God talk and congregational song: An interview with Brian Wren

Christian Century, May 3, 2000

BRIAN WREN IS an internationally known hymn writer. After completing his doctoral work at Oxford University, he was a pastor in the United Reformed Church of Great Britain and then a consultant on world poverty. Living in recent years in the U.S., he has led workshops and taught courses on worship, hymnody, and gender issues. In the fall he will join the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. We spoke to him recently about church conflicts over worship forms and musical styles, and about his own theological and musical convictions.

On one side of today's "worship wars" are people who like very traditional forms of hymnody. On the other side are people who want a form of worship that reflects contemporary culture. Where does you work fit into all this?

When I first went to church, when I was about 15, I found myself in a hymn-singing tradition. When I began to write hymns in the 1960s it was natural for me to follow that tradition. I think that a congregational song, or a hymn--which is a lyric that develops a theme or tells a story which unfolds over more than two or three stanzas--can be in any kind of musical style. I would love to have the opportunity to use multimedia to revitalize traditional hymnody. I'm quite hospitable to using a variety of musical styles. I just haven't had lots of opportunities to work with them, since people usually ask me to do traditional hymns.

The songs that my wife, Susan, and I write together have a kind of gospel-folk style, a much more informal style. And sometimes I get the opportunity to do a lyric that breaks out of traditional boundaries. I work with several composers who will move into something more rhythmic or jazzy musically if I ask them to and they want to.

So you would be happy to write hymns for people who want more popular forms of worship?

I think that mainstream churches should give a critical welcome to popular styles of music. I don't think that music can be divided into the sacred and the secular. There is simply music. When people speak of good contemporary music, they're thinking of music with a very strong beat, a strong rhythmic note. It's the music many of them grew up with. I think it's reasonable, good and right to be hospitable to it.

One kind of contemporary liturgy is the call-and-response form that comes from post--Vatican II Roman Catholic churches. It's musically eclectic, and it's easy singing rather than harmonically rich. Primarily it appeals to people over 30 and under 50--to baby boomers. The people over 50 say, "This is terrible, trite stuff" and the people under 30 call it "granddad music." There are also musical styles that appeal to a younger age group, though they aren't yet widely commercially published.

Almost all the churches I write hymns for are wrestling with the issue of styles of music and worship. I have a great admiration for classically trained musicians, and there are many fine musicians and composers in our churches. Some of them were taught to disparage popular music. Not many places teach the skills involved in popular music, which requires improvisation and the ability to work with instruments other than the pipe organ and piano. To look down on popular music is a class-based prejudice which we need to unlearn. My ideal church musician is a person who can play a Bach prelude or a Messiaen piece and then turn to something more popular, like a praise chorus.

I happen to be color blind, but I know there are people with excellent color perception who see color in more complex ways than I do. In a similar way, there are people who are better able than the rest of us to appreciate complex melody and harmony. To someone who is trained in music, who is able to appreciate the richness of classical music, whether ancient or modern, popular music sounds trite. It's not that they decide to consider it trite; they hear it that way. But if some people look at New England's fall colors and see 16 more shades than I do, that doesn't mean they have the right to tell me what I should be seeing or that their perceptions are morally superior to mine. Nor does it mean that I see the world in monochrome. It's the same with music.

At some of the "seeker" churches, the congregation is an audience and the musicians are performers on stage. What do you think of that kind of worship, as opposed to congregational singing?

I do believe that the songs people sing together, whatever their style, are a vehicle for their encounter with the divine. In most traditions, singing is a basic part of Christian worship, at its best if it's seen as self-expression rather than as a performance. People with all kinds of voices can sing hymns. It shouldn't matter whether they have trained or untrained voices, nice or off-key voices. In that sense, worship should be inclusive. Some people say, "I love to sing even though I know I'm not always on key." And if you sat next to them you'd know it was true. But they need to express their faith and to be part of a congregation through singing.