Marc Proctor
From New Hope Church
Here are some well written thoughts summarizing another persons thoughts on this, interestingly about the trinity in a sort of odd round about way:
Lester Ruth said something recently that bears repeating. In an essay where he analyzed the Trinitarian content for CCLI's top 25 between the years of 1989-2005, he concluded, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Trinitarian orientation was faint. Yet he ended his essay with a nice twist. If CWM [Christian Worship Music] songwriters are not writing music that is suffused with Trinitarian content, he argues, then the problem lies at a larger scale. The problem lies at the level of congregations and pastors and teachers. "Christians," he notes, "will write and choose more Trinitarian songs only if love for the Trinity resides deeply in their hearts." That is such an important statement. And again: "Songs will shift as Christians learn to love the Triune God for being Triune." The title of Lester's essay is "Lex amandi, Lex credendi." By that he means to say that what you love, you will believe, and in fact you will more likely write songs about the things that you love rather than simply believe.
Quoted from:
w. david o. taylor
http://artspastor.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-contemporary-worship-music.html
I agree with Paul. Not every song should have a Trinitarian focus in the same way that not every Bible passage each week does either. And as for the CCLI top 25 (or whatever), it is indeed a poor way to make a very broad brush statement about "the church". Churches should be evaluating the content of their worship songs regularly at a local level.
I'm not sure about the statistics even - how do you define something as having a trinitarian focus? Is it only songs that mention Father, Son and Holy Spirit separately in the same song or do ones that only use God count as well?
I'd be very leary of the CCLI stats as well because anything that is public domain doesn't get included in the reports - which takes in a big swodge of trinitarian ye olde hymns.
And I'd agree with Paul and MattF as well.
I think you guys are right, CCLI isn’t a perfect representation. But I don’t think CCLI can be dismissed completely as an indicator of general trends. I think the point is most people do not understand the trinity. Sure, most could describe the trinity in the sense of a dry textbook definition; but I don’t think many people feel any personal gravity towards the trinity. Not that the trinity is a required part of a service, just that it is oddly absent from the general cannon of songs we use. Maybe something beneficial that we're missing out on, not something we should require.
Just to say, I think the author has a valid point, even with the CCLI statistics aside. On a larger scale, I could extrapolate the authors point a little. It seems much of modern theology struggles to gain traction in peoples hearts. Things like the Trinity, propitiation, and the hyperstatic union are more conceptual than personal. I thought it was an interesting observation that the author made; one that I as a songwriter found convicting.
As an anglican I can rest easy that all our services are Trinitarian. Hooray for liturgy!
But although the methodology of looking at CCLI lists might be suspect I'd agree with Marc that it's something that should be on our radars (have you read Worshipping Trinity by Robin Parry?)
Although not all Anglican churches use liturgy... ;)
Worshipping Trinity by Robin Parry is on my list! I need to order it, books are cheap. Trying to get through "Blue Like Jazz"at the moment.
Just for everyone's information, that essay was one chapter in a book called "The Message In The Music" in which a number of scholars analyzed the 70 or so songs that made it into the CCLI Top 25 chart at any time between 1989 and 2005. So those 70 songs included a number of "older" songs such as "Because He Lives" by the Gaithers and "How Great Thou Art" as well as popular "choruses" such as "Lord, I Lift Your Name On High" and more recent songs like "How Great Is Our God."
As Paul and others allude to, since the most prevalent current medium of musical worship is the "song set" rather than the "three-or-more verse hymn", it is less important that an individual song teach on or even mention the Trinity as long as the entire "song set" or "worship service" mentions all three Persons at some time or other.
But for those songs that do attempt to be Trinitarian, what would be really excellent are songs that try to go a bit deeper than the basic Trinitarian belief that God is a Trinity and each Person of the Trinity is God (Trinitarian Theology 101) and perhaps try to get into who the Persons of the Trinity are, what they have done (or are still doing), and how they relate to each other.
Alex
Just stumbled across the earliest known Trinitarian hymn on a programme recently about the Oxyrynchan papyrus:
".. Let it be silent
Let the Luminous stars not shine,
Let the winds (?) and all the noisy rivers die down;
And as we hymn the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
Let all the powers add "Amen Amen"
Empire, praise always, and glory to God,
The sole giver of good things, Amen Amen"
Background info on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_hymn
Fascinating!
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Do songs need to have Trinitarian orientation? Or does a time of gathered worship need to have a Trinitarian orientation? I'd argue you can have one without the other.
Look at the CCLI top 25 is a poor guide to the Trinitarian focus of an "average" churches gathered worship.