Church Musician as theologian
Sitting in the “skipped and dipped” pile in the study awaiting further considered reading are two excellent publications. They are “Cathedral Music” – the magazine of the Friends of Cathedral Music – and “Soundboard” – the magazine of Dublin and Glendalough Church Music Committee. That both publications have actually been retained for further reading is praise in these quarters. The most efficient piece of modern study equipment still remains the wastepaper bin.
Whilst there is an excellent article in Soundboard on clergy/organist relationships, it doesn’t quite get to a central vital emphasis regarding the role of an organist, and one which I experienced some time ago.
For the fourteen years when I was rector of a Connor parish – a large housing estate where we maintained in the custom of the day the singing of Morning Prayer and Evensong complete with two different sermons crafted for each Sunday – the greatest gift available to me in terms of worship was the organist and choir master, Ernie McCleary. He had been raised and nurtured in the Church of Ireland. He knew the Church’s Year and the flow of the liturgy. He chose the hymns and anthems. And as this period covered the Ulster Workers’ Strike, attempted bombings and killings in the immediate area, one was mighty thankful for that assistance. And especially because more often than not, the appropriateness and sensitivity of the hymns and especially the hymn after the sermon, was better than any I could have chosen. Ernie – a boarding school teacher and superb cricketer, footballer and golfer – would have told me to feel my head if I said he was a practical theologian. But that is what this organist and choir master was.
Ask most people in any local congregation or parish who the theologian is, and they would point you to a clerical figure. A writer in the Duke Divinity School Magazine recently stated that, “Congregational musicians, because of their shared leadership of worship with the clergy, have a responsibility for practical daily theology of most worshiping groups. Making decisions about which hymns to choose, which anthems to pair to specific biblical texts can have as much impact in how those texts are understood by the congregation as anything the preacher says from the pulpit.”
He went on to say, “And that means that congregations will have to make sure that their musicians have the resources and training they need to accomplish that work.’
In most churches the musicians are not world class performers, but volunteers or “pressed-men”. They are often overworked and under-appreciated by some. Indeed some organists/musicians may not be members of the denomination which they are serving. And some even may be reluctant to claim the descriptor “Christian”.
It would seem unreasonable or threatening to add the descriptor “musical theologian” to their post specification, or to ask that before each service they consider how their musical decisions contribute to the theological formation of the congregation.
Let not the point be missed. Musicians, whether or not they realise it, shape congregations theologically through their music. The Duke Divinity magazine article puts it thus, “Congregations, even if they don’t explicitly know it, are formed theologically by the music of their worship services, just as they are formed by the sermon, the prayers, and the sacraments. Vibrant worship, therefore, requires that both church musicians and the congregations they serve become more sensitive to the theological work of music.”
The article concludes by noting the number of organisations and groups in the USA, including the American Guild of Organists, offering workshops and courses in this area of church education. It is an area of understanding worthy of consideration of promotion in any parish, diocese or church.
Houston McKelvey