Below is an outline of some thoughts I shared with a group at church

 

O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by our people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[1]

Last week you were presented with this question: what is a pastoral musician?  This is the exact topic I want to briefly discuss tonight. 

1.     A pastoral musician is someone whose primary ministry is to “enable the community’s sung prayer”[2] by “bringing theology and spirituality to the tasks of music.”[3]

a.     “The church’s liturgy is sung prayer, and the quality of this prayer hinges on the unique ministry of the pastoral musician.  All the good will in the world will not bring about a singing assembly if a community lacks pastoral musicians . . .”[4]

b.     What’s all the fuss with having a ‘singing assembly’?

                                               i.     CSL II. 14. Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.[5]

                                              ii.     So, our very purpose and vocation as the Church is to declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into marvelous light – the liturgy is a primary way in which we do this. 

                                            iii.     Pastoral Musicians enable and support this vocation.

2.     A pastoral musician cares deeply about the spiritual well-being and discipleship of the co-serving musicians and congregation.

 

a.     The “full, active participation of the people” points toward an intentional engagement in mind, body, and soul. 

                                               i.     PM’s are not “primarily interested in music which is passively received, but in music which engages all worshipers.  They seek to move the worshiper from role of audience to the role of active participant.”[6]

                                              ii.     We elicit and foster participation for the spiritual formation of the gathered.

1.     “Worship is a spiritually formative event.” 

                                            iii.     We orchestrate sung prayer through songs and hymns that have solid theological content.

1.     One way we can allow Christ’s word to dwell in us richly is to address one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Col. 3:16.

b.     My goal in rehearsals and performances of music is not necessarily the end “product,” but the journey of faith and discipleship that is shared along the way. 

3.     A pastoral musician looks for the voice of the congregation

a.     We cannot impose a voice on the congregation that is not theirs; our ministry contains an incarnational principle:

                                               i.     “Each and every one of us who is a lay minister leads not over and against the community of the people, not over and above the people, but sent from them as one of them.  Our giftedness bears fruit only through the people, only by an incarnational dynamic.”[7]  Discuss.  What does this mean?

                                              ii.     “The ideal music in any local church is not the concert or recorded music of Amy Grant, the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Beatles, the St. Olaf Choir . . . We should learn from any and all sounds, but the ideal music in a local church is the sound the people themselves make around Word and Sacrament.  It is what the cantor leads and why the cantor is so important.  To substitute external, extrinsic sounds for the sound of the people themselves is to contravene the very nature of the Christian worshiping community.  It is the same as, maybe even worse than, piping in a sermon.”[8]

4.  In all these things, the pastoral musician is primarily a servant pouring himself or herself out as Christ in the service of the local church.

 

Conclusion: So, a pastoral musician is much more than a musician that works/volunteers in church.  A pastoral musician is someone:

·      called to enable and support the sung prayer of the congregation

·      by bringing theology and spirituality to the tasks of music

·      who cares deeply for the spiritual well-being of the musicians and congregation

·      elicits the ‘local’ voice of the congregation. 

        [1] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 819.  The use of this prayer is important for this lesson series as it informs the choir of a sort of practical theology of arts in worship.

        [2] Virgil C. Funk, Pastoral Music in Practice 5: The Pastoral Musician (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1990), v.

        [3] See Connie Cherry, “The Pastoral Musician,” lecture notes, The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, delivered 16 June 2008.

        [4] Funk, v.

        [5] Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, The Second Vatican Council, 1963, http://www.cin.org/v2litur.html, last accessed 9 September 2008.

       [6] Cherry.

        [7] Virginia Sullivan Finn, “Lay Ministry and Lay Musicians,” in Pastoral Music in Practice 5: The Pastoral Musician, ed. Virgil C. Funk (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1990), 25.

        [8] Paul Westermeyer, The Church Musician, revised ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1997), 127.