it, the melody. Because of this, I chose to focus my attention on the tougher and less known Alto and Bass parts, the parts that will sing the rich harmonies. To my astonishment, I quickly discovered that the Sopranos did not know their part. A few of them had never heard the song before.

This is not their fault. They have been raised in a modern evangelical church, and the modern church is usually hostile to anything over ten years old. That's unfortunate and leads to to a dumbing down of Christianity. I am a firm believer in "you are what you sing." What do our children know musically? Modernity has done a great job of stripping down the church and relegating it to the sphere of self. Therefore, most Christians only know songs about themselves. I ask again, what can our children sing? They might be able to sing CCM tunes like Chris Tomlin or Matt Redman. These songs are fine, but they are not good enough if we want to raise a generation of warriors who will grow up to wage holy warfare on the dragon.

Too often churches take a stance of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." This is especially true of the music, bit it's not a matter of broken or fixed. God calls us to maturation, and our church music ought to reflect it as well. As much as I like a handful of CCM songs, I want my children to grow up with a rich tradition of psalmnody and hymnody. And when their high school choir director pulls out a piece by Isaac Watts or JS Bach, they can respond with, "Of course I know it, I learned it when I was 6."