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Finding Musicians
Your Comment (“Music and the Harvest,” May/June 2006) gave me the opportunity to tell how, in the churches I have served, we have dealt with the problems associated with a dearth of qualified church musicians.

In one of the congregations where I was a pastor, a talented saxophonist / guitarist / composer became our music director, beginning with a part-time commitment. He did not have a strong liturgical background but was a quick learner and brought his background in classical, folk, and jazz music to our blended worship setting. He also had the advantage of preparing only one liturgy per season, from among five or six that we used throughout the church year. This provided a unified worship experience for a congregation whose space limitations demanded that we offer two, then three, then four services a weekend. Because our music director worked diligently with our volunteers and had high expectations of them, the quality of our congregational song became stronger every year.

The second music director at this congregation (happily, he is still there) seemed on paper to be all wrong. He grew up in a Pentecostal church and received his first musical training from his rock musician parents. He attended Oral Roberts University and then the conservatory in trumpet performance.

We took a chance on him because he was young, bright, talented, flexible, and our only viable candidate. We gave him what he needed to “learn Lutheran,” and he took off from there. He is one of the greatest treasures of that congregation. He has expanded the church’s musical tastes, honored its traditions, and created an environment that has attracted many fine volunteer vocalists and instrumentalists.

I wasn’t always in the position of having a paid music staff. What I bring to my work as a pastor and chaplain is my own musical background and a passion for high-quality congregational worship. I am also willing to devote much of my ministerial time to educating, taking whatever small steps are possible at the time, and cultivating the best talents present. In every place I have served, this has meant that the resident gifts determined our music program — not only its breadth and depth, but its style as well. (At our weekly retirement community service, I use a simple liturgy and an old Baptist hymnal with which almost all of our residents are affectionately acquainted.) I am less intense about the type of music than its quality, and I have always believed that people can tolerate much more variation than we think if everything we offer is well done.

Every church has at least a handful of people with musical talents and a willingness to learn, but sometimes they aren’t considered, or they aren’t provided with sufficient training, rehearsal, and expectation. Cultivating young talent, not only for the youth choir, but for a role as cantor, accompanist, or instrumental ensemble member inevitably creates church musicians, as we have seen in many Lutheran churches in which this is an emphasis. Even small churches can do this, if the pastor or another musically trained person is willing to put in the time to mentor the young musician.

Unfortunately, we don’t always think creatively about church musicians. We look for a specific spot (organ bench, keyboard, bells, choir) to fill or a specific type of music to offer, rather than looking at what combined gifts a candidate might bring to the parish. Musical talent, creativity, respect for tradition, willingness to learn, a knack for mentoring, teamwork, organization, and a sense of humor are valuable assets, perhaps more so than the candidate’s liturgical pedigree. What if an organist can’t be found? Can we lead the liturgy in some other way? How about a spoken service, using a gifted teenage pianist to play the hymns?

I have just begun serving a synodically approved worshiping community of 30 hardy souls in a small Southern town. We are blessed that a classically trained young Wesleyan vocalist serves as our pianist each Sunday. Occasionally, she will sing before the service begins. I, who despise recorded accompaniments, find myself willing to tolerate them, because the payoff is her gorgeous voice, the care with which she chooses the music, and the professional grace with which she sings. I have already begun to talk to her about Renewing Worship. I’ve suggested we begin training the fourth grader with a nice voice to be a cantor. She has told me that the young boy in our two-person children’s choir can be trained to carry a tune. We both agree that recorded accompaniments are not the ideal. Together, we are hopeful!

The Renewing Worship folks and Augsburg Fortress are to be commended for making good, flexible worship easy to shape with Sundays and Seasons, thousands of musical resources, and the ELCA’s blessing of our wide diversity. I hope that pastors and lay leaders will be encouraged to look carefully at what the Lord might do with what they already have and the folks God sends their way.

Deborah D. Steed
Pickens, South Carolina

How does the ELCA ensure that its song is well-led, especially when confronted by the realities you describe?...

I have been wrestling with that question myself, and I propose that one crucial dimension of this “labor shortage” is the church’s less than exemplary commitment to the education of church musicians. On the one hand, the church is doing wonderful things. I received the Fund for Leaders scholarship which enabled me to attend seminary. A 2004 graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, I received an MAR degree with a concentration in liturgy and music under the direction of Mark Mummert (author of “Diverse Musical Riches of Evangelical Lutheran Worship,” May/June, p. 24). The church has recognized the value of other rostered ministries in a tangible way.

On the other hand, I surveyed the landscape and found that three ELCA seminaries offer this type of degree program. Others offer classes in church music, but many of these are not required. If we are to take seriously the formative power of music and liturgy, the educational institutions of the church must continue to question the value it places on training such church musicians. Moreover, it needs to kindle in future pastors an awareness of the gifts that a theologically-trained musician brings to mutual ministry. What a gift it has been for me to study, pray, and live among those training for ordained ministry! Could the gift be more widely cultivated?...

Jennifer Baker-Trinity
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I very much enjoyed your article and can relate to your musician quest! As search teams seek to establish a basis for hiring a qualified church musician, I recommend putting the puzzle pieces together in order of priority. The obvious pieces include congregational experience and keyboarding proficiency. Denominational similarity is a bonus, not a necessity. Remember that qualities such as leadership and vision are not always easy to discern from a cover letter and resume. Finally, assess your candidate’s potential for spiritual growth. You may have a “diamond in the ruff” that just needs a little polishing and guidance.

An unfortunate truth is that salary and benefit packages often influence the quality of candidates who are drawn to your pool. Performance stipends are an excellent source of additional income for musicians; however, the drawback is that this type of compensation sometimes attracts giggers rather than disciples. For churches that can creatively offer full-time employment to their music director, the harvest may be most plentiful. As with all calls, anoint your search with prayer and place your hope in the One who brings all things to fruition, Jesus Christ!

Mark Ferri
Lincoln, Nebraska

Singing One’s Dialect
Having grown up singing in Lutheran church choirs, high school madrigal groups, and a college glee club, I have the pedigree — and somewhat the personality — of a musical geek. So I empathize with my fellow churchfolk who are giddy with delight about our new worship hymnal, and to honor the book’s goal of being a “common resource” our congregation will buy a few copies as a resource for the band (of the seven songs in their sets each week, I ask for one or two to be hymns, preferably with that ethereal, haunting David Crowder-style so ubiquitous nowadays).

But the ELW’s goal of being a “primary resource” strikes me as vain. Throughout this multi-year ELW process, we Lutherans have been stubbornly unwilling to be genuinely Luther-like — using, like he did, popular, common melodies to proclaim the gospel. If the new hymnal’s goal is to reassure the faithful that there’s still some hunt in the old denominational dog, maybe that will be accomplished — and I truly pray it will bless us.

But the Great Commission, the Day of Pentecost, and the first word in our denomination’s title all point to a more crucial goal—proclaiming the gospel to the world in dialects it understands, not simply in the ones we prefer speaking. In fact, if reclaiming the E-word in our name was also our goal, it might be more effectively accomplished if congregations used their new hymnal money to buy a digital projector and screen and a bar-and-dance-floor-caliber sound system, and then pray for and build up a worship team of even non-degree-holding musicians who are simply passionate for Jesus and fluent in the kind of faith-inspiring music the real world rocks to and downloads every day. In most cases, those musicians won’t be Lutheran at first, since we’re not a church that has heretofore wanted — or frankly, inspired — them.

But the Lutheran theology God entrusted us with is far too useful for him to allow us to keep it to ourselves with idolatrous intellectualism and hubris-filled hymnocentrism. Not to worry, though: if we Lutherans won’t share the gospel with non-believers in a language they understand, God will keep on using non-Lutheran churches to proclaim it in our stead. They’ve gotten pretty good at it already.

Dan McKnight
Lenexa, Kansas

The cheerleading articles for the Renewing Worship project and the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal were deeply disturbing for their lack of openness or even awareness of how dramatically these liturgical materials further a process, begun already with the Service Book and Hymnal, to move Lutheran worship away from the theological convictions of the Reformation.

But there were some hints. Perhaps most telling was Jonathan Eilert’s admission that “foundational documents such as the reports of the Second Vatican Council and the World Council of Churches’ document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry have created an ecumenical framework that helps us to see how our worship practices and priorities coincide with those of the church catholic.” In truth, our worship practices and priorities now coincide with that framework only because a generation or more of liturgists and scholars have abandoned Reformation convictions in favor of those other sources, leaving us with a hymnal that is neither Evangelical nor Lutheran.

For a brilliant analysis of just how radical a change has been and is being foisted upon us, see Steven Paulson’s article, “What Is Essential in Lutheran Worship?” in the Spring 2006 issue of Word and World.

Scott Grorud
Hutchinson, Minnesota

What Is Science?
George Murphy has put together another informative article — “What is Science Anyway?” — as a contribution to a continuing science-theology dialogue (Handiwork, May/June 2006). It is hoped that church leaders take notice and do additional reading on the three topics presented. The article is an excellent public relations piece.

My only addition would be to discuss the subjective nature of the scientific endeavor more, keeping in mind that, often space limitations have an influence on what and how many different topics are treated. However, the subjectivity demonstrates — for church leaders — that science, like all human enterprises, is humanity seeking to understand itself and its place in the world.

In view of the popular nonscientist notion to the contrary, scientific procedures are never truly objective. The following considerations serve to clarify this point. The decision to study a subject and take data is a human one — a subjective decision. Formulating questions to be answered is a human activity — again a subjective decision. In the scientific study of any subject there are literally hundreds of variables influencing the data and a judgment must be made on which variables should be considered — informed judgment but human judgment nonetheless. This means the scientist must set parameters on the data used and the data discarded. This is critically subjective since the data selected tends to be that which furthers a chosen position.

It may surprise nonscientists that the data-recording process itself is subjective as well. What one knows of external events is based on one’s experience; and experience, whether gained from the five senses or the intellect, is subjective, since data cannot be taken without human intervention. Even data taken and analyzed by a computer is the product of the human limitations of its programmer(s).

It should be understood that scientists are aware of the subjectivity and institute internal and external controls to counter the effects of preconceived biases. John Polkinghorne in Science and Theology, An Introduction (Fortress Press, 1998) in chapter one presents some considerations that are helpful for additional insight.

Murphy’s brief, but excellent, survey presents some general thinking about scientific work and should go a long way toward relieving the feeling of uneasiness among church leaders concerning the “hard core” nature of the scientific enterprise. Science, like theology, can be humbling.

Carl Peterson
Columbus, Ohio

On Being “Normal”
The logic Merrill Carlson uses in his letter (May/June 2006) displays another example of the misunderstanding of Scripture. His interpretation of “normal” in the heterosexual realm is placed in the same context as being “normal” in the gay or lesbian context of community / family.

Using that logical reasoning would also imply that to a group of pedophiles or thieves they would describe their behavior / lifestyle as being “normal.” I don’t think there is any reference to the Scripture being judgmental against pedophiles. So that must mean it would be okay. There is that one little commandment against stealing so the Scripture does make a “judgment” against thievery. Jesus would add to that, as compared to the Sermon on the Mount, this is not a judgmental issue, it’s a godly concern for one’s life on this earth as well as its implications for what God has designed for eternity.

Stealing is not part of the temporal or divine eternal plan. Neither is the practice of a man having sex with another man. It is normal only in the context of it being sin against God’s divine nature.

Gary Kleypas
Buckholts, Texas

A point was made and missed! Regarding [the letter] “Quoting Romans 1:26-32,” Carlson made the point that St. Paul “is exhorting them to give up their former ways of thinking and behavior.” Then, he opens the door to accept the very actions that St. Paul has just rejected in the text.

The basis for the Christian life is always in the context of repentance and change. We don’t need to focus on only sexual sins, but as St. Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11,“the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The nature of sin dominates every human life, and that sin must be confessed and repented of daily as we live life in the Lord Jesus Christ in his church.

St. Paul concludes: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11, New International Version). It is apparent that St. Paul taught the need to move on in the Christian life by means of justification and sanctification!

Roy Beutel
Fredericksburg, Virginia