Brehm Center

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov�d with concord of sweet sounds,

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov�d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

-William Shakespeare¹

To talk about music and worship in the church is to take on a complex and sometimes contentious subject. Music matters to human beings: There are very few people who don�t enjoy music in some form, and it would be hard to find a culture that does not make its own music, however rudimentary. While I agree with many who say that music is universal, I part company with those who say it is a universal language. Music is particular and contextual; it is born in our cultural and social settings.

One only has to listen to music from different cultures to realize that we don�t all hear or make music according to the same rules or even with the same tastes. Music does not sound like music to all ears. Music from China sounds completely different from Indian music, following entirely different rules of creation and performance. They both sound very different from the blues-based pop music I grew up on, and I must learn how to listen to and enjoy them.

Not all musical forms translate well from generation to generation either. Music is personal and subjective. We all have opinions about what constitutes �good� music, mostly based on personal preferences. We even make character assessments of others based upon what we know of their musical choices: �How can you listen to that racket?� was a constant critical remark in my household�my choices didn�t match my father�s preference for Jim Reeves and other American �crooners.�

Similar conflicts fuel the ongoing �worship wars� plaguing many modern congregations who argue over forms and styles of music, as well as approaches to worship�as if the universe hung on whether a church worships by singing hymns or worship choruses. Some claim that God can�t be worshipped in a particular style or with a particular kind of instrumentation, but it is usually more about familiarity and preference than anything else: God does not inhabit the form of music, he inhabits the praise we offer him.

Emerging churches, in spite of diverse roots and traditions, land primarily on the side of the contemporary worship culture, challenged not so much by the various musical issues that have dogged the church for the last half-century but rather by where and how music fits into the new forms of church.

First, speaking of �the emerging church� as if it were a single, monolithic entity is both unwise and unfair. Alternative forms of church, emerging from virtually all denominations, come in many shapes and sizes. There is no �emerging church movement� as such, but there are churches emerging.

Though it is difficult to pin down exact categories by looking only at the end result of what is produced in worship, there are directions and trends that emerging churches seem to be taking with regard to music and worship. What results from the paths taken will look quite different depending on both the roots and the focus of the particular church, but a close look will reveal trends embedded in the praxis of individual communities.

Authenticity, Resonance, and Popular Culture.

Emerging churches have their own plausibility structures, or bases for existence, at the core of which is the issue of authenticity. Authenticity is vitally important: these churches don�t survive without it. One of the ways that worship is authenticated within emerging churches is by its resonance with the congregation. This resonance is often established by the acknowledgement of popular culture since, unlike those that seek out the church as a means of �escaping� the culture, emerging churches actively engage and embrace it. This relationship with popular culture is perhaps the defining characteristic of emerging churches. There are still tensions and discussions about the role of popular culture within the church, but it is a much more enmeshed relationship than experienced by previous generations. As Tom Beaudoin has rightly said, pop culture is the �amniotic fluid� of today�s culture,²and is reflected in the easy embrace of popular culture by emerging churches. Hence, both the tools and the content of popular culture are reshaping a form of emerging worship where technology features heavily and is used to create a multisensory environment.

Participatory

Worship in emerging churches in not simply about music and the singing of songs. A reclamation of worship as a way of being in the world is creating new approaches to the structuring of gatherings and services. Leaders function more as curators and facilitators, while congregants (if they can be so called) become active cocreators and participants in the worship experience. Worship is intended to be done together as a community rather than performed by a select group of professionals. Everybody has a part to play. The use of diverse technologies and media only expands opportunities for all kinds of involvement.

Eclectic

Life in the twenty-first century is like living in a huge bazaar, where every conceivable item is readily accessible. It has been called a �cut and paste culture��an environment in which nothing is thought of mixing and matching seemingly contradictory and diverse things. We eat fusion foods. We sample bits and pieces of everything. We buy vintage clothing from thrift stores and new designer clothes that are made to look old and worn out. We explore medieval theology and monasticism online. Boundaries collapse and new horizons emerge.

A visitor to an emerging church worship experience might see digital images of ancient icons, encounter a DJ creating a musical soundscape, sing a classic hymn, and take communion with a rock song as benediction. There could be poetry as well as Scripture, smells as well as sounds, and not a lot of sitting down.

Sacred

Because old boundaries have collapsed, the line between the sacred and the secular is not so easily demarcated. In an emerging church, nothing is sacred and everything is sacred, since there is a prevailing sense that things are made sacred by being put to use in service of the spiritual life; thus, the ease with which elements of popular culture can be employed in the worship experience. A sense of the sacredness of all of life, not just church sanctuaries, infuses much of the emerging church. Echoing Paul�s comments that �In him we live and move and have our being,� and that God is �not far from any of us,� a new relationship is being forged with the culture and in worship.

Pop culture functions as a �subculturalcapital� according to Jonny Baker.³It is a medium of self-expression and meaning for many in the emerging church, and the use of certain pieces of pop music or film as worship elements is directly related to an understanding of its significance to their own lives and for their communities.

Provisional

Everything is an experiment in the emerging church and nothing is etched in concrete. Fluidity and flexibility mark the approach to church life. Rather than �programming for success,� emerging churches �experiment in creativity.� An awareness and adaptability to change is a key ingredient in emerging church worship. This is because, like the rest of culture, the emerging church is on a journey towards something and somewhere not yet fully defined.

Particular, Contextual, and Local

Theologian John Drane identifies the �McDonalidizationof the Church�⁴ as the mass-marketing of worship songs and hymns and a kind of predictability that lowers the horizon of potential in many worship environments�as if, like any McDonald�s franchise in the world�the same things will be on the menu regardless of where it is in the church world. On the contrary, emerging churches seek to celebrate locality, geography, and socio-cultural dynamics that vitally inform the shape and content of the worship experience.

This is not to say that emerging churches do not suffer from the same tendency to capitulate to the idea that bigger is better, or that success in one place if duplicated elsewhere will guarantee the same success, but there is a desire to find a particular community�s singular and unique expression of the gospel. If modernity was characterized by the tendency towards the singular and the universal, emerging churches, born in the crucible of the postmodern shift, celebrate the plural and the particular. We should not expect a church in one part of the world to look, sound, and feel like a church in another area. There is no single way to worship, there is no formula, and there is no single answer to how music and worship should be expressed in a particular community. The question of worship has to be explored contextually as it does not occur in a vacuum. The great hymns of the church that have survived through the ages have done so because they were intrinsically linked to particular contexts.

What is here offered is by no means a complete picture of worship in the emerging church context. It has been anecdotally shaped by conversations and experiences with friends from diverse settings in many parts of the globe. It is intended to be a sketch of some trends, influenced by my own idealism and desire, as much as my experience. The future of worship in emerging churches is by no means certain, but that�s what makes it so exciting.

ENDNOTES

1.   William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.83�88.

2.   Tom Beaudoin, Virtual Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).

3.   Jonny Baker, one of the leaders of Grace, an alternative worship community in Ealing, London, made these comments in a personal conversation about popular culture and worship in October 2005.

4.   John Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000) 43�44.

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