Biblical illiteracy is
partly due to changes to the worship service over the years. Take the average church forty or fifty years
ago. There would have been a morning and
evening service on Sunday and a Wednesday night service. There would have been Sunday School, youth
group meetings, and Bible studies. To
one extent or another, most churches are doing less than they used to during the
week, and many people only experience ‘church’ in terms of one Sunday morning
service a week. Also, worship services
and sermons are, typically, shorter than they used to be, and the latter may
well be less Biblically focussed.
(Mainline denominations have moved increasingly away from orthodoxy
since the 1960s, and many Evangelical churches have opted for topical sermons
that fail to explore the Biblical text with the congregation.) Finally, the music in the worship service is
less conducive to Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literacy. This last point will be considered here.
Fifty years ago, the church’s
music would have come from the hymnal.
Having words put up on a screen allows the song leader to pick songs outside
a ‘canon’ of music that has been carefully assessed and chosen by a particular
tradition. It also allows an ongoing
variety of new songs to be chosen for the worship service, such that many songs
sung are often unknown or only briefly used in the congregation. This means that people know far fewer songs
over time. The problem this poses is
exacerbated greatly by the quality of modern songs, which often lack
theological depth. Moreover, many
churches, particularly large churches, opt to have bands lead the worship part
of the service, which is largely reduced only to singing. (There is far more to worship than singing.) In other words, the person with a good voice
and who can play a guitar is made the worship leader, even though there is not
necessarily any relationship between leading in worship and singing. Finally, the more the worship band sees
itself as leading in worship rather than aiding in worship, the more worship
can become mere performance. How often
one sees people trying to sing along to songs they do not know with a worship
band performing on a stage. These
worship bands do not always know the difference between congregational singing
and band music.
How does this dismal
situation relate to Biblical illiteracy?
Music is an aid to memorization—memorization of Scripture and the Church’s
theology. The hymns of a theological
tradition help to educate members in the tradition, such as when songs from 150
years ago are sung today. This is not to
say that new songs should not be written, but they should not overwhelm the
congregation or change every few months.
Most significantly, the words of songs need to be Biblically based and
even come from Scripture. Indeed, we do
have a few contemporary hymn writers who are doing just that, such as Keith and
Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend. But,
if and when we do introduce their music into our worship, we should repeat the
music over many years so that the congregation and different generations can
memorize it and be formed into a community of faith and tradition through it.
Consider the following
observations from Gordon Wenham’s excellent study of the psalms, Psalms as Torah. He observes that hymns and songs teach
theology and ethics (p. 3). Too often,
the music during a worship service is understood simply as music and worship,
not also as teaching. But lay theology
is learned largely from the music of the church, and a church that fails to
sing Biblically grounded songs, theologically deep songs, and songs that
incorporate the worshipers into the church tradition will also struggle to keep
its members Biblically, theologically, and ecclesiastically literate.
Wenham’s focus in this
book is the Psalms—Israel’s songbook. He
argues that ‘the psalms were and are vehicles not only of worship but also
of instruction’ (p. 7). Thus, second,
the Psalms should be much in use in the worship of the Church. The Psalms are not only Israel’s songbook but
also the Church’s book of worship, and, as such, it instructs people in the
faith. More quotations in the New
Testament come from the Psalms than any other Old Testament book, and it would have been a psalm that Jesus and the disciples sang before going to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, that Paul and Silas sang in prison in Philippi, and that believers sang in their meetings when filled with the Holy Spirit.
Third, Wenham notes
that the Psalms were memorized (ch. 3).
Indeed, the cultures of the Middle East and the Roman Empire in the
centuries during which the Scriptures were written spent considerable time on
memorization. Even if some people were
literate and could write, they tended to use literature as an aid to
memorization. That is, argues Wenham,
the predominantly oral culture highly valued memorization, and even the literate
thought of much of the literature available in terms of an aid to that
end. This was especially so of poetry
and anthologies, of which the book of Psalms is an excellent example. Memorization of the Psalms was aided by
poetry, music, and the organization of the psalms. Thus, the content
of the Psalms was the key and music was an aid to learning. Several points emerge from these observations
for contemporary worship. First, the
message, not the music, is primary (even if the quality of the music is important). All too often, the music gets in the way of the message, let alone the memorization of the message. Second, the Psalms are significant to deliver the content of worship for
the Church, and the more the Psalms are used in worship, the more Biblically
literate the Church will be. Third, memorization
is important because it means that the worshiper can take away the words of God
from the service, having internalised them and therefore being able to meditate
on them day and night. Fourth, the goal
of memorization and the focus on a particular collection of worship, the Psalms
(or the Church’s hymnbook), means that music is not going to be changed every
few months to keep up with the latest hits on the local Christian radio. Only in this way can we internalize and
meditate on Scripture and our faith throughout the week when we are not sitting
down to read Scripture.
Wenham also points out
that the Psalms are more than what is
said (locution); they are also a performance of certain acts of worship
(illocution). Examples can help
illustrate the point. One might read
theology and learn something important, but when one prays and sings a psalm,
one is performing certain acts, such as declaring, confessing, committing
oneself to do something, expressing something, and so forth (cf. p. 66). In the same way, listening to a sermon might
involve learning something important about Scripture and the Church’s theology
and ethics, but reading the Psalms out loud and singing the words of a song or
Psalm involve performances of the faith.
Wenham points out that the Psalms were actually not meant to be read
silently, and we can follow this practice by either reading Psalms in the
worship service out loud as a congregation or singing songs based on the
Psalms. In this way, we perform the
Scriptures—perform our theology and faith.
This is like the difference between signing a marriage certificate in a
judge’s office and saying ‘I do’ before a community of faith. The wedding is a performance of marriage that involves the acts of oath taking and
covenant making. The worship band
performing during worship and ever introducing new songs leaves many people
behind the performance of worship, and they become observers instead.
Thus, positively, it
might be said in conclusion that the congregation can become increasingly
literate in Scripture and the Church’s theology and ethics through its
worship in song. This will be aided
greatly the more what is sung is Biblically based and expresses the Church’s
theology. Further aiding this will be
singing from a body of known and well-chosen songs, singing songs written for congregational worship, not the performance of a worship band, memorizing the songs, and using
the Psalter in worship (whether singing or reading from it out loud). Such an approach to worship in the local
church will aid the memorization, internalization, and meditation on the
Scriptures.
A simple self-test
might illustrate the points made here.
Imagine yourself imprisoned for your faith—rather like Paul and Silas in
Philippi. Or, imagine yourself
imprisoned for several years, with no access to Scripture or to other believers. Will you have internalized and memorized a
large number of songs with a Biblical and theological depth that your faith
will be sustained and you will be encouraged despite your circumstances? Or will you groan as you barely remember more
than a line of a few songs, and ones that were not very deep or Biblical,
because your worship leader was really only a musician with a fairly shallow
faith himself who liked to change the music as often as he could? Without a doubt, hardly any of us today have
memorized Scripture as the average believer, including illiterate ones, would
have back in Biblical times. That is a
result of not being an oral but a literary culture. (And the problem continues as our literature culture becomes a visual culture with television, CDs, and computers.) However, we can make several changes that
will help us to know the Scriptures better in our day, and one of the changes
we should make is how we approach worship music in many of our churches.