With One Voice, Part 2

I'm continuing to work through an interview recently published in Leadership Journal with Keith & Kristyn Getty, who are some of my favorite worship songwriters. Here is another section I'm lifting to give you, along with a few comments of my own. You can find the whole thing here.

LJ: How do you negotiate differing musical tastes in worship when trying to bring the generations together?

Keith: It's not a matter of singing "Here I Am to Worship" immediately before the sermon and "Just As I Am" immediately after.

Kristyn: And it's not running an election—trying to appeal to the youth vote and the middle vote and the senior vote. We're preaching the gospel, which is for all generations, all tribes.

We hear the word "blended" an awful lot—people trying to do the best of the old with the best of the new. Everybody sings the songs they like. And that's a practical effort at trying to do your best in a complicated situation. But there have to be occasions when the whole body is singing the same song together. So we look for songs—not just our own—that create opportunities for an eight year old and an eighty-eight year old to stand together and sing.

Keith: It seems to me that if a church splits up over music that music has become more important than togetherness in itself. Music is merely a servant to the body of believers. I imagine that in Kenya or Eastern Europe or persecuted China, gathering together as a body of believers is more important than the fact that half of you listen to Coldplay and half of you listen to Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, or Bach.

Kristyn: I wonder if approaching things from the two principles we work from, as opposed to drums or no drums or jazz style or rock style, it might erase some of the difficulties. We just over-complicate everything so much.

Keith: When we worship, we're effectively joining with believers all around the world on a Sunday. We're also singing with the generations that have gone before us, and we're singing as a foretaste of what will come after us. So what we're doing now is a representation of that. And if it's a representation of such unity, why are people walking through two separate doors?

LJ: So you're not concerned with writing in a particular style?

Keith: I think less than half a dozen times since we've started has someone come up to me and said, "Your music is my favorite style of music in the world." No kind of music is popular with everyone, so we try to write the kind of music that suits amateur singers. Most of our songs actually can be done in contemporary arrangements, but the goal is to write melodies that are singable rather than songs that sound like ones on the pop charts.

This discussion reflects another challenge of today's worship leading pastor. Style is more important than ever to most people: they feel strongly about it, and they increasingly take their identity from it. If a musical style is identified with a different generation or social group, then others will seek to have nothing to do with it.

This is a problem for churches. Well, apparently not for some who just create separate services for varying styles of music. Ah, but it is a problem, because to be the Church is to be a people who might be varied in gender, race, culture, socio-economic class, or education, but most definitely are united in Christ.

That is why we work to find songs that are congregational, meaning that everyone can join in. Yes, we will sing some songs that stretch older members, but not too far. And we will sing some songs that stretch younger members, but not too far. But we will also try to find songs that are just flat-out singable doctrine that everyone who is willing to set aside their preferred niche can eagerly enter into.