In Depth:  Richard Simpkin

‘P.S. Are you singing any good new songs lately?’

This is a phrase that often comes at the end of emails sent to me. I don’t know if it’s just me, but there seem to be more and more asking the same question, which is odd, because there are hundreds of songs being written every week and disseminated on the internet from all over the world.

What’s more, the theology of the songs being written is much more solid than in the mid-90s, but I’m still struggling to find new material that a normal congregation finds easy to sing. Even at the London Music Ministry Conference (which I help run) I haven’t been bowled over with confidence in the new songs we’ve presented during the ‘New songs’ session.

Whenever I get back after a holiday, I have a fear that I’m not going to be able to play the piano any more.

The piano becomes a strange box with white and black keys that I have to press down with fingers that all of a sudden feel like a pack of Cumberland sausages. It’s back to basics for me, which isn’t a bad thing as the basics is what is needed to lead a congregation musically.

Every now and then I have a pointless ding-dong with someone about nothing. Literally nothing. That is, I have an unnecessary ding-dong about words that I choose to miss out of a song. Last Sunday I chose to miss out the ‘Oh yeahs’ that appear in the chorus of Nathan Fellingham’s ‘There is a day’. My problem with the phrase is that as the righteous realise at last the full extent of the grace of God in Jesus, and as, in horror, the wicked call on the rocks to fall on them, I cannot think that ‘Oh yeah’ is for one moment an appropriate response, but then it might be that I’m proud as well as being old-fashioned — I’m the sort of person who sticks one of my own t-shirts and a belt on my six-year-old for World Book Day and tells him he’s going as Mike the Knight.

Appropriate or not

However, there’s nothing in the Bible that says that it would either be appropriate or inappropriate for Christians to shout ‘O yeah’ on the Day of Judgment. Here’s the problem: if you leave ‘Oh yeah’ in, then you are sending the message that ‘Oh yeah’ is an appropriate response for everyone. If you leave ‘Oh yeah’ out, as I did, then you are sending the message that ‘Oh yeah’ is an inappropriate response for everyone. Hence the ding-dong.

Easter seems to have been falling out of favour in recent years, as far as the number of church visitors is concerned at least.

Easter cards are also increasingly hard to find, though we’ve been able to buy chocolate eggs in Tesco’s since November.

Change is one of the things that upsets people most in the area of Christian music.

Holding to tradition is the main reason that there is such opposition to modernising music in church, especially as there are no clear instructions about musical style in the New Testament. I say that without all the necessary caveats!

One of the things I enjoy most about the question time at the London Music Ministry Conference is that I get some ideas for the next Music Exchange.

One question asked whether it was ever legitimate to use music in evangelism. The answer was (and is) an emphatic ‘yes’, but the one who answered was very careful to say that music can only be used evangelistically if it is accompanying a proclamation of the gospel. If there’s no gospel, there’s no evangelism.

Christmas, as well as being great evangelistically, is also a good time to model how to sing congregationally.

Having experienced so many other types of church music, it’s struck me that evangelical church music is very distinctively congregational, and this should be hugely attractive to visitors at our carol services, who come because they want to sing.

In response to the need to train Christian musicians to serve Bible-teaching churches, we set up a Music Apprenticeship Scheme a few years ago.

If you know of anyone with a servant-hearted love of Jesus and the Bible, and who is also a musician, here is ‘A day in the life of a church music apprentice’ to give you a flavour of what an apprenticeship might involve. The author is Andy Cowan, who now helps run the music at Christ Church Kensington in London.

I’m very much looking forward to the London Music Ministry Conference on November 17.

I’ve been reminded this month of the importance of investing in evangelical church music. An evangelical church organist had emailed me a few weeks ago, wondering why the organ is used so little in our meetings these days. One of the reasons is the style of the songs that are being written, which is hard (but definitely possible) to make work on the organ. Another is that evangelical organists are a rare breed.

Every term, about 20 of us get together to keep each other sharp on an area of theology to do with church music.

We’re mostly full-time church musicians, though there are a few pastors who come along too, who help keep our feet on the ground. Last term we were very privileged to have David Cook from Sydney, who came to speak to us. I wish I could say that he came all the way to London just for us, but he didn’t — we just managed to grab him in between two other speaking engagements that day.

At the beginning of July just under 40 professional performance artists came to our house for a barbecue.

Mostly musicians, with a couple of actors, they were from a wide variety of churches and came with different levels of Christian maturity, some having been drifting spiritually. I spent the morning finishing off preparing a short talk on Philippians 3 for the evening, and praying for the rain to stay away. The rain didn’t stay away, but amazingly we were able to fit all 38 of us in our kitchen for the talk.

I’ve had a go when no one was looking, but I can’t play the drums.

I have no rhythm and no co-ordination between my feet and arms, which may seem strange as I was trained as an organist. Hmmm, maybe I’m not a very good organist either, but everyone’s been too nice to tell me.

A privilege of being involved in a central London church is mixing with such a diversity of people from countless backgrounds and races.

I’ve witnessed the baptisms of people into Christ from Islamic, Jewish and Hindu cultures, and I know that this isn’t happening just in London, but throughout the UK.

CHRISTIAN MUSIC
A global history
By Tim Dowley. Lion. 246 pages. £20.00
ISBN 978 0 745 953 243

The book aims to give a ‘comprehensive coverage of the history of worship music, from ancient times to the present day’.

Summer is just around the corner. I am very much looking forward to doing things with my family that I don’t get to do in term-time — wearing shorts, eating Coco Pops, doing roly-polies down hills, foisting our two boys on the in-laws. I think the word ‘foist’ must have been invented with in-laws in mind — it seems to fit perfectly the action of ‘encouraging good relations between grandchildren and grandparents’.

Summer can also feel slightly bitty, especially if holidays are mixed in with helping on a Christian camp, attending weddings or going to the Olympics (I failed in my application for family tickets to the second round of the women’s weight-lifting, so no Olympics for me this century then). All this summer activity means a lot of coming and going through July and August, which is tough for churches musically, as in my experience musicians do more going than coming.

I don’t write a blog. If I did write, this would be a perfect week to include personal anecdotes about things going on in my life that I’d love to tell everyone even if they didn’t want to know. That’s what a blog’s for, isn’t it?

Bike and Boris

The new tumble drier went on the blink and had to be fixed twice. Admittedly I’d bought it at a heavily knocked-down price from eBay. At the same time, our G-Wiz (which we use for the school run) has been kept in for a service for two weeks to have work done on it which took about ten minutes. A lack of car means that I’ve been cycling our five-year-old to school on the back of a tandem through the City during rush hour. Once, we met Boris Johnson at the traffic lights on London Bridge, and he thought the contraption was, ‘brilliant, brilliant, absolutely brilliant’. Brilliant it may be, but Ollie can’t reach the pedals yet, so it’s been pretty hard going, not helped by his suggestion of taking his encyclopaedia in for Show-and-Tell.

You’ve been a member of a choral society for some years. You’re asked to sing about lecherous abbots and fornication. What do you do?

Making your decision isn’t helped by the fact that the words are mostly in Latin, so no one (probably including you) knows what they mean. Furthermore, the piece is Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, one of the most popular works for audiences, and therefore a staple in any choral society’s repertoire. Making a fuss about it is going to make you look like a right prude.

When I spoke to some Christian organ scholars from Cambridge last June, one of their main questions was what to do when asked to provide music for heresy.

Many of us don't have to face this issue very often, as in God's grace we are working in churches where the pastor wants his congregation to sing truth. Every now and then, when we come across a line in a song with which we disagree, we can simply omit to sing that line, and then write a gracious note to the pastor about the concern. However, some of us sing in choral societies where we are asked to sing things with which we are uncomfortable.

I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks replying to a gracious letter about the use of instruments in church.

For about 800 years the majority view among the church fathers was that in the congregational meeting the only singing permitted was of unaccompanied Psalms. This view is still held today by those who hold to something known as the regulative principle — which stipulates that ‘God may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture’ (from The Westminster Confession).

Sometimes it takes a long time to get feedback from articles I write.

These days the accessibility of the internet means that responses are becoming a more common feature — and to articles I’ve even forgotten I wrote!

I’ve just been in a long and very useful email discussion about the use of instruments in church meetings.

I’ve had a number of emails about this in the past, and I’m glad that I have the opportunity to give the subject a bit more airtime. The last discussion involved a sentence that I used in my article in the August issue of EN (page 20) on emotional manipulation through music, where I stated: ‘God has given us music that moves our hearts not just to remember truths, but to respond emotionally to them’. I then quoted Psalm 92.4 (‘…at the works of your hands I sing for joy’, ESV). I’m sorry for any confusion, especially to the writer of the email I got in response, who picked me up on my use of the word ‘music’ in regards to that verse. The writer was concerned that I was saying that an instrumental accompaniment of a song was needed to help us respond emotionally to the truths of God. What I should have said is that ‘God has given us the gift of singing, which moves our hearts…’.

In the second instalment of my ‘bad answers to perfectly good questions’ series, I’m recalling a question I was asked at the last Music Ministry Conference about lateness at rehearsals.

This may seem a little trivial, but consistent lateness betrays more serious problems with discipline and service. It follows then that, if we’ve been given responsibility for rehearsing church musicians, the job involves much more than just playing the right notes. Rehearsals are another chance that God gives us to learn Christ and to serve his people.

A couple of months ago, I was sitting on a panel answering questions at the London Music Ministry Conference.

I never answer questions very well, but those times always give me a chance to explain in these articles what I would have liked to have said on the panel if I’d have had the time or clarity of mind.

What? Two spirits? Don’t worry, I’m not selling out to heresy! It’s just that the Bible says that there are two spirits at work in the hearts of Christians — the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. The Holy Spirit gives life as he breathes the Word of God into our hearts, the human spirit acts in response to the Word revealed by the Holy Spirit. The two spirits couldn’t be more different.

The Holy Spirit is God, is therefore perfect and is in sovereign control. Our human spirits, by contrast, are imperfect, they are responsive rather than sovereign, and each person’s human spirit responds differently (and sometimes inconsistently) to different stimuli. For example, Hednesford Town get knocked out on penalties by Salisbury City in the final of the Zamaretto league play-offs. My human spirit — despair; Salisbury City supporter’s human spirit — joy (presumably, though I haven’t met a Salisbury City supporter).

Are you a pastor who is frustrated with musicians?

Are you a church musician who’s had another ding-dong with your pastor? Are you a congregation member who can’t sing and is wondering what all the fuss is about?

Sitting on my desk at the moment are three crackingly good job descriptions for church musician roles in London churches.

I don’t think that they’ve arrived on my desk because those churches want me to do the job. If so, I don’t think I’d be anywhere near making the grade. I’d also like to reassure my boss that I’m not thinking of leaving — unless, of course, he put those job descriptions on my desk! I presume that the job descriptions are there because the usual advertising channels have failed to attract many suitable candidates.

Myth busting is very popular these days. Last year, MythBusters from the TV busted the myth that ‘a man can attach 400 fireworks to himself, launch off a ramp, fly over 150 feet, and land safely in a lake’. I love evening TV.

This month’s article is going to be a myth-buster. Here’s the myth: music can split a church in two.

Now here’s a subject that I’m totally out of my depth on — dancing. I’m only tackling this subject because I was given a questionnaire by a dance student who was doing a dissertation on dancing in worship.

The questions were about ‘the appropriateness of dancing within the church and whether it is a suitable form of corporate worship’. Dancing in the Bible is nearly always linked with music, which is why I thought it appropriate to include it in this column. Once I’d taken my head out of the sand and bravely filled in my questionnaire, I was grateful to the student for coaxing me out of my comfort zone.

Coming out of the end of carol service season (yes, I’m writing February’s article with four out of 17 carol services still to go), I’m reflecting on how easy it is for us musicians to become lazy in our evangelism. We love putting on or serving at evangelistic events, but we’re not so keen to do the hard graft of talking about Jesus to those who come to those events.

As musicians we know that we can make or break an evangelistic event (notwithstanding the sovereignty of God!) — certainly the case with carol services, which would be slightly dull without music. The trouble is that we musicians tend to kid ourselves that we don’t really need to be involved in evangelism because we ‘do the music’. In fact, sometimes we even like to think that our music is our evangelism.

WHY JOHNNY CAN’T SING HYMNS

How pop culture rewrote the hymnal

In the next few weeks, tens of thousands of visitors will be turning up to carol services for their yearly dose of feel-good religion all over the country.

We’ve been studying 2 Corinthians in our Bible study group this term, and I’ve been struck by the privilege we all have as Christians as we hold the treasure of the gospel message in our hearts. There is strong incarnation language in 2 Corinthians 4.6, where Paul talks about the glory of God: ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’.

I am a musical ignoramus. For those who are intimately acquainted with the hymns of the ‘Golden Bells’ era, please don’t read this article — it will cause you to say, ‘that’s what I’ve wanted these young upstarts to realise all along’. I’m now over 40, but I still feel like a young upstart, even if I don’t look it.

For those who are more used to a Dudley-Smith/Kendrick/Townend/Getty repertoire, I’m happy to go back in time with you to re-discover some classics that have disappeared from our modern-day song lists.

If you think that writing about Christmas in October is a bit early, it’s even worse for me — I’m writing at the beginning of September, I’ve just dropped off Ollie for his first day at school, the sun’s still trying to shine and I’m still in shorts.

As musicians, Christmas can take us by surprise, despite all the early warning signals in Tesco’s. Writing this article has prompted me to look in my diary and I’ve noticed with horror that I’ve already got 13 carol services booked in for this December — six of them are over two days, so this term I’m determined that I’m going to be ready! Also, I know that at the end of a long term I’ve got to have enough energy in the tank to survive the Christmas season. The key? Be prepared! I was a cub scout with the 1st Hednesford Pack, and though I was never a sixer, or even a seconder, I remember the motto well, even if I haven’t always heeded it.

We’re still on the solo instrument trail this month. I said that I’d give some specific tips for different instruments, so that’s what I’ll do.

Apologies before I begin that you may find this extremely patronising, especially when I get to your instrument. Sorry.

My last article was all about guitars, organs and pianos. As they are instruments that are probably the most effective in leading congregational singing they always get the most attention (along with singers).

Instruments that are often overlooked are some of the more orchestral ones — violins, cellos, trumpets, vuvuzelas, etc. How do they fit in with a choir/organ set up, or with a guitar-led band?

I’ve been dwelling on one of the questions posed to the panel at the last London Music Ministry Conference. The question was (as far as I remember) about the fact that we hadn’t used the organ or the grand piano during the day, and what the future holds for those two instruments.

It got me thinking. Nearly all contemporary bands are now guitar-led rather than piano-led, while an electric keyboard is used (if used at all) simply to provide a background wash of sound, or as a link in between songs. The organ, piano and guitar have the distinction of being the only instruments in their family (respectively wind, percussion and string) that can provide chords easily enough to accompany congregational singing.

I’ve always appreciated the importance of the P.A. operator’s job, and now that our system is on its last legs, I’m even more convinced that those who work the sound are real unsung heroes and heroines.

P.A. operators (real ones — like those who wear dark clothes and black trainers) are always there. They pick up all the balls that have been dropped by everyone else, and they have the wonderful inability to say ‘no’. They’re like AA men — if there’s a problem, it’s more than their pride’s worth to give up on the job. I was speaking at a jazz event last year, where, with an hour to go, there was no P.A. system, no drum kit and, of course, no musicians, as they don’t ‘do’ setting up. All the shops had closed, so there was no chance of hiring any equipment. Enter Rhodri (yes, the real article — all in black, long hair and beard), who single-handedly rigged up a whole system by banging on the sound shop door till the manager opened up. He then found bits of drum kit from around the place, and with five minutes to spare we were ready to go. Everybody needs a Rhodri.

‘At our church, we’ve got a wonderful pianist who’s got a diploma you know. We’ve also got an opera singer, la de da.’

‘Church musician one-up-man-ship’ is one of those games many of us would love to be able to play. ‘Poor St. Albert’s — they have to get by with someone who’s only got grade 6. How terribly mediocre.’ The game is all a bit of a waste of time though, as one of the things you learn doing a job like mine is that there is a difference of skills between trained classical musicians and church musicians. I’m a living example of someone who mistakenly thought that having grade 8 on the piano would set me up as a really good church musician (though maybe that’s partly because I only got a merit).

When I’m introduced as a church musician, the first question I get asked is, ‘Is that a full-time job?’ Well, as I only work one day a week, here’s what I did last Sunday.

7.45 Breakfast and Match of the Day with Philly (my wife) and the boys (Ollie, 3 and Charlie, 1).

Receiving feedback is a common experience for all church musicians. I’ve said in a previous article that the feedback I take seriously is from wise, godly people, and those who are in the habit of bringing guests to meetings. These people always have their minds fixed on serving others and not themselves.

However, dealing with the feedback of those who are simply looking for their own needs to be met is a delicate process. This is because their feedback is often very subjective, and is sometimes quite emotionally manipulative, but also they are feeding back to musicians who have problems dealing with their own emotions, and are equally manipulative!

If you’re like me it’s easy to get the post-convention blues.

Christian conventions always produce songs that divide opinion. Conventions are very often used by musicians to sell songs to people, and many who come back from those meetings try and convince their own musicians and pastors to sing the songs they’ve just learnt. ‘It was awesome. The words were great. The place rocked. I loved it. We must sing it here.’

I’ve been very encouraged that churches are planning to use music events as part of A Passion for Life.

I’m off to Morden in South London on Saturday to be interviewed at a concert which in past years has been simply that — a concert. The event has proved very popular, so I’m pleased that the organisers have wanted to include some gospel content to challenge the audience to think about Jesus. An evening like this is pretty easy to prepare and doesn’t create a lot of mess, so for those who thought they could never organise a musical bash, here’s a simple recipe for putting on a top gig.

Rotas. Like them? Loathe them? I’m not a fan, but there are obviously some good reasons for having them.

Rotas are good because they look tidy. I love the satisfaction of seeing neat little boxes filled with dates and names, all left-justified, and each in bold showing that the person has confirmed.

This is a final instalment on congregational singing (until I change my mind in a few years’ time).

Over the summer I’ve been wondering how to encourage our congregation to sing more heartily. This is partly because the topic is at the forefront of my mind at the moment, but also because of my pride: I’m still smarting after two people in the 14 years I’ve worked here have said that their congregations sing better than the one I run music for. I’m sure that there are many congregations that sing better than St. Helen’s (not that it’s a competition), and both of the people who spoke up were from Welsh churches, which is a small consolation for me, but it still hurts.

I’ve just returned from helping on a Christian holiday party, where I was given the week off providing music for the main meetings.

For once I could enjoy just singing without having to worry about intros, links, keys, bridges, split fingernails and wobbly music stands. It reminded me that we need to keep it simple, so here it is — the main thing we need to focus on when singing: sing to your heavenly Father and sing to each other.

It’s the annual reggae festival in the house behind us. It’s a very happy atmosphere — lots of singing, lots of laughter, all their children are running wild, and even the local dogs are joining in with the noise.

The trouble is, it’s nearly one o’clock in the morning and, if it’s anything like last year, the night is still young, so the happiness is confined to a very small, but very committed section of our street. Still, it gives me a good opportunity to get this article written ahead of my monthly deadline. The congregation at St. Helen’s will just have to suffer me playing with my eyes half shut tomorrow morning. Either that, or they’ll get a reggae version of ‘Amazing grace’, which I reckon might work quite well...

These last few weeks have been very good for my humility and prayer-life. We’ve recently started a new congregation, which meets in the middle of the afternoon.

The congregation is made up of a mixture of people who have moved from the morning and evening meetings, which had become too full. It’s been wonderful seeing how people have been so keen to help prepare food, welcome and serve on all the various teams.

The Christian music scene is in a strange place at the moment. I wrote last year that one of the reasons congregational singing is in decline is that songwriters were writing more for an audience than for a congregation. ‘Song writers have got into the habit of writing for the market or label rather than for the people of God.’

The reason for this is straightforward. As soon as you create a music label, you quickly have to rely on the market which buys in to your label. This means that it becomes more important to write songs which ‘sell’ well than ones which congregations actually enjoy singing together. It also creates a ‘pop chart’ culture, whereby each song has its day in the sun until tastes change. You then have to write another song, which you hope can sustain the momentum of the label. In my experience, songwriters tend to do this using the ‘blunderbuss’ technique, whereby we’re blasted by a load of second-rate songs in the hope that one finds the target.

One of the great things about being a church musician is that you rarely have to make a decision about some of the more important things that happen in the church meeting.

On the occasions that a decision is needed on the spur of the moment (and you make the wrong one) you can always pass the buck to the pastor of the congregation, as he’s the one ultimately in charge. For example. ‘When we share the peace, should we just shake hands or give each other a kiss?’ someone asks. ‘Don’t ask me — I’m just the piano player’, I reply. Aaah, all responsibility is abdicated.

LIFESONG
Bible-centred Worship for the Emerging Congregation
By Oliver Claassen. Christian Focus. 134 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-84550-373-4

The book aims to give a biblical focus to the purpose of the Christian meeting.

I’m having to change my mind about something at the moment, which is always uncomfortable, but I’m encouraged that at least I’m not as stuck in the mud as I often think I appear.

I wrote an article last year moaning that many of today’s songwriters write songs more for an audience than a congregation. Their songs sound good on CD, YouTube or MP3, but are often difficult to sing by congregations and even more difficult to play by musicians. Even I get intimidated by some songs that take up three or more pages of sheet music, and have so much syncopation that it’s difficult to tell what are notes and what are bits of squashed daddy long-legs.

There’s a wide range of views among evangelicals about the purpose of congregational singing.

Some say that we should sing only to engage with God and to worship him. Others say that congregational singing is all about mutual encouragement and teaching (we don’t sing to worship God — instead, we ‘go out’ at the end of our meetings to worship the Lord). I’m sure that not many people hold strictly to these two extremes, but the way some of our meetings are run often betrays a leaning towards one or the other. Those who hold to the ‘teaching’ view are always very careful about the theology that is sung, but the singing can often be dry, lifeless and clinical, and there can seem to be no acknowledgement of the presence of Jesus. Those who hold to the ‘worship’ view (in my experience) are often more exuberant or sensitive, but less discerning about doctrine. The presence of Jesus is all-important, but everyone is singing in their own little bubble, unaware of their brothers and sisters around them, who need to be encouraged and built up as a body.

Rehearsals are a very good way of serving each other as Christian musicians. However, many people dread rehearsals because they can bring out the worst in artistic egos.

A music teacher or professional being bossed around by a less competent church music director can be a recipe for disaster, but if the rehearsal is run in the right manner it can be a great opportunity to learn how to serve as equally valuable members of God’s family. We may have different gifts and abilities, but we should all have the same attitude of service (1 Corinthians 12).

‘As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 4.10-11, ESV).

Just last November we put on an evangelistic concert at St. Helen’s. We try and do one of these concerts once a year. God has brought some professional musicians to us over the years, along with some music students, so it’s not a hard event to put on musically, because the players and singers can just perform some of the material they are working on at the time.

‘Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5.19, NIV).

I often ask friends for issues to tackle in this column, and every now and then a few people give me the same idea independently. This month I’d like to thank three good friends — John Pearce, Jon Ward and Andrew Joyce for prompting my brain to splutter into at least a bit of life on a grey Monday morning in November. A concern of theirs and of mine is about the nature of the words we sing to God and each other as Christians.

There have been many responses to an article written by Mike Raiter from Australia about the death of congregational singing¹.

Some of these writers have pointed the finger at the singability of contemporary songs. One of those fingers was mine. Others have mentioned the lack of skilled musicians. Recently there have been some who have questioned the need for musicians at all. Here are some quotes from some who responded:

Weddings provide great opportunities for hairy music moments — those instances which rarely happen in a normal church meeting, but which occur more often at weddings because of factors like the involvement of less experienced musicians and slightly crazy musical requests.

I had one of my hairiest wedding music moments this summer at a wedding I wasn’t even supposed to be playing at. I’d thought it was quite strange when the visiting band stood up a couple of minutes before the entrance of the bride to play ‘La rejouissance’ from Handel’s Fireworks Music. I wasn’t sure how Handel was going to mix with electric guitars so I sidled up to the keyboard player and asked him if he was playing it from the piano. ‘No’, he said, ‘you’re playing it on the organ’.

I’m just coming to the end of the wedding season here at St. Helen’s.

The number of weddings that take place each year seems to go in waves. Two years ago there were three or four over the whole summer; this year I’ve done 11 in under two months. So I thought it would be worth writing down some reflections that may help those thinking about the music for weddings during the coming year.

Having to write this monthly article is a great way of making me think through some of the issues I confront from time to time. I hope that the Music Exchange is useful to churches and musicians, but the dreaded monthly deadline certainly helps me to analyse and give focus to my own thinking.

These days there seem to be lots of requests for congregational singing to be lively. A call to liveliness would be good if it meant a call to singing full of life, but mostly the calls are to be more up beat and rocky. I can only think that these requests come because of a genuine desire to be cheered up when we sing, which is not a bad thing in itself. It’s good to be cheered up by our singing — a response of real Christian joy is exactly what we’re aiming for as musicians, but my argument in this article is that Christian joy is not necessarily achieved by lively or rocky music.

Music and youth groups are a tricky combination — getting young people to take singing seriously can be more trouble than it’s worth, so should we be encouraging youth groups to sing at all?

First I’d like to say a resounding ‘Yes’, and then (as ever) lay out some reservations, being a reserved type of chap.

There have been a few articles in the evangelical press recently about the demise of congregational singing. I was told only a few weeks ago that the singing at St. Helen’s (where I run the music) is dreadful.

I think our singing is not bad as it goes, but the person who made the comment was Welsh, so there are different expectations. That’s my excuse anyway.

‘To God’s elect, strangers in the world... who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood’ (1 Peter 1.1-2, NIV).

I’m back on the godliness trail.

1 Peter is the book I encourage all the professional musicians I work with to read when on tour or away from Christian fellowship for extended periods of time. It’s a letter which is full of assurance as to our identity in Christ and our hope in heaven, while at the same time providing a rich dose of realism as to the world we live in. Peter says that we are loved by God, our home is in heaven, but presently we are strangers in a perishing world.

I’m very privileged to work with a group of Christian professional musicians. They’re a huge encouragement to me as I see God strengthen them to stand for him in a tough world.

One of the greatest encouragements was sitting with one of them as he took a call from the London Symphony Orchestra. Offers of work from the LSO are the dream of any young musician starting out in the profession. He wrote down the dates and then ended the call. Checking his diary, he noticed that one of the concerts was on the same date that his Bible study group was going away for the weekend. Without hesitating, he crossed the dates out. He had a prior and more important engagement — to be among his Christian brothers and sisters listening to the words of Jesus.

At the start of the year we’ve been focussing as a church on the importance of godliness. It’s a much-needed tonic after Christmas. We’ve been learning that Jesus is our perfect model, but he’s also our source of godliness as well as being the reason we strive for purity.

For some reason though, musicians often seem to miss their calling to godliness. Newspaper stories about organists going off with vicars’ wives have dried up, not because organists no longer go off with vicars’ wives, but because it’s no longer news — it happens all the time. Musicians and godliness don’t often go hand in hand. Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), whose anthems are regularly sung in cathedrals throughout the land, was a drunk, as well as being a ‘notorious swearer and blasphemer’.

It’s wonderful that God has been sending evangelicals into churches that for generations have been starved of good Bible teaching. It’s less heartening to hear of the problems that accompany the change in emphasis.

More often than not, evangelicals move into parishes that have been focused on the traditional elements of liturgy and choral music. In this tradition the organist is in a very powerful position. Though the ‘priest’ provides the words of the liturgy, the organist provides the spirit of the liturgy by his/her playing and the music of the choir. Much of the choir’s repertoire will be almost Catholic in its theology, but emphasis is less on theology, more on the musical interpretation of the liturgy.

Over the years I’ve met lots of different types of church musician who have humbled me, cheered me up, or have exasperated me. Here are some of them.

You may recognise them. If so, it’s not the same person I’m thinking of (I hope). This article may not be much use, but it’s November at the time of writing and I did Christmas last month, so I reckon it’s time for some free style. If I start with me first, at least I’m casting the first stone at myself!

It’s the beginning of October as I write this, but in a bid to out-do Tesco I’m trying to get all Christmassy.

I know that many like to think far ahead so that they can be fully prepared for December. This article’s for them. It’s also an alarm call to people like me, who wake up in a cold sweat a week before the first carol service with no ideas, and musicians who have already gone on holiday, not returning till mid-January.

Chris Hayward was the first person I met who convinced me that it was possible to be an evangelical whilst being dedicated to music.

Chris oversaw the music at the Round Church in Cambridge when I first came across him. My immediate reaction to him was deep and selfish jealousy. This was because I heard him as a musician before I met him as a person. I was jealous that, though he was primarily an oboist, his keyboard skills far outshone mine, even though I was an organ scholar at the time. He used to use a spectacular ‘fill’ in the breaks between verses, which I sweated for hours to try and copy. God had given him a very natural musical ability.

There is a mission field that I’ve always struggled to know how to reach with the gospel. It’s made up of what I call ‘choral atheists’.

These are people who belong to church choirs or choral societies, they sing Christ-centred works like Bach’s Matthew Passion or Handel’s Messiah, and yet they don’t believe a word of what they sing. To be honest, I find that choral atheists are more hardened to the gospel than anyone else I meet. Just as hardened are the non-believers who like to listen to this music, which, though I don’t like the definition, I’ll refer to as sacred music.

Every now and then I walk into work. Usually it’s because I’ve been too lazy to cycle home the night before.

Occasionally, like last week, it’s because someone else has borrowed my bike in a permanent non-contractual arrangement. This time, the borrower was kind enough to leave my bike lock neatly propped up against the side of the church building. I don’t know if the circulation of Evangelicals Now reaches bike thieves, but if the borrower is reading this, I’d be interested to know if you’ve been able to get it into ninth gear. I never could. Also, the saddle chafes when it rains.

Is our singing in Christian meetings Word ministry or not? I would like to propose that if our singing reflects the pattern of biblical songs, where the deep truths of God are expressed, then it is indeed Word ministry. All the song writers in the Bible are clearly committed to the communication of God’s Word.

I would also like to suggest that, if singing biblical truth in church meetings is counted as Word ministry, we would avoid a lot of misunderstanding about the place of music in Christian worship. Here are some of the consequences of divorcing the singing of God’s Word from Word ministry.

How much are we supposed to enjoy ourselves when we sing in a Christian meeting? As evangelicals, our fear of going over the top with our emotions often leaves us bereft of any emotion at all.

We sing because they that’s what they did in the New Testament Christian gathering, so it must be important. Don’t know why it’s important, but better do it anyway.

‘And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him’ (Colossians 3.17, ESV).

I’ve just had one of the most humbling experiences of my life. On the day before the operation to remove our son’s liver tumour, the surgeon said, ‘I will treat him as if he were my own son’. Though he’d never met Ollie, he said that he knew every detail of the inside of his body back-to-front from studying the various scans. Complete mastery of the profession, and dedication for someone he had never met and may never see again.

The issue of musical style is a tricky one for music co-ordinators and pastors alike. I’m often asked, ‘How do you cater for lots of different ages and tastes without compromising on depth and cohesion?’ In short, how do you please everybody without losing the plot?

The simple answer is that it’s impossible to get it right, because there are as many tastes as there are people in the world, and all of them have a very clear idea of what is appropriate and what isn’t. However, that shouldn’t discourage us from trying.

It’s customary for a writer to say how much of a fraud he or she feels when talking about prayer, so here’s my bit: I’m feeble and faithless.

I’ve wanted to write this article ever since reading Christopher Ash’s in The Briefing (Issue 331). This article (particularly the words of Samuel, ‘Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you’, 1 Samuel 12.23, ESV) convicted me again of the central place that prayer has in every sphere of Christian ministry, alongside the preaching of the Word.

WHAT IS WORSHIP? (DVD)

Vineyard Worship Resources

I know I’m a real sucker for generalisations, but one of the things you notice when you’ve grown up in the music world is that certain instruments encourage distinctive characteristics in the people who play them. It’s a bit like dog owners who start to resemble their pets (though I’m not implying that pianists have three legs and are hard to wheel around).

I only started thinking about this when I had to teach a bunch of 13-year-olds about orchestras. I was confident I had enough material to last 40 minutes, but having gone through all the different families of instruments and where they sit, the clock showed that I’d still got half an hour to kill. So I started talking about the sort of people who played all the different instruments, and what they’re like.

I’ve had a change of heart on what to write about this month. The article I had written can wait for a bit, because I’ve just been struck by something I found on the internet.

I do a certain amount of work among Christian professional musicians in London, some of whom are in bands. The internet is very useful to them, because you can create a platform for your music for free without having to hire in agents and managers. As soon as your blog page comes up, your music plays automatically, and anyone from all over the world can listen and comment. Those listeners can then piggy-back on your page by saying how great they think your music is, thereby attracting others to listen to their music too. These people are then known as your ‘friends’.

Imagine: it’s February, it’s cold, it’s four minutes to ten, we’re all tired, and, horror of horrors, the musician hasn’t turned up. Maybe he’s got the flu; maybe she’s jammed her finger in the food mixer; maybe he’s got the hump because they said he played too slow last week.

What to do? How about putting on a CD and everyone singing along to that? Cracking idea — congregational Karaoke! The great thing about CDs is that they can’t get ill, they’re not susceptible to kitchen blunders, and all you have to do to make them go faster is shove a few more volts through the system (though I reckon this should be just as effective on a piano player).

The relationship between the pastor and music co-ordinator is often a rocky one. Both can feel threatened by the other for different reasons.

The pastor is the boss, and in theory has the power to change the musical make-up of a church at a stroke — the musician will feel that his position is most shaky the first few months after the arrival of a new incumbent.

I’m very pleased to announce the arrival of Oliver George Simpkin on May 27. 8 lbs. and rising. Why give The Times all my money when I can announce his birth for free in Evangelicals Now?! I’d also like to announce that Oliver has already been given his first tambourine. Philly and I are hoping that it will be his last. No kazoos either, please.

At the start of the academic year, I asked for prayer for students at the various music colleges. This is a mission field in which we’ve seen three or four new births this year. We’re full of praise because Jesus has proved himself powerful to save young men and women as they’ve heard and believed the gospel. With all the pressures they face, we have had to rely on the power of the Word of God to be brought home to their hearts by the Holy Spirit. We’ve been humbled by our own weaknesses in proclaiming that gospel, but Jesus has shown his strength through our weaknesses time after time. He is faithful to his promises to save.

Musicians, by nature, are often quite absent-minded and disorganised. If you are a musician, you may be the exception to the rule. Most of us, though, have had some life-defining moments when our disorganisation has caught up with us. I say life-defining because our mess-ups are nearly always in the public eye, and like everyone else, we fear the judgement of man more than God.

I thought I’d suggest an ‘alternative church musician’s check-list’ so that we could be a little more on top of our game. The items included in the check-list are there because I have been caught out on each one, so I’m doing this for me as much as anyone else.

As I go around doing the Worship Conference, the questions that people ask invariably give me an idea for an article. I’ve just been to Latvia (I can’t name-drop, so I might as well place-drop) and met a small but faithful group of Christians who are standing for the truth in a largely secular society. The other thing I noticed about Latvians is that they still clap when an aeroplane lands.

During one of the sessions we took time to analyse the content of some contemporary songs, and we noticed that many of them don’t even mention Jesus or God, so focussed are they on expressing individual sentiments. This gave rise to the question, ‘Is there a difference between the songs we sing on our own to Jesus in private and the songs we sing together as a body of believers?’

This article’s not going to require much brainpower, but this car theme’s been going round my head for a few weeks, so I needed to get it off my chest.

Thank you to Doug Mavay for suggesting I did something on teaching new songs.

Sorry to those who like to read about something different each month, but, on the rare occasion when someone writes in, I like to respond, especially if it helps me get clearer about an issue.

I want to thank Ian and Irene Herring for their response to the last article on prophetic worship — I’m glad to have at least put the phenomenon on the map as an issue we need to engage with. They seem to have had much more first-hand experience of this than me, so it was very helpful to have their insights.

‘Prophetic worship’ is a phrase that is used commonly these days among Christian musicians.

I wish I could nail down exactly what is meant by prophetic worship. I’ve been to conferences where the phrase has been used, read books about it, and been on the internet to find definitions of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that prophetic worship is considered to be something that everyone should be involved with, but no one actually knows what it is.

I don’t know what you think of doing solo musical items in a congregational meeting. I blow hot and cold on the issue.

I used to organise a lot more solo stuff, but recently (other than Christmas and Good Friday), I can only remember doing one item in the last year.

It’s that merry season of good tidings and cheer, when ye olde carolling chestnuts deck our halls with boughs of holly on a cold and frosty morning.

Here’s a yule log-tide plea to keep Christ central among all the celebrations and carol medleys that make up the bulk of our Christmas invitation services. I managed to miss Jesus out from the first sentence of this article completely, but I still reckon it brought out that Chrissy tingle.

I’m writing this article in the foyer of the Royal College of Music. I’m here because I help out a little bit at the various London music college Christian Unions. There’s a new influx of freshers filing past me from every nation, and the confident, striding swagger has been genetically inherited from the older years.

I’m always taken aback by the way these young people have such huge expectations, and have such an unrealistic view of their own significance. And yet, at the same time, one of their biggest problems is low self-esteem. All these confident faces are the faces of performers. The performances are very professional, and they are successful in masking the truth that they are petrified of failure. What their performances do reveal, however, is the fact that they have exchanged the worship of their Creator with the worship of created things — music, fame, themselves. This is mostly because of the prevailing ‘success’ culture within the music world — if you’re not the best, then you’re a failure. No one is being groomed to play second fiddle.

I’ve just been on my song-shopping spree, and have come back with a couple of new books which have some singable songs in.

The Source 3 (published by Kevin Mayhew) has most of the latest, and Worship Experience New Songs 2005-06 (published by Kingsway) has the new Getty/Townend, ‘Oh, to see the dawn’, which I think is worth the price of the book in itself.

‘Pick your battles’ is a phrase that has helped me stay relatively sane over the last ten years.

Most musicians have plenty of battles to fight, as have pastors (as they battle with their musicians). Some are important to fight, but most are matters of taste, so, although I get easily wound up by petty issues, it’s worth remembering that that’s all they are.

Every now and then, over the summer, I go ‘grazing’ for new songs before the influx of students in September.

Are you, like me, always on the look-out for new songs that are suitable for congregational use?

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel’ (Galatians 1.6, ESV).

If you are involved in youth work at the moment, or getting ready for holiday clubs or summer camps, please, please, please don’t listen to the lies that are around at the moment. These lies teach that the Word of God is not enough to get young people to engage with God. They say that we must work out where young people are at ‘in worship’ before they can know God. They say that kids of today are so worldly wise that we must help them make sense of their world before they can make sense of God.

I’ve been thinking about how to help our congregations sing more heartily. I find that if the congregation isn’t singing well, then I tend to blame them, the weather or general morale (as I did last month — oops!).

Here are some ideas that people often think are solutions to the problem:

Why is the quality of singing in English churches so unpredictable? On one Sunday morning, I can have mediocre musical accompaniment with a couple of singers with colds, and the congregation sings like the Telstra stadium at the end of the World Cup in Sydney.

The next Sunday morning I can pull out all the stops musically, stick some tub-thumping tunes on the sheet, and the singing sounds like Twickenham would if England ever lost a rugby match against Germany.

Easter is a time when music plays an important role in gospel presentation. Choral societies everywhere are performing ‘passions’ and other crucifixion-centred oratorios.

Most of us will still be getting music ready for the Easter weekend in our churches too. The ability of music to stir our hearts to reflect on the Easter events can be very powerful indeed.

I've just been on a student conference, where the speaker took us back to Scripture to encourage us to live in the light of the end times. I'm still smarting from the old joke, 'If you don't know what eschatology means, it's not the end of the world', but the students seemed to appreciate it.

What struck me is that Jesus is very clear about the physical nature of our resurrection: new bodies, new heavens, new earth, a city, meeting Jesus in the air, the throne, seeing God as he really is. Do I believe Jesus's promises about Heaven? Yes. Then Heaven exists, and I'm going there to be with Jesus for eternity. The physical decay that we see all around us drives us to hope in the physical perfection and eternal security that is ours in Christ. I'm so looking forward to Heaven. At the same time, however, the Holy Spirit also convicted me of the physical horror of Hell, and the deep terror of meeting God without a Saviour. The lake of fire, the gnashing of teeth, the worm that never dies. Do I believe Jesus's promises about Hell? Yes. Then Hell exists, and by the grace of Jesus, I have been plucked from the fire.

Mission and music

February and March seem to be a big time of year for missions. Churches, University and School Christian Unions all over the country put on talks, events, dinners, and 'grill-a-Christians' to get their guests of wide-ranging tastes in earshot of the gospel.

Accompanying those events, or even integral to them, will be the use of music. Whether in the background during the event, or up front in a classical concert or jazz night, music can play a big part in breaking down cultural barriers so that the culturally uncomfortable message of the gospel can be heard. Many great evangelists have used music to great effect. Dwight Moody and Billy Graham are the two most famous examples.

This article has been inspired to a certain extent by Nick Page's book, And now let's move into a time of nonsense, which I've reviewed in this EN (page 29).

The book has been written as a plea for modern song-writers to give us songs which use the highly-crafted techniques of historic hymnody while also appealing to a contemporary culture.

Christmas stocking

This article is going to be a bit like a Christmas stocking - a few things chucked in, some of them boring but useful; some interesting but useless; or a combination of the above.

That word produces any number of reactions, all dressed up as a yawn. One yawn comes from the conscientious administrator who has to block out a day or two to fill out the returns booklet. Another yawn comes from the person who knows nothing about it and doesn't really care. Another comes from someone writing an article about it, and another from the reader of that article.

Whatever we think about copyright, the law has certainly tightened up on this over the last few years and I' m pretty sure that many churches are (in most cases unwittingly) breaking that law. As gospel-loving Christians we need to be subject to the authorities on this.

After this year's Evangelical Ministry Assembly, one of the questions that threw up a bit of discussion was whether we should ask non-Christian musicians to play or sing in our meetings.

I'll be up-front and admit that I am not keen, but the Bible doesn't stipulate either way, so I'm happy to have my opinion changed (actually that's not true - I'm a sensitive artistic type, so I'm prone to take any challenge personally and go all quiet and moody).

Every now and then I get asked how I go about putting a meeting together. Which songs do you sing when and why?

Every church will have different and equally valid ways of doing this. There is no blueprint, and I certainly don't have all the answers, though there are some important principles that should govern the general shape of the Christian meeting. From Colossians 3.15-16 and Ephesians 4.7-16 it's clear that the New Testament writers expected two main things to be going on as Christians met together.

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever!' And the four living creatures said, 'Amen!' and the elders fell down and worshipped (Revelation 5.13-14, ESV).

There are often times in our lives when we are made especially conscious of the greatness of God, causing our hearts and minds to respond in an outpouring of affection for our heavenly Father. I'm grateful for Mr. S. Wheeler's letter in last month's EN as he drew our attention to Job, David and others in Scripture who are compelled to worship God as a direct response to God's awesome revelation of himself.

RS: People know you principally as a songwriter, but ultimately you're a Christian first, so can you tell us how God drew you to himself?

GK: I had the advantage of Christian parents - my father was a Baptist pastor. When I was about six, my mother was reading me a bedtime story which included within it an explanation of the gospel in a way that a child could understand. When she finished the book, she asked me if I wanted to follow Jesus, and I remember going off to another corner of the room and praying. I remember being surprised that I felt as if something had exploded in my heart. I had no expectations - I was just praying, but I know something had happened that was significant. I believe that was the first conscious decision to say, 'Yes, I want my sins forgiven, I want to be a Christian.'

What is the worship like at your church? Give yourself the following test to assess how it is doing as regards worship.

* Is it lively, vibrant, varied, high quality, using session musicians?

Have you ever sat next to someone in church who sings like a yak with bronchitis? What can possibly be going on in their heart as they honk out 'I'm in that place once again' on a monotone?

I spoke on a Christian Union's house party a while ago, and we saw in the Bible that if we belong to Jesus, then whoever we are, whether we can sing or not, we have the most intimate relationship with God that we could ever hope for or deserve (1 Corinthians 6.17).