Four Worship Practices That Traditional Anglican Churches Will Want to Avoid

By Robin G. Jordan

As I mentioned in my previous article, the rector of the church where I was senior lay reader for fifteen years hired the band teacher and chorus director of a local high school as the church’s music minister. The new music minister was an excellent musician and choirmaster but he came from a Baptist background and his only experience in church music was gained in Baptist churches. He had received no training in the use of music in liturgical worship and had picked up a number of bad practices while serving as the music minister of a rural Baptist church.

Among these practices was cutting off every hymn after the third stanza. Over the years I have read a lot of literature on church music, including the works of a number of Baptist authors. None of the authors that I have read condone this practice. Those who mention it are unanimous in condemning it.

Why you may ask? These authors condemn the practice because it devalues congregational singing, shows a blatant disregard for the literary and theological integrity of the hymn, and evidences a lack of reverence for God. As Harry Eskew and Hugh T. McElrath emphasize in Sing with Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Hymnology, the place and purpose of the people’s singing in worship is “the offering of a sacrifice of praise requiring the commitment of mind, body, spirit, and will (Ps. 107:22).” It is an integral part of the worshiping assembly’s prayer.

When we cut off every hymn after the third verse, we are not in any way respecting the congregation, the hymn, or God. When we ask the congregation to sing nonsense, gibberish, we are not only showing contempt for the congregation and the hymn but also for God himself.

As C. S. Lewis who admittedly was no fan of hymns and hymn-singing wrote in his essay, “On Church Music,” “nothing should be done or sung or said in church which does not aim directly or indirectly either at glorifying God or edifying the people or both.” Cutting off every hymn after the third verse does not do either. It does not glorify God or edify the people.

From what I gather this practice has its origins in the Sandy Creek Revival tradition of Baptist worship. The Charleston and Sandy Creek Revival traditions are two influences that have shaped Baptist worship in the South. Among the differences between the two traditions is the main thrust of worship. In the Charleston tradition it is vertical but in the Sandy Creek Revival tradition it is horizontal. The focus of church services is not on worshiping God but on converting the sinner and encouraging converts not to backslide and lose their salvation. In the Sandy Creek Revival tradition the purpose of the congregational singing of hymns and gospels songs is to put the congregation in the right frame of mind to hear the sermon, which is viewed as the main event of the service.

James Rawling Sydnor in his book, Introducing a New Hymnal: How to Improve Congregational Singing, offers helpful advice on the right way to shorten a hymn:

In well-wrought hymns, stanzas are connected logically with each other and consequently, as a rule, the entire hymn should be sung. If it seems wise and necessary to shorten a hymn, care must be used in stanza selection. Some hymns like “Come, thou almighty King” (based on the Trinity) and”The King of love my shepherd is” (based on the 23rd Psalm) should not be abbreviated. Care should be taken in selecting those stanzas which, if omitted, do not violate the sense of the hymn. Some editors help in this matter by placing an asterisk by those stanzas which can be omitted.

This is what the editors of The Hymnal (1940) and The Hymnal 1982 did but the editors of The Book of Common Praise 2017 did not. Instead they placed a line after the third stanza of the longer hymns for which they offer no explanation and which suggests that the hymn may be shortened by omitting all the stanzas after the third stanza of the hymn, thereby seemingly encouraging the adoption of this bad practice in the Reformed Episcopal Church.

An equally as bad practice is cutting off a hymn because the pastor is finished doing whatever he is doing and wants to move on to something else. Hymns are an integral part of the assembly’s worship. They are part of a three-way conversation between God and his people. God speaks to us. We speak to him. We speak to each other while God listens. Hymns help people to say what they should say or want to say at specific places in this conversation. If the pastor is finished what he is doing, he should join in the singing or wait quietly until the singing has ended and not abruptly end the singing.

A third bad practice is that of sandwiching the reading of the Gospel between the stanzas of a hymn, singing two or more stanzas before the Gospel reading and two or more after it. This practice has nothing to commend it. It not only shows contempt for the congregation, the hymn, and God, but it also shows contempt for the Gospel.

When I first encountered the practice, the pastor who had adopted it was using a hymn as traveling music as he moved from the chancel to the midst of the congregation for the reading of the Gospel and then back again. His choice of hymn had nothing to do with the specific place of the reading of the Gospel in the three-way conversation with God. The practice not only mutilated the sense of the hymn but it also defeated the purpose of reading the Gospel.

The singing of the remaining stanzas of the hymn after the Gospel can be compared to the birds in the Parable of the Sower. They flew down and gobbled up the seed before it had an opportunity to sprout. A period of silence after the reading of the Gospel gives the congregation time to reflect on the words of the Gospel. However, singing the remaining stanzas of a hymn diverts their attention away from the message of the Gospel to something else. It does not give the seeds of the Gospel time to sprout in their hearts.

The same kind of thing happens when we say a prayer or sing a hymn immediately after the sermon. The focus of the congregation’s attention shifts from the message of the sermon to the prayer or hymn. For this reason we should observe a period of silence after the sermon before moving on to the next part of the service. This will give the congregation time to process what they have heard.

A much better practice than sandwiching a sermon between the stanzas of a hymn is to sing an alleluia and verse, an alleluia by itself, a Lenten verse, a hymn, or an anthem to herald the reading of the Gospel and then to follow the Gospel reading with a period of silence for reflection.

If the Gospel is read from the midst of the congregation and a hymn or anthem is sung to herald the Gospel reading, the Gospel procession should not start until near the end of the hymn or anthem. This enables the congregation to focus their attention on the hymn or anthem. After the reading of the Gospel, the Gospel procession should quietly return to the chancel without any music to accompany its movements.

Periods of silence have their place in liturgical and non-liturgical worship. A pastor does not need music to cover all of his actions.

Between the reading of the Epistle and the reading of the Gospel is not the place in the service for a length hymn or anthem. A lengthy hymn or anthem, according to Lionel Dakers, throws the natural sequence from Epistle to Gospel out of balance. A hymn or anthem at this point in the service should act simply as musical bridge. He recommends something contrasted and short. Lengthy hymns and anthems should be saved for the offertory.

A fourth bad practice that also should be avoided is singing the children’s hymn “Thy gospel Jesus we believe” before the reading of the Gospel Sunday after Sunday. This hymn is a Communion hymn for a child’s First Communion. It is listed as a Communion hymn at the end of the Communion hymn section of The Hymnal (1940). Its origin can be traced to a nineteenth century Roman Catholic catechism which was used to prepare children for their First Communion in the late 1800s. This hymn has been grossly abused in the aforementioned manner since its inclusion in The Hymnal (1940). It was not included in The Hymnal 1982 for that reason.

The wording of this brief hymn is also not theologically precise and is open to a variety of interpretations. According to the Bible “obeying the Gospel” means believing the message of Gospel. However, some ecclesiastical traditions interpret it to mean “being obedient to all the necessary moral and religious requirements of the New Testament”, or “obeying those commands one must do in order to be saved.” This goes beyond believing that Christ died for our sins and trusting in him for salvation. To be saved one must obey “all the necessary moral and religious requirements of the New Testament.” For this reason it would also be best not to use the hymn even as a Communion hymn for a child’s First Communion.

I do not remember the Episcopal church that my family attended when I was a teenager using this hymn at all, much less misusing it in the way that it is often misused. We sung a hymn between the Epistle and the Gospel or the choir sung an anthem. This was in the days of the 1928 Prayer Book and The Hymnal (1940). The church is known to this day for its high standards of excellence in church music.

If we love and reverence God, we will want to offer him the best that we are able to offer. We may not have a building of our own, much less a vaulted ceiling, a pipe or reed organ, and a SATB choir, but nonetheless we will want to pursue the degree of excellence in the music of our worship that our circumstances permit. We will not be willing to settle for bad practices like the ones described in this article. We will take to heart the old adage, “What is worth doing is worth doing well.”.

Image: Jesus the Good Shepherd Anglican Church, Las Vegas, Nevada