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CURRENTLY IN MUSIC
A new song:

Helen Rose Pauls

A few weeks ago, my daughter came in, breathlessly excited. “DOXA is starting up again!” she said. Without formal advertising, the good news about this contemporary worship event was spread by e-mail, phone and word of mouth, and the church was full of hundreds of young people for opening night.

Almost 100 years ago, my grandmother apparently got into serious trouble because she used to go to the next village to sing four-part harmony at youth rallies. “Songfests”, they were called, and they radically broke with the tradition of having a Vorsänger, a “singing leader” who would sing solo lines loudly and then have the congregation repeat the verses after him in unison. Grandmother must have been exonerated, and her music was accepted as the norm eventually; she even married a former Vorsänger from the next village.

My mother-in-law, who is 90 and can recall the horrors of anarchy, famine, the onset of communism and Stalin’s death camps in Russia before she eventually immigrated to Canada, wonders why we don’t sing the wonderful songs of deliverance any more.

An older friend recounts with misty eyes, “I’ll never forget the time in 1948 when 1200 people were standing in the Yarrow MB Church and singing, “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” (Groszer Gott, Wir Loben Dich) in four-part harmony. We’ll never see those days again,” he said wistfully, bitterly disappointed with the modern stuff the youth are performing in our church today.

It seems that one generation’s grace often becomes the next generation’s legalism.

For my younger aunts and uncles, gospel quartets reigned. This summer, one can go to any number of nostalgic “old time” gospel quartet rallies and relive those years, but we don’t hear that music in church anymore.

For my generation, it was choruses that kept our youth nights fresh and new. Loudly, we sang, “Do, Lord!” and “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” (with the men going off on a marvellous tangent all by themselves). In Chilliwack, one church now sponsors the occasional Sunday night hymn sing for my age group.

Later we sang “Kumbaya” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” at hootenannies, with guitars, campfires and lots of feeling. We still try to capture this at our annual cornroast, but some of the idealism is gone.

A friend from Manitoba said to me recently at an MCC meeting, “You B.C. people aren’t even Mennonites. You don’t sing harmony anymore!” In almost the same breath, she expressed sorrow that they were losing a lot of young people from their church. I couldn’t bring myself to point out the correlation. Our youth are doing just what the Psalmist instructed in at least ten different verses: “Sing unto the Lord a new song!” (See for example Psalm 33:3; Psalm 40:3 and Psalm 149:1.)

And now my daughter is at the Sunday evening event in the next village called DOXA. It is loud, noisy and full of strange instrumentation, and the words are not my heart’s expression. But they are her and her generation’s words, written fresh and new by those who have experienced God in a new way in a very different world. The words bring hope and faith and community to the next generation of youth.

The “new song” has caused very real debate and ongoing division in our churches. It is probably as divisive and controversial as the change from the German language to English was in the 1950s. I remember an elderly neighbour hearing us children say our nightly prayers in English and asking my mother whether she really thought that God would accept them.

Many churches are coping with “new songs” by having two services, one youth friendly and one more staid, but some mourn that the important intergenerational aspect of church is gone. Others have lost their youth to churches that sing only the new songs; this occurs quite easily where so many Mennonite churches exist in one geographical area. Almost four years ago, our two youngest teens, as soon as one of them had his driver’s license, began attending a church that sang only new songs. Their older brother was in another “with it” church which attracted a huge college and career group; this is where he met his life’s partner. Our eldest daughter moved to the city to work and found a lively church there, where she also met her husband. Our parents, when they were still alive, found peace and solace in the familiar songs and worship of a nearby church that was full of gray heads.

We have stayed in our home church, which was founded 25 years ago by people in our age group who speak our language and sing our songs, but which has also tried to adapt to modern worship teams. We thought our church was “cool” and very comfortable for people of all age groups. “Sure, Mom,” said our son, “It’s great if you’re 50.”

I’m glad that all of our children have found a place to worship with others who are like-minded. There are times when I wish we would all be together. Is compromise possible when we older ones still enjoy what were once our “new songs” and our youth want to sing theirs? I hope it is. If it is not, I hope we can affirm and encourage our youth, and find other venues for our old songs, for our youth will lead our church in this new century and it will be with “a new song”.

Helen Rose Pauls is a member of Sardis Community Church in Chilliwack, B.C.

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Last modified August 12, 2000.

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