New Church Life May/June 2017 | Page 87

  says dismissively of the pipe organ: “It endures not because anyone particularly likes organ music (there’s none on iTunes top singles this week, and, I’m betting, none on your iPod), but simply because it’s there. Usually ensconced in the balcony of a church, an organ is too heavy to move and too expensive to burn, so we might as well play the thing, no matter how many young people we are scaring away.” Among the responses to this critique: • There are many reasons why attendance is down across the country. You can no more say it’s the music than the taste of the communion wine. • We just did a liturgy survey of our parishioners and the biggest response we got was that the people wanted more contemporary music (less organ). • There are a lot of reasons for the decline in church membership. It’s silly to say the organ is the reason. I think it’s more due to churches being hypocritical, too judgmental, and irrelevant to the lives of people. • In our culture, which is saturated with music, iPods and playlists, we need worship services that are a mix of the old (our roots) and the new (where we are as a people today). • Whatever music style is chosen it needs to be done well and with reverence. • Imagery and vocabulary from the baroque era do not easily touch the soul of most millennials who never knew a world without the internet. • There is no magic bullet to fix things, but I rarely hear someone talk about liturgical choices as reasons why people leave church. It is almost always because of the failings of the institution, not its worship. • The whole generational divide thing is really the Church of the Perpetual Adolescence making another appearance. The Bryn Athyn society is large enough that people have several choices each Sunday, from traditional organ to contemporary guitars, mellow horns and harmonic voices, and most of our churches and societies are experimenting with variety. There’s nothing wrong with accommodating to different forms of music and worship as long as it is all reverent and brings people to the Lord. But whatever accompaniment we choose, let’s all be appreciative of the musicians and music directors who are generally underpaid and often are volunteers. And let us not use organs, guitars, “praise bands” or “soft rock” as an excuse for not going to church. Good music that helps put us in the right sphere surely helps, but we should be there first to worship the Lord. Then thank the organist. (BMH) 267