View source for Observations: a weekly meeting - worship: what is it about? - 9 February 2008

Note: these are my preliminary experiences regarding worship. This is under further investigation.

Weekly Meeting – Spiritual Battle

February 8, 2008 – at Education North 2-115

[''The transcriptions are made from ear, and are my own reflection of the songs sung in worship this week. I went to this particular weekly meeting with the intent to focus on the analysis of the worship songs they were singing.'']

[3.1] This time, I went to the weekly meeting at Campus for Christ with the intent of looking at how the group uses music for worship. The format of songs is the same: five are at the beginning, and one is at the end. The ensemble is similar as well: the instruments are a female voice, a djembe, a piano, and an acoustic guitar.

Worship turns many musical conventions on their heads, primarily the convention that people pay money to attend a concert to be entertained. When most people attend a concert, they are an audience, and they pay to be entertained by the performers. The audience is the recipient. In worship, everyone stands up and joins in the singing. They become the performers, and together with the musicians, they sing songs about God’s characteristics, deeds, and the Gospel. The only audience is God. [''Sometimes, I hear a service dedicated to worship referred to as an ‘Audience of One’ for that reason.''] [March 6: ''I realize that perhaps I didn't provide enough background to make some of these assertions. I have attended Christian clubs of one stripe or another for about ten years, and there are certain things that they agree on. Moreover, they take great care to re-iterate these points many times as they have newcomers showing up often who do not know what worship ultimately is about.'']

The worship opens with two songs in D major: Light the Fire Again by Brian Doerksen and My Savior, My God by Aaron Shust. Both songs are in a rather predictable style similar to much of the top 20: there are two verses using the same chords, followed by a chorus, followed by a third verse, ending with a repeat of the chorus. The verses and chorus remain firmly in the home key. Light the Fire Again does contain an interesting chord sequence: V jumps straight to IV/IV, which quickly resolves: IV-V-I.

The next two songs, as well as the song ending the worship service, are by Chris Tomlin. The first, How Great is Our God, uses only four chords: I, IV, V, and vi. The second, Enough, also uses only four chords: I, ii, IV, and V. The final Chris Tomlin song at the end, Forever, again only uses four chords, I, IV, V, and vi. The Tomlin songs are in G major. The last song, All I Want is You, by Henry Seeley, also restricts itself to I, IV, V, and vi. Every song is in 4/4 time. If the harmony clearly is not a primary consideration for the composers of worship music, what is?

The major characteristic common to most melodies (Light the Fire Again, My Savior, My God, Enough) is syncopation: that is, the tendency to accent the offbeat and omit the downbeat relative to the harmonic structure. Enough is the textbook example: For the first half of each verse unit (You’re my reward / Worth living for), the melody starts on a D at beat 1.5, changes to G at beat 2.5, changes to F# at beat 3.5, and finally rises back to G at beat 4.5. This repeats twice before going to the unifier: still more awesome than I know, which continues this pattern with a variation. How Great is Our God contains 4:3 patterns in its verses between the melody and chords, resulting in the melody and chords syncing back on beat 4, an offbeat (the Lion and the Lamb). 

The criterion that receives the most scrutiny for presentation as worship is the lyrics, or rather what the lyrics convey. The lyrics generally fall into several broad categories: God (power, greatness); Jesus (power, greatness, what He did on the cross, resurrection, the Holy Spirit); our situation (before/after the Cross, need for repentance); love (He for us, us for Him, dependency); and the Great Commission (save the lost). Although it is not the case here, many times the worship songs are themed as a frame for the speaker’s sermon. There are a few cases of contemporary slang (gonna, ‘cause). In all cases so far, the lyrics, and in many cases the chord charts also, can easily be found on the Internet and copied to use in any service1, which goes against the general grain of composer/performer copyright.

The paradigm of music in worship is one that challenges many current conventions regarding music. The music is freely available so that anyone can perform it if they so choose; the music is not about making money, nor is it about being entertained; and it is not the end, but rather a means to an end. [''Upon reflection two weeks later, this is still the case, but the artists still make huge gobs of cash. I wonder why? Another question to ask, I suppose.'']