Music

In church this morning I was reminded of an ongoing conversation I've been having with one of my friends about making hymns contemporary. As a general rule, I'm against this. And today I wanted to cry, my heart broke so much as the theology of one of my favorite hymns was obliterated. Dan Schutte would be appalled by the way we sang 'Here I Am, Lord'. We flew. I have never even heard the song played at that tempo. I would say (guessing) that this song is written to be sung at a tempo of andante, around 90, in order to give people time to reflect. Saying to God, Here I am, use me, is a dangerous thing that I don't believe God wants us to enter into lightly. While the text this song is based off of in Isaiah 6 isn't generally described in conjunction with the song, Isaiah had a big decision to make and it radically changed his life. He had a painful beginning to ministry (with a hot coal burning the impurities from his lips - this is not just a slight sunburn people) and the end of his ministry (with the fall of his people into captivity and exile). And all along, God pretty much told him the message he needed to give was just telling the people that their hearts were too far from God to even listen to anything Isaiah could tell them from God. Reflection is needed before we commit our lives to a ministry like that (which strikingly reminds me a lot of the current age today).

But we sang the song in an "upbeat" manner. Translation, Allegro about 140. It took all I had just to sing the song at that pace, I had no time for reflection. What a tragedy against the composer and what a denial of theology to those of us who were singing. For the sake of what? Being modern? Hymns are written to convey a theology that many modern people can't even match (with one or two exceptions), so don't deny the few opportunities to sing a song the way it was meant to be, with time to reflect.