i am a part time reviewer of restaurants (nice gig when you can get it). one thing that i have noticed is that there are a number of chains of Italian restaurants prominent on high streets in the UK - three to be precise - which are owned by the same restaurant group. really the philosophy behind these three chains is the same. the food is styled the same. the decor is different, but the layout is the same; the staff wear slightly different uniforms, the types of pizzas or pastas or salads is a little different from one place to the next. i assume that most people don't really notice these things, thinking that the different names and colours and slightly varied menu means different ownership.
this is a malaise that many have mentioned in connection with UK high streets. in the name of "consumer choice" and "variety", we are actually LOSING diversity. all the unique, one-off, mom and pop places out there are disappearing and being replaced by cookie cutter replicas which you find in every high street everywhere. increasing commercialization actually is decreasing our choice.
i went to church twice last weekend. that's slightly more than 1 visit more than my average weekly church attendance. it was for a Good Friday service and an Easter Sunday service. the two most important dates in the Christian calendar. i was certainly expecting to sing some great hymns or choruses of the past which resonate with this special time of year. Wesley's "Christ the Lord is Risen Today", etc.
all we got were the same choruses we sing every other week. if i didn't know any better i would think that there were actually only about 25 Christian songs in existence and we are forced to sing these same ones over and over, at Christmas, Easter, for Lent, for Pentecost, etc, ad nauseum.
the songs we sang were all good songs. they were done well by the band. but they were THE SAME as every other week.
i wonder if increased commercialization of the highly profitable and well-marketed WORSHIP INDUSTRY has yielded the same results. we are now compelled to only sing songs by about 4 or 5 different writers/artists because they are the most popular. no more local artists. no more rediscovered gems of hymns from days gone by. no more worship materials developed in house by our own musicians (unless you are a megachurch with a band signed to a label of course).
the more churches i go to, the more i feel like the songs we sing are just like pizzas in those Italian eateries. good enough in their own right, but in the end, a bit tired and a bit "samey".
(don't even get me started on the number of times we have to sing a song over and over in one go before it gets a bit annoying. if those songwriters can't be bothered to write more than 2 verses, why should we feel compelled to sing the song for 7 minutes! even the horrible 3 minute pop songs on the radio realize this truth!)
when we lose touch with our traditions, we are poorer for it. when we lose diversity, whether in ecosystems/wildlife, cuisine, or the musical canon of evangelicalism, we are much poorer for that as well.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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6 comments:
the solution:
sneak into the church and hide the overhead transparencies (if they still use them) for the songs you don't like.
my word! how, erm, juvenile. who would ever do such a thing! i suppose the equivalent would be to hack into the chordpro/songpro server and delete all the songs one doesn't like.
the strange thing is that it was almost 20 years since the overhead hiding incident and yet it still bugs you (and me) to no end that the same song (new flavor every 3 months) gets beat to death.....For me though I have no solution like writing my own song as I can barely clap on beat...
(and I complained this week to my wife that we never sang "Christ the Lord is Risen..." at our church either....) I was then accused of being like my mother and to that I had no response.....
well, no need for Wesley....they could just as well have done Keith Green's "Hear the Bells Ringing" or "He's Alive" by Kenoly or some other Easter-oriented song from the last 2-20 years. It was as much the fact that there was absolutely no musical recognition of the most important Christian date of the year. Just another stop for the all-conquering train of sameness.
Boy, it's been a while since you've posted... though I must agree the homogenization of worship, with very little diversity (except for the requisite Christmas carols) from week to week is bothersome...
Well, I was at church 4 times over four days and we never sang the same song twice. And it was glorious - of course that's one of the primary reasons I go to an Anglican church - the sense of connection with the past and the care given to the ENTIRE church year, not just the big holidays!
The fact that I took communicion on Easter Sunday whilst singing a Jesus' Blood medley of Delirious, Tom Waits and Robert Lowery was simply icing on the cake.
Kara
PS - what's this about hiding overheads . . . ?
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