Comments on: Matt Redman’s doxological theology

By: A cold and broken hallelujah? « Shored Fragments

A cold and broken hallelujah? « Shored Fragments — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:41:32 +0000

[...] prayer with certain friends, and being at worship with my own local church). I’ve had a go (or two or three) at defending modern worship music before on this blog, but a new thought struck [...]

By: roger flyer

roger flyer — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:40:45 +0000

Hi andy-
I am an admirer of Matt Redman’s work, too. I have a couple songs at my website I’d be interested in getting your feedback on. The Kingdom of God and We will Trust.
Thanks! Roger

By: Andy Goodliff

Andy Goodliff — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:06:47 +0000

Matt Redman has a new album out in early september … when perhaps the conversation can continue

By: Kevin Davis

Kevin Davis — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:17:51 +0000

I really enjoyed this post. I first came to consider the great value of contemporary hymnody (praise & worship) when I was invited, a few years back, to a Passion event at my college in Charlotte, NC. That got me into the music of David Crowder, Charlie Hall, Chris Tomlin, and others. There is a lot of depth, even in the simplest refrains, in a lot of these songs. Theologians can and should be about the task of promoting what is good herein, weeding out the bad, and proposing directives for new material.

And this may sound odd, but I found that listening to Passion albums while reading Emil Brunner went well together.

By: Ben Sternke

Ben Sternke — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:10:45 +0000

Hah. No problem. I guess I’ve been “lurking” for awhile and thought I’d comment. Thanks.

By: Chris E

Chris E — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:27:26 +0000

@Steve

Matt Redman shouldn’t be held responsible for how his materials are used, but that particular album doesn’t necessarily reflect current worship practice.

I take your point on the confession, though there are ways around that. My concern is that in the absence of grace being proclaimed first, ‘worship’ can become a work, where we work ourselves up trying to get God down here.

[It's perfectly possibly to pitch a song so that both women and men can sing it - it's just that many contemporary songs stretch this range upwards - so it's a case of aiming the pitch for the comfort of one sex or the other.]

By: Steve H

Steve H — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:59:39 +0000

@Chris again. I’ll take your word for it on the voices – but of course routinely 66% of our congregations are female, so perhaps having songs women can sing is just appropriate? Trying to sing anything modern without rhythmic accompaniment is probably a mistake – but you can get rhythm from a solo piano or solo guitar very easily, so this is not perhaps a big limitation.

By: Steve H

Steve H — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:57:43 +0000

@Chris: I think you are a little rosy about the BCP: the Westminster Assembly produced Common Order, after all, which was completely different, and presumably much preferred by the Presbyterians. At the same time, the Baptists and Independents were still just a little wary of any set prayers or orders, as restricting the Spirit’s inspiration.
Zwingli argued that confession should follow sermon – only when we have heard the gospel can we have the courage to confess our sins. The ASB followed this line, as I recall.
I agree about the saturation with Scripture, of course – a point I’ve recently made in a paper entitled ‘Baptists and the Bible,’ that our services have far less Scripture than any liturgical church’s.
I’m not sure Redman is responsible for how his songs are used in ocngregations, particularly. All he can do is model good practice, which I think he does well; if others misuse the raw materials he supplies, that is their fault, not his. To take an analogous example, I used to go to a choral Anglican Eucharist in London fairly regularly, where the priest routinely asked the choir to sing the Ave Verum Corpus before the Eucharistic prayer – that particular bit of theological incoherence was not the fault of the songwriter!

By: Steve H

Steve H — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:50:33 +0000

@Ben: Welcome to the blog, & thanks for your comment. The avatar generator seems to have taken a real dislike to you – sorry.

By: Steve H

Steve H — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:47:22 +0000

@Andy: I take your points at one level, although I wonder how much responsibility an individual songwriter has, or can have, for filling the gaps in the worship diet of the church. (I chatted briefly to Graham Kendrick recently – told him how much I hated name-droppers – and one of the comments he made was that he didn’t have any clear sense at all of the range of hymnody currently being produced. If even he doesn’t know the spread, how can anybody be expected to correct the imbalances?)

I love the first two tracks on Beautiful News, but find it disappointing beyond that. (Although it’s a good one for your Christology project: ‘there’s a God who came down to save…’)

It is strange that songwriters who are based in local churches don’t write Eucharistic songs, or Christmas songs – they must be programming worship around such events repeatedly, or at least annually.

I confess that I struggle to believe people can’t sing some of this music. There are bad examples, although fewer than 20 years ago in my estimation (the key is almost always scansion – if there are the same number of words as notes in every verse, it is easy to sing); I have more time for the banality complaint – the music is sometimes tedious to the extreme in its basic melody, and needs a large band and an elaborate arrangement to make it interesting.