Faith Works 9-28-19
Jeff Gill
What's not so new, but not familiar either
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Last week I was inviting you, the reader, to think with me about some of the changes that are impacting organized religion and traditional worship.
The shifts away from membership as something personally meaningful, of weddings moving to non-church venues, and even funerals going to unique and unusual locations are all "outside the church" changes which have some pretty big implications for the usual way things have been within the average congregation. If marriage and family farewells have long been a place where frayed or lost ties to a faith community can be renewed, that's not as likely to happen if most such services don't even have a member of the clergy involved.
Some of these social shifts more directly show up inside the church building, and during the worship service itself.
Singing is . . . well, it's hard. I hear lots of colleagues decrying contemporary worship because getting away from hymnals and going to screens and words up above a stage means no longer having four-part harmony notes in front of the worshiper.
Except how many can, or do sing one of the non-melody lines? And as someone who has led singing at Scout camps and other outdoor activities for years, I can say with some certainty that group singing is just not a thing anymore. Karaoke is a thing, but rarely does the whole group get up on stage to sing along. Just getting a tableful of family to sing "Happy Birthday" can be a challenge. We listen, ironically, to more music than has been available at any point in human history to date, but we don't much sing it. We like to listen.
Where that leaves us in congregational hymnody I don't know. I'm blessed to serve in a place where members love to sing in the choir (or play in the handbells), but I hear often about how the struggle to keep a choir has ended in other churches. I have a deep connection to the old hymns, but that's less common even among church goers.
And while people like to listen, they have high expectations on audio quality. Think those headphones, and then think about your aural experience in a worship space. It's not always said exactly this way, but basically people expect to be surrounded and I would say even overwhelmed by the sound . . . or they will say it's not loud enough, or it's not clear, or something like that.
It was not until 1945 that my congregation even had electronic amplification; for many churches, a very basic microphone and public address or PA system was the norm until around 2000. Today, the expectations are that any speaker, any music, any sound in worship be amplified. A hundred years ago, if you didn't have a loud, clear voice, you couldn't get ordained to preach. Literally. So that's a fascinating, two-edged change.
But it's closely paralleled by a second expectation alongside of sound quality: sanctuary temperature. I don't know of any clergymember my age or older who doesn't think this has gotten worse in the last few years.
Folks, I hate to do this, but I remember vividly going to church as a kid in the summer when the little windows at the bottom of the stained glass were all that opened, the funeral home fans with the picture of Jesus or Last Supper on one side were all waving in every hand, and you heard dogs bark outside and trains pass, but you didn't close those narrow panes for nothing, because it was already hot enough to steam a sauna full of Finns inside. It could be beastly in church during the summer, but we dealt with it.
Writing this led me to pull out my copy of Jacob Little's history of Granville and the Presbyterian church there, where he describes the controversies over stoves in church. The first ones brought in by individuals in 1831 were vigorously objected to, but even that hardy old Puritan said "Our Church being without stoves, there was less interest in public worship in the winter." At Rev. Little's request a collection was taken and church stoves for heating were installed at the end of 1832.
Which means we probably have 187 years of complaints about the church being too hot, or too cold, in Licking County. Are those concerns greater or not? I can't really say. What I do know is that it comes up, often.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; yes, he's heading somewhere with all of this, continued next week though it is. Tell him where you see these thoughts going at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
