Evangelicals Now
<< May 2009 >>

The Music Exchange

To play or not to play ...

One of the great things about being a church musician is that you rarely have to make a decision about some of the more important things that happen in the church meeting.

On the occasions that a decision is needed on the spur of the moment (and you make the wrong one) you can always pass the buck to the pastor of the congregation, as he’s the one ultimately in charge. For example. ‘When we share the peace, should we just shake hands or give each other a kiss?’ someone asks. ‘Don’t ask me — I’m just the piano player’, I reply. Aaah, all responsibility is abdicated.

Getting a handshake

Actually, I did take a spur-of-the-moment decision on peace-sharing once. A visiting bishop was following the formal liturgy for an ordination service. When he reached the part which said, ‘The congregation shall exchange the sign of the peace’, he made the mistake of asking the congregation for advice. He asked publicly, ‘What do you usually do here, share the peace or sing?’ Before anyone could hear the uneasy shuffling (or — more embarrassingly — shout out an answer), I ploughed straight in with the next hymn. I’ve never had my hand shaken by so many people after an ordination service.

Another instance of spontaneous decision-making was during a memorial service, which needed some solemn processional music in order for the wreath to be carried from one end of the church to the other. Before the service, the vicar said he’d tip me the wink when we needed the play-over for the hymn following the procession. The wreath was duly laid, the wink came and I cranked up the organ to max. No one sang for the first verse, so I stopped to look down from the organ gallery to see what was going on. Incredibly, a second wreath had been produced, which then needed transporting back to the other end of the church. I asked the vicar why he’d winked at me, and he said that I’d been looking at him so intently that he thought I needed cheering up.

Now, music during the Lord’s Supper? There are so many different views on this one, a lot of them dependent on the way the Lord’s Supper is administered. The building we use for our meetings is usually crammed full of people, so the bread and wine need to be distributed to people as they stay in their seats rather than everyone getting up and coming to the communion table. Sometimes I have improvised gently around one of the songs we’ve been singing. Most of the time we sit in silence.

Different views

Here are some of the views I’ve come across (the views aren’t expressed as curtly as this, of course — I’m just trying to keep this article under 800 words):

Music distracts me — I like to pray in silence during the Lord’s Supper.
Silence distracts me — especially if there are colds going around and everyone’s coughing, blowing noses and scraping chairs.
Music helps me — if I know the words to the music being played, I can use those words to sing to the Lord in response to his love for me.
Silence makes the whole thing feel like a funeral rather than the celebration of the death of the Lord Jesus for our salvation.
Silence is much better, as music can manipulate us into thinking that there’s something mysterious and magical about the bread and the wine.
Let’s do a bit of both — have music one time and silence another time.

Who’s right? Scripture doesn’t stipulate the exact mechanics of how we should celebrate the Lord’s Supper, or whether we take it in silence or not. All 1 Corinthians 11 encourages us to do is to have the attitude of serving each other by remembering the cross, hence ‘discerning the body’. To push our own views without understanding the concerns of others is to be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord, because we are eating and drinking in an unworthy manner (1 Corinthians 11.27).

Who’s right?

So I’ll ask again, who’s right? Easy answer — the pastor. We need to take the lead from the man who God has given to us to teach us the Word of God, because he’ll be the one reminding us from the Word to keep our attitudes towards the church meeting thoroughly Christian rather than totally Corinthian. He has a God-given authority over us, which (even if we disagree) we joyfully submit to. No grumbling.

In this respect, I really am just the piano player, and the best way I can serve is to obey those God has put in charge over me. If done with a right attitude, it’s obedience to the Word of God — which, come to think of it, really isn’t abdication of responsibility at all.

Richard Simpkin