AUTHOR’S NOTE: In an effort to break up the practical posts on this blog, I thought I would share this research paper I put together recently. I hope you enjoy reading how far we’ve come in the Church as it pertains to songwriting!
Songwriting in the Church is a crucial element of the history of the Church. Even predating the institution of the Christian Church through Old Testament account, the use of songwriting originates further back than human history can account for. Even when it comes to musical style, there are few mysteries that we have so little knowledge of its origin. This overview of what songwriting and musical creation has played throughout the history of the Church proves the importance of the practice in how the Church has grown, thrived, and succeeded over the last 2,000 years.
The Church has a rich history of creativity and art throughout her existence. One form of art, however, is shrouded in mystery as to how it came to be. Music has had an important role in religious history, but there is so little known about the origins of music both in the Church and in general human history. The definitive arm of music – the song – is equally mysterious. How did the writing of a song become such a crucial part of the modern Church and where did it all begin? Songwriting in the Church has been one of the most important tools of the Church over the last 2,000 years and even before the coming of Jesus and throughout Jewish history as well.
Before the institution of the Church by Christ there were foundations of music being performed throughout the Old Testament. The earliest examples of praise music are given to us through Scripture and we see this as an act of worship directly to God, not for the applause of man (McGowan, 2014). The style of music was also far more beautiful than the earliest documentation we have in music history. The earliest form of music that is documented is called Gregorian chant, otherwise known as plain-song. The evidence we have that plain-song is not the earliest form of music is simply based on the descriptions we find in the Old Testament where horns, cymbals, harps and so much more are given triumphant exclamations (Gray, 2004). There are also clear examples that this was not simply spontaneous noise but that the songs had form, including the existence of lyrics that gave the song meaning all the way back in Genesis and throughout the elder half of the Bible.
With a brief and still vague foundation laid on the origins of songwriting in the Old Testament, we can jump closer to the modern era by studying the life of Jesus of Nazareth. There are recollections of moments where Christ sings hymns with His disciples that they are all familiar with the lyrics and melody of. Additionally, we have very little knowledge of what Greek music sounded like and how the music of the Hebrews may have intermingled with the music of the Greeks. At this point in history, around 30 A.D., even Gregorian chant – a style of monotone singing that is known as being the most primitive music on record – isn’t traced back as far. The best guess that can be taken about what music in the Church looked like during the time when Christ walked the earth would be to imagine some sort of blend of Greek and Hebrew culture: Hebrew in content and understanding while being Greek in form and instrumentation. However, even with this there is so little to go off of in Greek music that this certainly clears up very little about the way that Jesus and His disciples may have sung and what songs they could have used. The most accurate presumption to be made is that the songs themselves would have been derived from scriptural texts, traditional Jewish hymns, and original compositions within the small and localized community. This would have certainly matched Jewish culture and custom (McGowan, 2014).
After the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, the earliest Christian hymn found with guidance and instruction to lyric and music is from the late third century. This instruction found on this music, known as notation, is foreign to the way music is notated today; however, it is still some form of musical guidance that can be loosely interpreted. This still predates Gregorian chant, giving Church music history more evidence that the songs sung in the early Church were not simply recited phrases in unison but were also given to beauty and emotion (McGowan, 2014). Additionally, after a study of the lyrics to that song, there is more evidence of a key distinction: they did not simply sing Scripture but were open to the writings of praise songs based on the Truth of the Gospel and the character of the God of the Bible.
This leads us another few hundred years into Church history where we finally see Gregorian chant come into practice. Around the time that the Catholic Church was instituted and European culture began to influence Christianity and own the practices of worship (as well as enforce regulations on what would be deemed appropriate). Music also became less impressive and beautiful while holding very strict rituals and exclusive utilization of Scripture and creeds (Gray, 2004). For those who do not know where Church history goes after this, the Catholic Church then went into a frenzy of destroying and limiting art, while also limiting education and free thought, which led to the Dark Ages. After the Dark Ages, however, The Church flipped the other way, utilizing art and commissioning beautiful works. The most comprehensive works of songwriting were found during these medieval times in the 13th century when the Church took full opportunity to incorporate art into her services (Strunk, 1968). It is during this time period where sung music began to take its first known shift from being something corporate and communal to being a tool used to minister to parishioners via performance of the skilled and the observation of the general audience (McGowan, 2014).
When History finally came to the Reformation of the 16th Century, music had taken on a very odd role. Only the skilled were allowed to perform it as the lyrics were entirely in Latin and, with the general population not only illiterate but also unfamiliar with the language, there was very little engagement and corporate worship (Bertoglio, 2017)- corporate meaning communal and interactive among a gathered people. When Martin Luther famously instituted the Protestant Reformation with his 95 Thesis the sparked controversy surrounding music was that the general public and the day-to-day Christian was unable to engage in corporate worship. Luther himself found it crucial that Christians were able to sing in their own vernacular. Not only that, but his personal stance was that music was “Next to the Word of God… the greatest treasure in the world” and was to be utilized in the local Church gatherings (Willis, 2010).
The Reformers actually did not land on full agreement of the use of music in worship. Luther’s view of music as a gift of God caused him to revel in it. For theologian John Calvin it was also a gift of God, but he viewed it as something that must not be overused: the best china left in storage for fear of chipping it. For Heinrich Bullinger, music was an earthly tool and a tool of Satan to tempt or at best to be a distraction from the pure spoken Gospel (Willis, 2010). However, this didn’t stop many reformers to take up the practice of hymn writing in their own language for the use of their congregants. Luther and Calvin, among others, were at the forefront of this new practice. Luther was incredibly counter-cultural in his practices of hymn-writing. He would utilize well-known melodies from popular secular and bar music into his hymns for ease of learning, and he would use words with fewer syllables so as to better engage the uneducated and uncultured (Bertoglio, 2017).
The constant in reformed songwriting, however, was a pursuit of Biblical accuracy and theological depth. Most commonly these writers would simply paraphrase already existing creeds, statements of doctrine, and scripture to infuse a knowledge of faith and God’s Word into their communities. So, even when these writers would use unorthodox methods, mostly Luther, there was always a strong sense of foundation in the lyrics of the songs. This value, along with the desire to use language common to the people in society, was one of the anchors of the reformation that caused it to explode the way that it did (Bertoglio, 2017).
As we move into the modern Church of the 21st century, new strategies have come about in the writing of music in the Church. What is known as the “Hillsong brand” of worship music has become the common form of music in the Protestant Church. Out of the Protestant Reformation birthed a string of events that led to multiple, and eventually hundreds, of mainline and Evangelical denominations that would all fall under the Protestant umbrella. Hillsong, a global church based in Australia, would initially align with the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination which was birthed out of an event called the Azusa Street Revival in Southern California in the early 20th century. This revival would be put into motion by a necessity to see the Church more culturally diverse and for a hunger to see the Holy Spirit work similarly to the way He worked at Pentecost in the Bible. In the 500 years since the Protestant Reformation, all of the different denominations have gone the way of Luther in utilizing their own hymnbooks and commissioning songwriters to create music for congregational use. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, however, the music of Hillsong Church started to catch steam and would be distributed all across the planet (McIntyre, 2007).
The songwriting of Hillsong music would take on a slightly different focus than the hymns of the Reformers. Though a pursuit of Biblical accuracy and utilization of common languages remained at the forefront, the influence of Western culture onto this new music cannot go unnoticed. Hillsong’s music includes the modern value of individualism – the use of the words “me”, “my” and “I” instead of what was more common of the Reformers in the use of “Our”, “He”, and “We” – which is meant to plant a commitment to a personal relationship with God above all else. More use of repetition, musical complexity, musical structures that invoke emotion, and directives of action (we raise our hands, we lift our voices) are also characteristics of this new brand of church music (McIntyre, 2007).
The modern era of church music is also more vague and broad when it comes to use of biblical language. Where older songs by Luther and John Wesley, the founder of the Wesleyan and United Methodist denominations, would align very specifically to denominational doctrines and creeds, the lyricism from Hillsong tends to be more general, allowing churches from all sorts of different denominations to be able to sing the same songs (McIntyre, 2007). Authorship is also a new concept in the modern church that was not as organized for the Reformers (Bertoglio, 2017). Songwriters in the modern age are able to benefit from financial royalties as their songs are played live in churches on Sunday mornings and are given airplay over the radio, something that was not yet even dreamt of by the songwriters in the Church even as recently as the 1970’s. It is with all of these distinctions that the new brand of worship music as instituted by Hillsong Church finds success as a song producer for the global Church, across denominational lines and all.
Since the turn of the 21st century, even more of these modern churches have turned to writing songs for the Church. New Life Church (Colorado Springs, CO), Elevation Church (Charlotte, NC), Bethel Church (Redding, CA) and so many others both in the United States as well as in other countries (Great Britain, South Africa, Canada, etc.) have found global success in distributing their music to churches in similar ways to Hillsong Church. It is through these groups that new worship gets funneled into the radios and playlists and eventually Sunday morning congregations. As these songs begin to find success, competition also has been created between the groups to create more quality (or in some cases, more niche) music to be used in the churches around the world.
In conclusion, over 2000 years of history of the Church as it pertains to songwriting brings us to a very interesting point. There are many similarities between the modern movement and the way that the Catholic Church used music pre-Reformation. There are also some incredible values in modern music that aligns so clearly with the values of the Protestant Reformation. To the former, this modern age of church music relies on the most talented and musically educated to “perform” for the congregations. Though the performance is usually to incite congregational engagement, there is an element of exclusivity that only allows talented to shepherd and lead the congregation in musical worship. With the latter, however, these modern songs do utilize cultural vernacular, even slang, into their songwriting. A value on biblical accuracy is also present through resource tools available directly from these churches and their worship bands.
As the music culture of the Church has gone from small and local, to international-yet-curated, to exclusive and out-of-touch, to reformed and localized, to now both global and accessible it is fascinating to see how songwriting in the Church will change in the future. Some newer groups have begun relying on more Reformation-styled lyricism; Austin Stone Church and King’s Kaleidoscope band come to mind. There is so much potential for the Church to infuse the old and the new, the localized and the global, the emotional and the staunch into her music as she seeks to edify and resource the Church. With an ear to the past, would the Church remember the focus of worshiping God through song with this 4th century hymn entitled Joyous Light that sums up the focus and the outcome of musical worship in the Church that Christ instituted:
Joyous Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father,
Heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ:
Coming to the setting of the sun, seeing the evening light,
We hymn Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God.
It is right for You at all times to be praised with blessed voices,
Son of God, the Giver of life. Therefore, the cosmos glorifies You.
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Kevin McClure has been leading worship in the local church for over 10 years in different capacities of student and adult ministries. As a songwriter, musical artist, and worship leader he has had the honor of touring the United States both as a performer and worship leader over the better part of the last decade. With a heart to see believers learn how to take the act of worship beyond the setting of a group gathering, Kevin is incredibly intentional with his time on and offstage to help teach the practice of worship as a lifestyle. Kevin lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his bride Hailey and his two daughters, Everleigh (8) and Eliska (2). His favorite food is coffee (lifesource), loves bonfires, and is convinced that Jesus is a Chicago Cubs fan.
References
Gray, C. (2004). History Of Music. London: Routledge.
Willis, J. P. (2010). Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England : Discourses, Sites and Identities. Farnham, England: Routledge.
Strunk, W. O., & Powers, H. (1968). Studies in Music History : Essays for Oliver Strunk. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Bertoglio, C. (2017). Reforming Music : Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century. Berlin: De Gruyter.
McGowan, A. B. (2014). Ancient Christian Worship : Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.
McIntyre, E. H. (2007). Brand of Choice: Why Hillsong Music is Winning Sales and Souls. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 20(2), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.v20i2.175
Kevin McClure 