c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ At Metropolitan Baptist Church, a prominent African-American congregation, the music winds through the service like a carefully orchestrated symphony.

The Young and Adult Fellowship Ensemble sits under shiny silver organ pipes and leads the congregation in”Come, Ye Thankful People,”a traditional hymn. But not much later, the pipe organ is silent and the piano and electronic instruments take over as they perform”Jesus, How Sweet the Name”in a manner that barely resembles the version in the closed hymnal in the church’s pews. Young people stand to clap along with the male soloist and older women in their Sunday hats nod their heads to the beat.

Throughout the service, the music sways back and forth from old-time religion to contemporary praise, meeting the needs of young and old, hip and not-so, bridging what often is a generational divide in the nation’s churches _ black and white, Catholic and Protestant, conservative and liberal.”I love all of the music,”said Nola Abel, 79, a longtime member of Metropolitan Baptist who said it sometimes moves her to tears.

Abel, who has seen the genres of music change over her 65 years in the Progressive National Baptist congregation, acknowledged”it took me a while to take to the clapping and the upbeat and whatnot but … I accept it on the outside, why not in church?” Metropolitan Baptist’s answer to the frequent debate over music is variety, variety, and more variety. Each year on the Sunday before Christmas, the church even offers two versions of the holiday music classic. The morning service features selections from”Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration,”a 1992 recording featuring African-American artists, and later that afternoon, the church offers the traditional version in a concert featuring top black opera singers.

Other churches have decided to cater to varied musical tastes by offering different Sunday services every week. Many communities are dotted with church signs announcing a traditional service at 9 a.m. and a contemporary one two hours later.

Decisions about music _ as central a part of the service for many churchgoers as the sermon _ can literally bring congregations together or tear them apart.”Music, if not carefully monitored and intentionally developed and guided can either be a very useful vehicle for growth development and forward movement or it can be used as a divisive tool for people looking for a certain niche of entertainment,”said Thomas Tyler, Metropolitan Baptist’s director of music ministries.

Tyler, who helped coordinate a Howard University School of Divinity conference on church music in November, is a proponent of educating congregations to help them appreciate a variety of styles.

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So is Carl P. Daw, Jr., executive director of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.”Our position is that we believe there is a place for a broad spectrum of congregational song,”said Daw, whose society is housed at the Boston University School of Theology.

In many of the nation’s churches, congregants reach for one of the 40 denominational or nondenominational hymnals that have appeared in the last 20 years with more of a blend of traditional and contemporary music. That publishing phenomenon represents a”remarkable period of creativity”that reflects the diverse musical tastes within congregations, said Daw.

But with that creativity comes a challenge for church music directors.”One of the things that is required by all this development is that worship really needs to be planned more carefully than it has in the past,”said Daw.”And that’s one of the challenges, to find, say, a traditional hymn and a contemporary chorus that may both be related to whatever the theme of the service is going to be. In fact, there can be an interesting kind of echo effect or synergy that develops when more than one musical style is used.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

For some, the challenge of satisfying an array of musical preferences in one service proves to be too much for a congregation.

Wayne Brouwer, senior pastor of Harderwyk Church, a Holland, Mich., congregation of the evangelical Christian Reformed Church in North America, speaks from experience about how music can be a dividing factor.”We went to a blend and then we backed off and we have separate groups now,”said Brouwer.”Great Is Thy Faithfulness”and”Holy, Holy, Holy”are featured at a 9:30 a.m. traditional service and, at 11 a.m., a praise team leads the congregation in contemporary Christian music mostly from the last two decades, with words projected in front of them on screen. The two”communities,”as Brouwer calls them, meet in different locations on the church grounds _ the traditional in the steeple-topped sanctuary and the contemporary in movable chairs in a more informal auditorium.

Brouwer compares the clear divergence in liturgical expression at his church and others to fans who are faithful to different sports teams.”Music in the church is a way in which teams show their colors,”he said.

Harderwyk Church has two part-time ministers of music, in part, because it’s hard to find one music minister who can do the broad spectrum well.”They tend to do very well for a churched culture, but they don’t necessarily hit what is the edge of the non-churched culture,”Brouwer said of musicians trying to bridge the musical divide.

John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, said the division over musical genres _ as demonstrated by Harderwyk Church _ is not only generational but a matter of how congregants view worship.

If they see it as sacramental, they tend towards the traditional, but if they see it as evangelistic and oriented toward outreach to Generation Xers or baby boomers they”tend to argue for the most accessible forms of music,”said Witvliet, whose institute is based at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich.

When the institute opened in the fall of 1997, 20 of its first 30 phone calls were about worship disputes and music was a factor in most of them.”You wind up with disagreements,”Witvliet said, ticking off the various points of conflict.”Those who argue for contemporary music style versus traditional music style, bringing in the overhead projector … or printed order of service, praise team or choir, band or organ.” Richard Smallwood, a Washington-based composer inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in November, said the long-standing debates have related to the beat of music. Congregants who shun drums, synthesizers or other electronic instruments label them as secular instead of sacred.

But Smallwood, who spoke at the Howard conference in Washington, said any style should be accepted if the lyrics have a biblical basis.”I have no problem with crossover music as long as you carry the cross over with you,”he said at the Howard conference.

Marva Dawn, a Vancouver, Wash.-based writer and lecturer on worship issues, thinks more churches are attempting to resolve the”worship wars”by holding separate services.”Splitting is more popular, which is what I keep working against ’cause it’s dividing the congregation,”she said.”Young people need mentoring of old people and old people need the vitality of young people.” Dawn urges increased training in building a sense of community within a congregation and gradual efforts to introduce new kinds of music in services of a particular style. She said the church can be used to widen a culture’s appreciation of”how big our God is”through the varied sounds of organs, oboes and guitars.”The real problem is worship has been turned into a matter of taste,”said Dawn.”It’s God we’re worshipping, not us, so our taste really is irrelevant and God has really eclectic taste.” Smallwood, a singer and pianist whose musical style falls between contemporary gospel singer Kirk Franklin and traditional hymns, agrees with Dawn.”A lot of church folk are just a little too arrogant in their musical tastes,”said Smallwood, the co-director of the Young and Adult Vocal Ensemble at Metropolitan Baptist.”Even if you cannot identify with a particular style of music, if that was not your eraâÂ?¦ realize that God is so big that he can use any style of music he wants to reach who he wants to reach.”

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