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Trinity (CD)Beating TimeTRINITY (CD) For his book, Worshipping Trinity Ð Coming Back To The Heart Of Worship, Robin Parry conducted a survey of 28 worship albums produced by Vineyard Music between 1999 and 2004. He reports that only 1.4% of the 362 songs could be classified as Trinitarian in their doctrine. Parry isn’t singling out Vineyard as especially deserving of criticism, he’s just underlining an important point. Having conducted my own statistical survey of this album, I can confidently report that 100% of its 16 songs are Trinitarian in content. But that’s the easy part. A lot of contemporary worship music is doctrinally lightweight, and is thus quite easy to evaluate. However, this CD very consciously raises the bar to a level which leaves me feeling seriously unqualified. In his introduction in the CD’s inlay booklet, Robin Parry writes: ‘If the God at the centre of our worship is the Three-in-One then our worship should reflect that fact. Rich and full Christian worship is worship which engages with the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit and gives glory to all three Persons...’. What follows is a diverse selection of songs, spanning nearly a quarter of a century from writers incuding: Brenton Brown, Mike Busbee, Ed Cash, Brian Doerkson, Chris Eaton, Dave Fellingham, Keith & Kristyn Getty, Amy Grant, Melody Green, Graham Kendrick, Geraldine Latty, Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, and Stuart Townend. Many of the songs were specially recorded for the album, others are remixes from elsewhere. The lead singers include: Cathy Burton, Lou Fellingham, Kristyn Getty, Chis Hanby, Geraldine Latty, Martyn Layzell and Monique Tute. This makes for an enjoyably diverse sounding collection, despite the dependably strong Phatfish presence in two thirds of the tracks. The CD begins with a very in-your-face setting of the Townend / Getty glorious ‘Resurrection Hymn’ (‘See What A Morning’). If this is too loud for your taste, do stick around for Keith & Kristy Getty’s joyful, energetic, mid-Atlantic, folky ‘Come Let Us Sing’. You will also find plenty of variety in between. It was the Latty/Busbee collaboration ‘Dance Of Our God’ which got me scratching my head… There’s a dance that all creation is invited to join, My knee-jerk reaction was, ‘Oh no, it’s Sidney Carter’s ‘Lord Of The Dance’ all over again!’. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. The song contains good Trinitarian doctrine, it’s just the dance metaphor I’m not used to. This metaphor also appears in Robin Parry’s book in a discussion of perichoresis (peri = around, choresis = dance), a word used by some early church fathers to describe how the members of the Trinity indwell each other (i.e. primarily in John 14 terms). I must admit I’m not yet entirely convinced, but there’s certainly some potential for further and profitable investigation. Now, how often does a worship CD do that for you?! In a word: stimulating. PGDH© Evangelicals Now - June 2006 |