Jenny Weiss – In the Passage

May 31, 2024June 16, 2024

A Performance During a Church Service?

Lately, I’ve been pondering the part of the Copyright Act of 1976 sometimes referred to as the religious service exemption.

Under federal copyright law, two of a songwriter’s exclusive rights are the right to perform his or her song in public and the right to display it in public.

Others who want to publicly perform or publicly display the song need permission to do so.

The law provides exceptions, though, such as if the song will be performed during a service at a place of worship or other religious assembly.

I wondered: What did legislators have in mind regarding performances and displays when they wrote Section 110(3) in 1976?

So, I checked out the current law and, for insight, went further back to the previous major revision of the copyright law. That was in 1909.

Section 28 of the earlier law mentioned church choirs, stating that if they performed an oratorio, cantata, mass or choral octavo, for example, that wouldn’t be considered copyright infringement, assuming the performance was not for profit.

Neither the 1909 law nor the 1976 law — which superseded the earlier one — specifically addressed congregational singing in churches.

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know the reason for that. I do find it interesting that the 1909 law focused solely on choirs and the 1976 law didn’t delve at all into who was doing the singing.

Also, there’s no reference — that I found — in Section 28 of the 1909 law to the display of a musical work.

By 1976, when that term found its way into the law, the technology used by some churches to display lyrics would have been an overhead projector and a pull-down screen. Most churches, though, hadn’t progressed that far technologically. They still put hymnals in congregants’ hands as they had done during the first part of the century and further back than that.

To the glory of God

These days, during a Sunday morning service, we’re likely to see a variety of soloists on stage, backed by a band, with lyrics sent from a laptop to one or more screens at the front of the sanctuary.

It’s generally accepted that these activities fit the definitions of “perform” and “display” under current copyright law.

Meanwhile, most singers and musicians on stage cringe at being called performers, instead referring to themselves as worshippers. However, the terms aren’t mutually exclusive.

As for me, I don’t have an aversion to the idea of a performance, as long as it’s done to the glory of God.

April 30, 2024January 18, 2025

5 Reasons We’ve Stopped Singing in Church

The first in a series of articles addressing the misconceptions that some churches have about modern music:

We want to sing. We used to sing. But now, for the most part during Sunday morning services, we’re silent.

We can hear you, coming through the speakers, as you lead us from the stage.

Have you noticed us and wondered why we’re not participating? Maybe you’ve figured we’re unenthusiastic or unspiritual, or both.

Allow me to explain what’s really going on with us. Here are five reasons we’ve stopped singing in church:

Reason #1: Theology. Each individual line in a song and the lines of the song taken collectively convey something to the congregation about who God is. In so many songs, the message is off. We don’t want to support faulty theology just because it happens to be set to music.

Reason #2: Repetition. This is a problem with both the words and the music. We realize repetition is a literary device used in poetry. Likewise, musical compositions contain recurring motifs — Classical music in particular is full of them. As for the songs you’re asking us to sing in church, they don’t use repetition in a skillful way. Quite the opposite, the songs are mind-numbing and trance-inducing.

Reason #3: Melody. Beauty is lacking from the bulk of songs in church now. We’re left mostly with tunes that could be compared to gravel — dull, ordinary, fragmented. In addition, while music notation might help us pick up a non-catchy melody, we can see only the words.

Reason #4: Range. The keys you’re selecting for most songs don’t work for the average singer’s vocal range. In any given song, we have to stretch both too low and too high to reach the notes. Part of the problem is a trend that could be dubbed “the chorus jump.” With this, the first couple of passes through the chorus are sung in a certain octave, and then as the song progresses, the chorus is sung in a higher octave. This showcases the leaders’ voices but isn’t accessible for the rest of us.

Reason #5: Volume. You’ve told us that you’ve tested the volume in the room with a decibel meter and that technically the decibel level is permitted. Even so, the music is too loud. We know because when we try to sing, we can’t hear ourselves over the sound system. Alas, we simply stand there, in the midst of the noise.

March 16, 2024June 16, 2024

Yes, His Eye Is on the Sparrow

We came to sing to her. But she insisted on singing to us, too, as she lay in her hospital bed.

That happened every time we visited the geriatric floor of the hospital.

We were a group of young teens led by a few adults from our church. Walking from room to room, we’d sing choruses popular in the 1980s.

Some elderly patients responded with a “thank you.” Others didn’t say anything — in some cases they couldn’t.

But as for Adele, she sang back to us and always sang the same song: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

“That was beautiful, children. Now, I have a song for you,” she’d say, and then she’d begin to sing.

Why should I feel discouraged
Why should the shadows come
Why should my heart be lonely
And long for heav’n and home

Adele’s voice was soulful and sincere, reminiscent of Ethel Waters, who’d sung the same hymn at Billy Graham crusades.

When Jesus is my portion
My constant friend is He
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me

As she sang, we stood quietly around her.

I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free

Free, even though both of her legs had been amputated.

For His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me

Assurance in spite of her blindness. Her Heavenly Father watched her, and she knew it.

These many years later, I still remember Adele, a woman confined to a hospital bed — unable to walk and unable to see — who did what she could do. She sang.

I think about her gratitude and her faith.

I think about how Jesus was her constant friend.

And I think about the lessons she taught us, simply by singing a song.

February 23, 2024June 16, 2024

Let’s Get Back to Singing the Psalms

Churches, why aren’t we singing the Psalms?

I’m not talking about songs loosely based on the Psalms, but rather songs that try to stick to the divinely inspired words, line by line.

Some people dismiss using the book of Psalms as a modern songbook because it’s found in the Old Testament.

But part of what makes the book such as treasure is that it’s forward-looking to Jesus. Most of the authors of the Psalms, including David, lived at least 1,000 years before Jesus, yet the book foretells Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension.

In fact, Biblical scholars refer to certain Psalms as being messianic because they so clearly describe the coming Messiah.

And Jesus Himself said that the things written about Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled.

So, when we’re singing the Psalms, we’re putting our focus on Jesus, and we’re reminded that God does what He says He’ll do.

We’re also heeding Paul’s exhortation in his letters to the churches in Ephesus and Colossae. He told them to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

Psalm-singing in services

As the New Testament shows us, the earliest believers sang the Psalms, but the practice didn’t stop with them. We know from historical documents that Christians continued to sing the poetic and prophetic words.

A letter written by a European nun named Egeria contains a description of what she saw when she attended a Christian service in Jerusalem around A.D. 400.

In the service, as the letter explains in detail, church leaders sang a total of four Psalms, each one followed by a prayer. One hymn was also sung by the people in the church.

The start of metrical psalmody

Centuries later, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, there was a renewed emphasis on and a new approach to Psalm-singing.

John Calvin wanted to encourage congregational singing, and he believed making Psalms metrical — i.e., placing them in poetic meter — would help.

In 1539, Calvin and poet Clement Marot produced the first metrical psalter, containing nearly 20 Psalms for singing. Calvin oversaw the completion of this French translation, utilizing the skill of poets and composers, until finally in 1562, all 150 Psalms were published in the Genevan Psalter.

Other psalters appeared in Europe throughout the 1500s.

When the Pilgrims and the Puritans came to the New World, each group brought its own psalter. The Puritans soon after wrote another version, and in 1640 it became the first book published in America.

Clearly, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Christians understood the importance of Psalm-singing. Hymns started to crowd out the Psalms during the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, with the introduction of church pop music in the 20th and 21st centuries, Psalms by and large lost their place in church services.

Today, a handful of denominations still sing the Psalms, using modern-day psalters.

For example, The Book of Psalms for Worship, published in 2009, is a metrical psalter that contains all 150 Psalms arranged for four vocal parts.

Churches could use that psalter, or another resource closely paraphrasing Scripture, to readily get back to singing the Psalms.

January 19, 2024June 16, 2024

When Did Worship Become an Adjective?

I remember standing in a Christian bookstore, looking at the labeled dividers in the CD bins and trying to process the meaning of a new genre: worship music.

Around the same time, in 2005, I joined the worship team at my church, and our worship leader arranged for all of us to attend some worship seminars where we learned more about playing and singing worship songs.

In 2010, I started attending a different church. There, I served as a volunteer in worship ministries under the direction of a worship pastor. That church often repeated that people in the congregation should set aside their worship preferences and accept other people’s worship styles during the worship time.

While attending another church in the early 2020s, I received a list of prayer requests and came across this phrase: worship experience. I was perplexed — even more than I had been while standing in the Christian bookstore years earlier — by its meaning. In fact, that worship-as-an-adjective phrase led me to create this blog in 2024.

I don’t take issue with the people I’ve known or the places I’ve been. Quite the opposite, I’m thankful for them.

It’s the terminology that concerns me.

Examining our lexicon

Now, you may wonder why I care about worship being used as an adjective, let alone why I’m troubled by it.

After all, worship is Biblical, you may say.

True.

However, in the Bible, worship is almost always a verb, sometimes a noun but never an adjective.

In today’s Christian circles, by contrast, it’s a go-to modifier.

Also, oddly, the adjective has been attached to a single style of music. The result, whether intended or not, is that worship music has been elevated above all other styles.

That makes honest conversations difficult.

Think about the members of the body of Christ who prefer to sing traditional music or another style of music that’s not worship music.

If they articulate objections to singing worship music, they’re perceived as objecting to worship itself.

That’s clear when you compare these two statements:

Worship music generally doesn’t resonate with me.
Church pop music generally doesn’t resonate with me.

And these two:

The lyrics in that worship song are questionable.
The lyrics in that church pop song are questionable.

Choosing to say church pop music and church pop song would be a good start to revise the language. I could go on, offering suggestions for replacement terms, but here’s just one more example along the same lines: Instead of saying the worship team, shouldn’t we say the church pop team? Or to be more exact, the church pop band?

It’s a weakness of our lexicon that we use worship as an adjective, especially in connection with any style of music.

For the sake of open dialogue in our churches, it’s time we changed that.