A recent prayer-circular from some former Christian Union members includes two unconnected entries with a similar concern. For an Anglican friend who has just moved house and church, 'to sing lots of proper hymns again is absolutely fantastic - all that doctrine, all those good tunes!' A former Baptist church secretary reports having to resign his post then leave altogether, 'because, in the absence of a minister, the services were hijacked by a group of musicians playing a variety of loud instruments and singers singing shallow, self-centred songs'. Did you ever hear anything like it?
Well, yes. The very same week, I read in print what I have long suspected: that some musicians of the hijacking school see themselves as a new Levitical priesthood raised up by God to take charge of his church. When years ago, I first aired such thoughts, some musicians were self-effacingly quick to deny any such thing. Now, one of them has come clean. Ten years back, I read that God was 'restoring worship to his church' (that is, there were a lot of new songs around); now it seems it is only in the last five that God has actually been at work. This column will be out of date before you read it.
New priest, new popery
My impression of this new 'priesthood' arose from the extraordinary prominence given to music in so much current 'worship'. The playing and singing were squeezing out preaching, praying and the public reading of Scripture. Just as both Jewish priests and Roman Catholic ones saw themselves as vital to the whole show, including our very access to God himself, so now the music comes to dominate our gatherings, our listening and our budget. The musicians speak, dress and pose accordingly. Music becomes the new way to God's real presence; no wonder the apostles made such a hash of things. Well, here it is in print with a cluster of spuriously-applied Scriptures to back it up. These are the 'creative people', different from the rest; for a church to neglect their gifts is to risk wounding them deeply and thus opposing God.
