Quote from Forum Archives on April 3, 2018, 10:33 pm

Posted by: rik.osborne66 <rik.osborne66@...>

Hey all -

I've been doing a lot of thinking about "praise & worship" music lately. Specifically, about how boring and banal a lot of it is.

A while back I posted about my leaving the worship team I'd been part of for 21 years, after the retirement of our longtime leader. I shared the letter I wrote to the church expressing my reasons, and cited "respecting my wife" as a primary motivation (short version: I had the strong impression that my wife would be better served in a different church, but had been using my feeling of "responsibility" to my longtime worship team as a reason to stay where I was). But, while my words were true, in the time since writing that letter I've started to question whether part of my motivation for writing it was to backtrack and cover some things I'd previously written to the new worship leader, as well as to the new pastor.

The simple fact is that I became quite miserable on the worship team after my pastors retired. Mike was the senior pastor, and Nancy was his co-pastor and worship leader, and I had known the two of them since I was about 18 years old. Fun story (I've probably shared this before, but it's been a few years): I first played bass at church when I was 18. I wasn't really a bass player yet; I didn't have my own bass, and I was actually a young guitarist who would rather play the bass. So I played a church-owned bass (I'd really like to go back and have another look at that bass - it was a Gibson, violin-shaped like a Hofner, but with a solid mahogany body) through a church-owned amp. And ... I eventually got "fired". I made up many excuses for getting "fired" back then, but in hindsight and with maturity, I realize that I was fired because I was an 18-year-old dumbass who didn't understand the role of the bass and was too interested in who was looking at me while I played.

When I was 19, I switched churches. Not because I was mad, but because my best friend at the time invited me to visit his family's church. It was a Church of the Nazarene, a very "traditional" church, which was quite a change for me, having grown up in a Calvary Chapel church and then in a Foursquare church after my family moved to a new city that didn't have a Calvary Chapel. Attending the Nazarene church really opened my eyes and ears to music that I hadn't heard a lot of while growing up: HYMNS. Sure, at Calvary Chapel we sang an occasional hymn, and at the Foursquare church we sang a hymn each week. But at the Nazarene church, it was hymns out of a proper hymnal, rather than words projected overhead. 3-4 hymns per service. I knew how to sight read music, so I loved having the harmonies all written out for me (I'm terrible at singing harmony on the fly). And of course my years of playing in school bands (clarinet, alto sax, and bassoon) in a variety of styles made me appreciate, even at the tender age of 19, good composition. By the time I was 20, I realized just how good hymns were when it came to the musicality, the composition ... just the overall musical creativity that went into them. Especially when compared to the Maranatha Music "praise choruses" I grew up on. Not to mention the fact that, once my mother got over trying to protect me from "the world" and allowed me to listen to rock music, I gravitated toward bands that seemed to put an emphasis on creativity, composition, and technical excellence. That is, prog and metal.

Alas, my hymn-singing church life was short-lived. When I was 22, being a cook (which I still am, as I approach 52 years) I got a job that required me to work on Sundays. I was no longer able to attend church, and unfortunately by this time I had discovered beer. The beer pretty much took over my life for most of my twenties. I got a DUI when I was 26, but that just stopped me driving. I kept drinking until, at age 28, certain events transpired (six cops pointing guns at me - story I will relate later if anyone's curious, but it's pretty lame) to make me say to myself, "enough of this s***" and I stopped drinking, cold turkey.

I ended up, at age 30, returning to the Foursquare church, where my mother still attended. Soon after, I found myself playing bass on the worship team again. Alongside Nancy, still playing piano and leading worship. Denise and Alexa taking turns on alternating weeks on synth/organ. Larry playing the trumpet. Joe on the flute. And ... somebody ... playing the drums. And, wow. I had matured by this point, and having played bass in a lot of bar jam sessions, I had a better understanding of my role. I played pretty "understated" to begin with, just wanting to listen and fit myself into what these guys had going on.

But here is where I learned some things about our leader that I didn't know 10+ years earlier. She was SO much easier to play behind now, and she didn't get upset when, on some songs, I started playing a "busy" bass part.

Back when I got "fired" for the busy-ness of my playing (actually, it wasn't the "busy-ness", it was my attitude, but my immature 19-year-old self couldn't see that), Nancy was a 30-something pianist/singer whose entire musical life had revolved around classical training. It was only when she and Mike had been commissioned to start a church here that she had taken the first steps to learning how to look at nothing but lyrics and chords, and create a piano accompaniment. Nancy and Mike actually both grew up in the Church of Christ, which does not allow musical instruments in the sanctuary. When I was 19, Nancy had only been playing the way she was for 3 years or so. And I'd been making her job more difficult with my attitude. (Note: she and Mike didn't say this to me - this is my own honest evaluation. If my younger self tried playing with me right now, I'd fire me too. When I brought up my "firing" to them, when I was in my late 40s, neither of them actually remembered it.)

So, once I had rejoined the worship team at age 30, I found out that what Nancy was doing was something called, "blended worship". Apparently, the whole point of "blended worship" was to not get locked into a particular "style". And oh my goodness, to me, this was AWESOME. It wasn't a steady diet of hymns, and it wasn't a string of simple "praise choruses". It was hymns and praise choruses and full-on songs with multiple verses and choruses, in multiple styles, and songs that came from different Christian communities from around the world, written in the style of those local cultures. It was pure joy to this pure musician, and I absolutely loved adapting my playing to each and every style. And since she was Mike's wife, the two of them worked together to make sure that everything we played and sang tied in with what Mike was preaching each week.

For 20 years, I was on the best worship team that could ever be. And then Mike and Nancy retired, after leading that church for more than 30 years.

With Nancy gone, the worship team was now just me, Denise, Alexa, and Larry (too many rotating backup singers to name). Okay, this can't be all that bad, right? Even with Nancy gone, I'm still playing alongside the same other three musicians I've played with for the last 20 years!

Except ... Dave. Denise's husband, and, technically, our "associate pastor". Before Mike & Nancy retired, Dave would preach the sermons when Mike took a week off (and I LOVED Dave's preaching), and would lead worship in Nancy's absence. I never liked it when Dave led worship, because he always picked boring songs. But, hey, it was only now and then, so I could deal. Except for one funny Sunday when he kept telling me that my bass was too loud. I kept turning down and turning down during rehearsal, to the point where I "played" the entire actual service with my volume turned all the way down to ZERO. I effectively mimed my way through the service, producing no sound, and then had Dave telling me afterwards that I sounded "great".

And now Dave was the new worship leader.

One year. One year of Jeremy, the new pastor, a guy younger than me, for whom I had hopes of great worship music because he's a musician himself, and also a pretty good songwriter.

And one year of Dave as worship leader. One year of slow, plodding, unimaginative songs. Pardon my language, but HOLY S***! Dave introduced a new song that he thought was pretty cool. Except the chorus of the song recycled that I-vi-IV-V chord progression that was used in every third "rock & roll* song from the 1950s. One solid year of slow song after slow song after slow song. Sure, Dave would pick a somewhat uptempo song for the first song, but every following song was slow and plodding. And this wasn't because Denise, now the main pianist, couldn't play uptempo. I'd been playing with her for 20 years, and I knew what she was capable of. No, this was Dave imposing his musical preferences on us. Dave is only 3 years older than me, but somehow, while I was listening to Judas Priest and Rush, he was listening to The Carpenters.

I gave it a whole year, because I suspected Dave was going for some sort of "grieving period" over Mike & Nancy's departure. And sure, Jeremy was coming in, knowing how long Mike & Nancy had been here and going for the "smooth transition" and not wanting to make any sudden changes. Okay, fine, I'll go along with that. Except I didn't see anything "Christian" about it. It wasn't "being Christian", it was modern "let's not upset anybody". 

Let's not upset anybody? Let me tell you about one of the oldest men in that church, Vergil Murren. Verg is around 10 years older than my parents, so he's pushing 90 by now. In his retirement, Verg spent his time almost singlehandedly remodeling the basement of our church building. Meanwhile, Mike & Nancy, knowing that my living arrangements made practicing the bass impossible, gave me keys to the building and allowed me to use the sanctuary on Mondays (when every church employee had the day off) to plug in and play bass. I had a setup with a stereo, and my amp. I'd pop a CD into the stereo and play bass and sing along with the songs. All secular rock, mostly Rush songs but also others (and I did make a point of not playing anything that could be considered "satanic"). So I would be in the sanctuary, plugged into my amp, playing and singing long with Rush or whoever ...

... and one day Verg came walking up the stairs into the sanctuary, looking right at me. And I thought, "OMG, he's about to lecture me about this evil music I've been playing and singing up here!" Because, well, that's what I'd grown up with. Instead, Verg said, "Hey, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy listening to you play.".

WHOA. That was absolutely the best thing that anybody has ever said to me about my music.

And now I can finally get to the point.

Modern P&W music, as far as I can tell, SUCKS.

And listening to it makes me think that the generic "Christian" isafraid of good music, because they think it might be too worldly.

We're not a "band", we're a "worship team".

We don't play on a "stage", we play on a "platform".

It's fear. Fear of appearing "worldly".

And that is so sad.

Quite a few years ago, my stepdad gifted me a CD. It was The Newsboys "Take Me to Your Leader" album. Wow, what a great bunch of songs! The creativity, the cleverness of the lyrics ... More, please! I looked for newer stuff from them and ... the profit-driven record company had forced them into making P&W music, and wow, it sucked.

Not so many years ago, I discovered Barlow Girl, and I was blown away by their lyrics and musicianship ... and then later, was not so impressed. And then I read that they disbanded to focus on other ministries. I found myself wondering if they got pressured to make P&W music, and simply chose to disband instead. If so, I have much respect for them.

After leaving the church I'd been in for so long, I switched over to the church my wife liked. And this is a very modern church, where everybody's young, and the preaching is very "hip", and the music is very modern and ... BORING AND UNINSPIRED AS ALL HELL. My wife keeps trying to encourage me to audition for the worship team (this place has multiple services and thus multiple rotating teams), and I'm all, "Um, no ..." The players they already have are great. I'm sure I could fit right in ... except I wouldn't enjoy playing the boring P&W music they're playing.

P&W music is boring because the musicians are afraid of offending people.

--

Rik Osborne

<rik.osborne66@gmail.com>

<https://www.facebook.com/mister.rik>

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