Music planning

Adam Copeland over at A Wee Blether has a perceptive post on hymn selection during his seminary days. Adam gives cogent positive and negative factors that could possibly account for the seeming popularity of the hymn Guide my feet in chapel services at Columbia Seminary. It's a fine spiritual, but yeah, I could get real tired of real quick. So I don't think that the song's inherent positive attributes that can really account for its (over-)use at the chapel. Adam wonders if maybe the worship planners are not at their strongest when it comes to selecting music for worship. Finally he wonders if maybe the simplicity of the song makes it a popular choice.

I think Adam closest to the truth with a remark related to the second of his three possible reasons. Picking worship music is a daunting task. And when one has to select liturgical elements and music, it's easy to resort to a known quantity, like a well-worn hymn to conclude the worship.

Myself, it very often takes a long time to connect the worship dots. The right liturgical element may not spring to mind on first reading the appointed scripture for worship. The connection may come two or three weeks after first reading through the lections. My brain needs time to percolate with the readings and the wealth of material available for possible inclusion in worship. A word or phrase in a Bible reading or in one liturgical element may make me think of a similar or related word in another resource, but that doesn't happen right away. Just as a preacher really wants to live with a text for a while before actually preaching on it, so to with the musician at worship. I for one need some time with the scripture and a homiletic direction before I can connect music to it.

This past week was a good example. Trinity Sunday. Choosing Holy, holy, holy (NICEA) was an easy call. The spoken opening sentences were full of "creation" imagery, so God of the sparrow seemed a good call for the close of worship. (You know how each stanza ends with a single word, "awe," "praise," "woe;" those all reminded me of feelings Isaiah might have had that day in temple in the year that King Uzziah died.) The Old Testament reading from Isaiah brought to mind pretty quickly Dan Schutte's Here I Am, Lord. But we've used that song quite a bit of late. It took some time, and a little digging, but I ultimately suggested Together We Serve by Dan Damon. The text meshed well with the sentiments the preacher conveyed in conversation. And it made explicit mention of Jesus and the Spirit, which pinged off the day (Trinity Sunday) well. It was a new text for us, with a sturdy tune. It probably won't make anyone's top twenty-five, but it served us well in that service. Much better than the gut-reaction hymn I might have opted for.

So Adam, the frequency with which Guide my feet is used at Columbia has do probably with a mish-mash of reasons including musical awareness, sing-ability, and the pace with which worship probably has to get planned in the seminary setting. I mean no disrespect to the folks who plan worship at the school; I don't know a single one of them. But having been to seminary, I know what the pace is like, and for that matter what life is like in the parish setting. I hope here simply to suggest more of the dynamics at play that cause a certain song to crop up more than one might expect.

Worship planning and music planning are daunting tasks indeed. The more distance I can put between planning and execution, the better off this worship planner is. It allows more time for the Spirit to work her magic and help me make connections that I miss when I am rushing about.