c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In an age when praise bands sometimes replace organists and the sounds emanating from pipes have faded from some sanctuaries, Eileen Guenther is working to help church organists face the 21st century in new ways.

Installed this summer to a two-year term as president of the American Guild of Organists, Guenther is an associate professor of church music at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington and former minister of music at Foundry United Methodist Church, where former President Bill Clinton attended during his White House years.

Her organization’s voting membership has dropped from 19,806 a decade ago to 18,274. Rather than deciding to “unplug the organ,” she hopes congregations will expand their musical horizons while maintaining some use of the instrument. Her comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: It seems like one of your greatest challenges would be that many houses of worship don’t use organs anymore. Is that the case?

A: That’s an interesting question. Lots of places use organ and other instruments as well, and I think a challenge is to reach out to everyone who is involved in music-making in houses of worship, regardless of the instruments they play.

Q: So you want to include instrumentalists who play instruments other than the organ even though you’ve been an organization of organists?

A: Right. Many of our places of employment want more than just the organ and we want to be able to support organists, of course, but also encourage them to acquire more skills that will … meet the long-term needs of the marketplace. It’s not a phrase that people use within the church, but it’s kind of a reality.

Q: How has your membership changed since you’ve been involved with the organization?

A: The membership has gone down some, but not gigantically and it’s, of course, aging as our population is aging. But I think that it’s remained vibrant and strong. The church is the biggest employer of our members.

Q: Are organs still influential in American congregations, or is that influence waning?

A: Many organs are still being installed. The sort of myth of the death of the organ is completely unfounded. Organs are being installed in churches, in concert halls and the concert hall instruments are large, elaborate and there’s a lot of financial investment in these instruments. It’s not like everything has gone electronic.

Q: Is there sometimes a disconnect between clergy and musicians, even though they’re both working in the same worship service?

A: Not just a disconnect. There are lots of assumptions that get made.

Clergy tend not to give credit to the musician for caring about the total service. The assumption is you only care about the music.

There is the assumption that the word of God only comes through the spoken voice in the Scripture read, sermon given. That is wrong. We are multisensory people. The word of God comes to us through many, many media.

Q: You have also said you want to see churches embrace music beyond “the standard Western European-based repertoire.” What are some examples of how you would do that?

A: An initial thing would be singing, say, a Taize chant as an introduction to prayer. Then you go to choruses from Latin America. There’s amazing songs from Africa.

Q: You have just returned from teaching in the Ivory Coast. Is there something from that trip that you are hoping to incorporate into your organization?

A: I have to say the diversity of the music that they sing blew me away. They sing great. People talk about the male choirs of Wales. … This was just as phenomenal a sound but you can hear (echoes of) Anglican chant. You hear British and French hymns, standard repertoire. You hear African songs.

Q: This is the kind of diversity you’d like to see more often?

A: I just think that no one kind of repertoire has a lock on spirituality through music. I have a goal of three different cultures represented in any service that I’m involved in designing, ’cause I like to see us spread out.

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