We think it’s a new problem. It’s not. We have only to unearth a copy of the Book of Common Prayer to make sure. In the preface on ceremonies we find the writer lamenting the tussle between those anxious to respect received customs and those besotted with innovations and new-fangleness. As always, the real dispute is not between old and new; it is between good and bad, between blossom and hum-drum, between flying and drooping.
When they went about their business, the compilers of the prayer book did not have to adjudicate on the merits of hymns and worship-songs. No such items existed, except for the ancient lyrics translated from the Latin. What they did have to deal with – and what ‘Common Worship’ has made even more difficult – is the abundance of pages. ‘Common Worship’ has 850 of them so that we are in much the same position as our forefathers. They found ‘the number and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold changes of the Service’ resulted in an outcome where ‘there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.’
Wordiness is nothing new. Augustine (about whom I know little) was as much addicted to thudding repetition as, say, Barth (about whom I know even less). Unhappily, theologians are seldom given to brevity. The BCP makes do with 650 pages but contemporary worship-songs multiply like rabbits. The level of worship falls accordingly.
Take the worship-song recently promoted amongst us entitled ‘We seek your kingdom’. We can see where its authors are coming from. We cannot but applaud their intentions. But the humdrum vocabulary, blameless aspirations and limping repetitions fall well below the discriminating standard that should be governing our public worship. Watts, Wesley and the rest are in another league altogether.
It is not, as I say, a case of old versus new. It is good versus bad. At least Sankey and the Salvation Army had the gusto of the music-halls alongside them. Lassitude rather than vigour passes for depth in many worship-songs today.
‘Man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ asked Browning. In our worship there must be a profundity just beyond our reach if today’s worship is to be all it should be.
CHADWELL CHANGES
St Chad’s church, Chadwell Heath, East London is something else. It is getting its teeth into a revolutionary refurbishment of its buildings, with new worship-space and ancillary accommodation – not to mention a block of flats. It also has ‘The Vicar’s God Blog’ in which the Vicar, Martin Court (who is a natural in front of a TV camera), offers a series of chatty up-dates unlike anything I’ve seen on any other church website. Not to be missed is a sequence of ‘Views from my Window’ submitted by church members.
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