Eastside

So I am writing this on Sunday night at Andy and Dave’s apt. I will post it when I get home.

I went to Eastside Baptist Church is good ole Belzoni Mississippi this morning for church. Since Eastside is a traditional, fundamentalist, Southern Baptist Church I expected to use the hymnal. I was so looking forward to this. However, I was very upset that I was not able to do this. They were having a special “revival” service, so they pronounced that the “worship” was going to be different. This means that they were going to “sing five songs in a row.” Again, I was upset and disappointed that they projected the words onto a screen using what I assume was PowerPoint. You would think that I would be ok with this, since I was the one who started the whole multimedia craze at Emmanuel. However, it is the curse of a Frankenstein to hate and fear the monster he has created. You see I despise the death of the hymnal. The Hymnal does several important things:

1) It introduces the congregation to music. Here I don’t mean the passive act of singing along. Instead, I mean the active art of participating in the music. The congregation is introduced to music in its purest form. They are able to see the notes and understand the difference between chorus and verse. The absence of the hymnal in the church perpetuates what VH1 has been telling us for year. The American public is loosing its ability to appreciate music and musical-ness.

2) It intrudes the congregation to the basics of Christian doctrine. Take the second verse of Amazing Grace, for example. “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And Grace my fears relieved…’ It was not our cognitive understanding that caused us to fear our wretchedness. No! It was the grace of God. I think music is a great way to teach people the doctrines to the church. Some may find it difficult to remember important passages of scripture but they may be able to recall the song of their youth.

3) It introduces the congregation to church history. During my years of hymn singing I spent verse two and maybe the beginning of verse four (because we never sang verse three!) looking at the bottom of the page to see who wrote the hymn and when. Even the Baptist Hymnal has twelve songs written by Charles Wesley. I think this serves as an introduction to the basic names and traditions of the Christian faith.

Please do not take this an indictment of “contemporary” worship services or the use of newer choruses. I think they can all play a part in the worship experience. However, being a transition period I still feel obliged to bemoan the death of something so important.