By Traci Rhoades
I’m old enough to remember the debates in the 1990s when praise and worship music was introduced to Sunday morning services.
Many churches switched to a traditional service and a contemporary service to accommodate the preferences of congregants, often divided by age.
Over time, it would seem the traditionalists lost the battle, as the traditional songs of my youth became a rarity.
I remember hymn books being set aside, and big screens taking their place. I attended a church where the elderly pianist played familiar songs at her own pace, one church where we had a nice-sized orchestra and a full choir, and just about everywhere in between.
Regardless of your own personal preference, I think we can agree the past 50 years or so have brought a lot of change to worship music styles in the American church.
About two years ago, I began regularly attending Mass, being confirmed in the Catholic Church about a year ago. While a friend of mine who grew up Catholic lets me know some of the songs we sing regularly are traditional songs that have been around for years, they’re new to me. Occasionally, we sing a hymn that is familiar to me, and it thrills me to think some songs have the ability to cross our denominational lines.
It appears the same can be true of certain praise and worship artists too. Last weekend, I met up with some girlfriends from my former church, a Reformed one, and we traveled to the Blue Gate Theatre in Shipshewana, Ind. Amish country. We met up with some other women I knew from a non-denominational church to attend a concert.
Matt Maher was the artist performing that evening. While I knew a few of his songs (we all actually recognized more of them than we thought), one reason I’d come to really appreciate Maher is because he is Catholic. He mentioned the fact on more than one occasion during the concert. No apology or fanfare, but only when it fit into the stories he’d tell as he introduced a song.
The crowd didn’t flinch, either they’d done their research and they already knew, or it simply didn’t matter. It was a good reminder for me, our common ground still far outweighs our differences.
“Lord, I Need You” is one of Maher’s more popular songs. “Lord, I need You, oh, I need You; Every hour, I need You.” Who among us can’t relate to that prayer?
I’d worshiped with a number of his songs on Sunday mornings for years, but they were no longer part of my Sunday morning worship. For Maher, a cradle Catholic, this style of music was likely not part of his traditional Mass experience either. Yet he obviously knew his way around repeated riffs and emotional choruses.
Maher was born in Newfoundland, Canada, and introduced to a variety of music genres. As a teenager, he moved to Arizona, worshiping in Catholic charismatic renewal services. Here, he began to develop his own unique blending of traditional prayers, creeds, and hymns. Maher is one of an emerging group of artists focusing more on liturgical themes in their music, utilizing the psalms, moving toward more spiritually dense offerings.
Maher is also commonly involved in a number of writing and recording collaborations with other well-known artists such as Chris Tomlin. As evidenced there in Amish country, his music style is reaching a broad audience across various church traditions and ages. He continues to perform for both Protestant and Catholic concerts and events, even playing for the last Pope Francis at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day 2013.
It’s been the cry of my own heart for years now, that we’d be one as Jesus prayed we might be in John 17: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word; that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that You sent Me (Verses 20-21).”
Artists like Matt Maher are paving the way for us. May music continue to be a common denominator. Echoing one final song lyric from a Matt Maher song, “And all the people said Amen.”
—————
Traci Rhoades is a faith writer who advocates for an integrated life rooted in Christ. Her family of three loves living near the beach towns of Lake Michigan.
I’m old enough to remember the debates in the 1990s when praise and worship music was introduced to Sunday morning services.
Many churches switched to a traditional service and a contemporary service to accommodate the preferences of congregants, often divided by age.
Over time, it would seem the traditionalists lost the battle, as the traditional songs of my youth became a rarity.
I remember hymn books being set aside, and big screens taking their place. I attended a church where the elderly pianist played familiar songs at her own pace, one church where we had a nice-sized orchestra and a full choir, and just about everywhere in between.
Regardless of your own personal preference, I think we can agree the past 50 years or so have brought a lot of change to worship music styles in the American church.
About two years ago, I began regularly attending Mass, being confirmed in the Catholic Church about a year ago. While a friend of mine who grew up Catholic lets me know some of the songs we sing regularly are traditional songs that have been around for years, they’re new to me. Occasionally, we sing a hymn that is familiar to me, and it thrills me to think some songs have the ability to cross our denominational lines.
It appears the same can be true of certain praise and worship artists too. Last weekend, I met up with some girlfriends from my former church, a Reformed one, and we traveled to the Blue Gate Theatre in Shipshewana, Ind. Amish country. We met up with some other women I knew from a non-denominational church to attend a concert.
Matt Maher was the artist performing that evening. While I knew a few of his songs (we all actually recognized more of them than we thought), one reason I’d come to really appreciate Maher is because he is Catholic. He mentioned the fact on more than one occasion during the concert. No apology or fanfare, but only when it fit into the stories he’d tell as he introduced a song.
The crowd didn’t flinch, either they’d done their research and they already knew, or it simply didn’t matter. It was a good reminder for me, our common ground still far outweighs our differences.
“Lord, I Need You” is one of Maher’s more popular songs. “Lord, I need You, oh, I need You; Every hour, I need You.” Who among us can’t relate to that prayer?
I’d worshiped with a number of his songs on Sunday mornings for years, but they were no longer part of my Sunday morning worship. For Maher, a cradle Catholic, this style of music was likely not part of his traditional Mass experience either. Yet he obviously knew his way around repeated riffs and emotional choruses.
Maher was born in Newfoundland, Canada, and introduced to a variety of music genres. As a teenager, he moved to Arizona, worshiping in Catholic charismatic renewal services. Here, he began to develop his own unique blending of traditional prayers, creeds, and hymns. Maher is one of an emerging group of artists focusing more on liturgical themes in their music, utilizing the psalms, moving toward more spiritually dense offerings.
Maher is also commonly involved in a number of writing and recording collaborations with other well-known artists such as Chris Tomlin. As evidenced there in Amish country, his music style is reaching a broad audience across various church traditions and ages. He continues to perform for both Protestant and Catholic concerts and events, even playing for the last Pope Francis at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day 2013.
It’s been the cry of my own heart for years now, that we’d be one as Jesus prayed we might be in John 17: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word; that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that You sent Me (Verses 20-21).”
Artists like Matt Maher are paving the way for us. May music continue to be a common denominator. Echoing one final song lyric from a Matt Maher song, “And all the people said Amen.”
—————
Traci Rhoades is a faith writer who advocates for an integrated life rooted in Christ. Her family of three loves living near the beach towns of Lake Michigan.
