The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele

Expressive Individualism and Church Music - with Philip Percival and Alanna Glover

• Philip Percival, Alanna Glover • Season 6 • Episode 31

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What does Expressive Individualism mean for churches?  And what specifically does it mean for church music?

Here is the expressive individualism worldview: ‘Truth comes from inside me.  It’s important that I look inside to discover who I truly am’ and ‘I need to express my individuality and personal truth to the world around me to receive validation.’

That truth comes from within - is the unspoken assumptions of guests who come to our churches.

And it’s a worldview that has impacts inside the church, including inside our music teams and inside the heads of the songwriters who write the songs that we sing.

Philip Percival and Alanna Glover lead the work of Emu Music, focusing on writing congregational songs and the training of church musicians and leaders.

Alanna is doing a masters research project in Expressive Individualism & music, and Philip’s PhD is in the biblical theology of worship.


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Speaker 1:

expressive individualism and how it plays out in church music, among our members, among our music teams and our songwriters. Our guests are philip percival and alana glover. It's the pastor's heart and dominic steel, and here is the world view. Truth comes from inside me. It's important that I look inside to discover who I truly am. Truth was once external, now it's internal. I need to express my individuality and personal truth to the world around me to receive validation. It's more important to be performing than to be formed. That is the worldview of our society. It's the world we live in in the West. The truth comes from within. It's the unspoken assumption of guests who come to our churches. It's the assumptions of the people who are potential Christians who might come to our churches, and it's a worldview that has impacted inside the church, including inside our music teams, and inside the church, including inside our music teams and inside the heads of our songwriters. What does expressive individualism mean for churches and specifically for church music?

Speaker 1:

Philip Percival and Alana Glover are fresh off the plane from leading the music at the Big Keswick Conference in the UK a fortnight ago. They lead the work of Emu Music, focusing on the writing of congregational songs and the training of church musicians and leaders. Alana's doing a master's research project on this expressive individualism and church music subject, and Philip's PhD is on a biblical theology of worship. Alana, let's start with you. You and I'll come to the pastor's heart in a moment, but first this worldview change of expressive individualism. It feels to me as if the music scene in churches is changing under our feet. Am I right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely there have been lots of changes in the way that we sing in church over the last couple of decades. We've seen that change ramp up as expressive individualism has taken hold in our society. But what's deeply unsatisfying about it is that it's really hard to pinpoint what that looks like exactly, because church singing that's very reserved and non-expressive can just as much be expressive individualism at work as those churches that are extremely expressive and really big in the way that they do their singing. Both of those things can be driven by this worldview, so it's quite sneaky.

Speaker 1:

Oh, so you're saying that the traditionalist can't look down their nose of the contemporary on this issue?

Speaker 2:

That's right and that is the temptation right, especially with this phrase, expressive individualism. We think where we see expression, that must be expressive individualism at work. But actually non-expression may be the choice of the individual as much as expression.

Speaker 1:

And you can't actually see the heart.

Speaker 2:

No, it's all about the motivations of the heart. That's right.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, let's just define expressive individualism. I mean, I gave a little one, but you have a go, and I mean it's your project, so yeah, let's hear from you.

Speaker 2:

You have a go, and I mean, it's your project. So, yeah, let's hear from you. Yeah, it's the idea that individuals should look inward, that we have an inner core of feelings and desires and convictions, and that that is really the ultimate truth and that, in order to be a happy and successful individual in the world, we should identify those feelings, express them to the world around us and that the world around us should affirm those feelings. So, yeah, it's really the shift of where truth is coming from. When we look back in history, people would identify themselves by external factors, their relationships, their families, their communities that they're a part of, but now we're defining ourselves by what we see inside of ourselves.

Speaker 1:

And I need to be true to myself.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's where we got all those pop cultural kind of sayings you know, you do you, or I'm living out my truth. Now we have this concept of my truth can be different to your truth, but they're both just as valid and we should validate each other.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so to the Bible and music and singing, Philip, because we're going to talk about the interaction between these two. What do you want to say from the Scriptures on this?

Speaker 3:

Well, obviously, the Bible takes a very different view about how we view ourselves, and particularly when it comes to singing, different view about how we view ourselves and particularly when it comes to singing. We love to look at colossians and ephesians as some of our core um texts for understanding god's purposes for singing within the context of the church, and you immediately see that that our singing is not about ourselves. So colossians 3 starts with the idea that we fix our eyes on Christ, not on ourselves. And when Paul talks more about what singing means, it's being driven by the external word of Christ. It's the word of Christ that God plants in our hearts. It's how he edifies and builds the church. It's other person-centered as we teach and admonish one another with that word of Christ. It's the word of Christ that drives our affections and that response of praise and thanksgiving when we sing. So essentially, our singing is controlled Christologically by the word of Christ.

Speaker 3:

There are other approaches that people take with singing, so what I would call a doxological approach, or our singing is all about our praise, or there's an approach where our singing is more spiritual and internal and a Christological approach encompasses those views. So, yes, we do our praise, guided by the word of Christ. It's the word of Christ that engages our affections. But if we focus on our praise or focus on the internal. But if we focus on our praise or focus on the internal, then we are at risk of letting expressive individualism subvert our singing in church.

Speaker 1:

Now, just as you say that, I was thinking, oh, there's a temptation for me to think. There were these glory centuries where Christians had it right in church music. And then in the last 50 years it's all gone wonky with fights over contemporary worship versus traditional worship, and then it's just got worse in the last five years with the rise of expressive individualism. But are you saying to me, I mean, was there ever a time when Christians had it right, or has it always been a corrupted mess?

Speaker 3:

Have we always had it right in our singing or was there any time when we had it right in our singing? I think that's impossible to say. I think, historically, that you see the modern issues that have existed throughout the centuries, I think the early evangelicals, who did put a great emphasis on singing alongside the preaching of God's word, did have a model of singing which balanced both external truth and a personal, affectionate response, thinking like the hymns of Charles Wesley and John Newton. They will speak in the first person and they will speak passionately about the human affections. But what is very clear in that is that it's a response to the gospel from that external truth first.

Speaker 1:

So when you look at Wesley and Newton you think actually I think those guys particularly they did get it kind of right.

Speaker 3:

I think so, and I think in many ways they were actually just repeating the model of singing that we see in a number of places in the Bible where we see songs occurring throughout the narrative history of salvation.

Speaker 1:

Now, alana, with this rise of expressive individualism in the last kind of I don't know how long would we say decade, or does it go further back than that?

Speaker 2:

I mean you can trace kind of the heritage of it right back to the 18th century. But really with the advances of technology and just the speed at which technology has advanced, globalisation, all the ways that we are the iPhone yeah. Yeah, that we are connected now that it has just ramped up so much in the last decade or so to the point that it really is the water that we're all swimming in, it's the air that we are all breathing. None of us really can escape it, it's just everywhere.

Speaker 1:

And so where is the person who comes into church likely to feel a clash with what happens from the platform you know, or an affirmation with what happens from the platform?

Speaker 2:

I think what a person, or an affirmation, with what happens from the platform. I think what a person, an expressive individual coming into church will do is well, they've been trained that their inner truth is the ultimate truth for them, right? So they are going to measure everything they're hearing against how they feel inside, and if anything doesn't sit well, then they're likely to reject it. So it's not a place where they're expecting to be formed or to have their mind changed. They're really just looking for things that align with what they find inside of themselves, and immediately we can see that's deeply problematic. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

How is expressive individualism playing out as people choose a church? I mean because which church will I go to?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, this idea of us wanting to perform instead of be formed, I think, is really important. So we're looking for places to perform our inner feelings. So we are going to look at all of the options, the different flavours and styles of churches that are available now, and pick one that is the space that we think I'm most able to perform my feelings in this space, and so I'll choose that church to do that in and to choose a community that will affirm me in that, not one that is going to try and change me and to choose a community that will affirm me in that, not one that is going to try and change me.

Speaker 1:

Now, how is what you're saying there different to the? Baby boomers go to church at 9.30, their parents go to church at 8am and their children go to church at 6pm.

Speaker 2:

I think it's deeper than just a preference, because a lot of those things were preference, right, we think of the 8am service as that traditional service. Maybe there's an organ, and then the 9am's got some contemporary music in there. Maybe those are more preferences, I think, rather than thinking of those things as aligning with a truth. So now it is higher stakes.

Speaker 1:

I think we're actually looking for those things to affirm what is within us and to allow us to perform what are some songs that if you like, where you see, if you almost synchronistically the gospel and expressive individualism meshed together.

Speaker 3:

Ooh, I'm not sure we want to name names of particular songs. I think there's a trend to want to sing songs. Go on, it's just us and a few thousand others.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think there are certain theologies that lend themselves more to expressive individual language.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So if we think about some of the Pentecostal movements, the word of faith movement, the idea that all Christians are little g gods, and therefore the feelings of the little g god are very important. They are maybe as important as the word of scripture you can see how, in that kind of theological framework that I can be an expressive individual and that gives me a lot of power to have my feelings validated right. So the language that we see coming out of a lot of churches of that tradition is very me-centric. I will do this for the Lord. I will do this in the name of the Lord. My praise is the water that the enemies drown in. That kind of language is elevating the self and that sits really nicely with expressive individualism. Even though they're not the same thing, they work really well together.

Speaker 1:

What about within the music team and how we if you like, our posture to the congregation, and how does it play out there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean when you do seminars.

Speaker 1:

I'm imagining the content of what you're teaching. Music teams now, compared to 10 years ago, has had to intentionally interact with my innermost heart problems on this.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, we are teaching people all the time about the core reason that they are doing what they're doing. The reason they're standing up there and leading the singing is so that their congregations can sing and so that their congregations can give glory to God. It is not about us having a platform. That's the platform with which we show everyone our incredible musical skills, where we see out our dreams of being musicians. Um, that's not the space to do it in. We're actually, um denying ourselves, for the sake of the congregation, being able to sing. That means setting aside our preferences, our musical preferences. That means, um, often we've done eight years of, you know, slaving away learning this instrument only to play very basic, simple chords, because that's what the congregation needs.

Speaker 3:

So we're teaching that shift all the time to musicians because it's so easy for that to creep into any musician's heart who are involved in music yeah, one of the core things that we try and teach church musicians is that the heart of music ministry occurs in the congregation, not on the platform, and that's just working against this trend that everything that we see on media or even at conferences does put the emphasis on the music happens at the front, whereas when we're driven theologically, we see that that's actually the opposite. The word of Christ ministry is going on within the church, within the pews, as we teach and admonish one another. So we have to just always be thinking, and being on guard is the way, simply, that we lead and introduce songs pushing us in a different direction.

Speaker 1:

What's your line that you would say to the muso who does do a gig at a pub or a place on a Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night and then comes to church Sunday morning, and how they need to think differently about that.

Speaker 2:

I guess the shift is that you turn up to church to serve, don't you? It's about serving the congregation before you and serving God. Yeah, and what I've found in music teams is I've had a lot of musicians who want to step down because they feel like they're not being authentic anymore. So I think I'm seeing that expressive individualism come in. They want to do everything authentically. Yeah, authenticity is lauded and they must feel kind of in line with what they're doing at all times. But we know that that's just not realistic. If I am down on the music roster every second week, there are going to be weeks where I don't feel like doing it. But I actually need to be faithful in that and see out that service, even if that is kind of grading against how I'm feeling that morning. But that's a real battle I'm having with my generation, the generation below me, that they, just the minute they feel that grating against who they are inside, how they're feeling, then they want to step back, they want to step down because they're not being authentic. Do you think that's?

Speaker 1:

more of a problem for the musician on a Sunday morning than it is for the person on the morning tea roster or the sound desk or welcoming team or something like that. I mean because the worldview the background worldview is going to be the same, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, maybe there's less kind of heart engagement involved in setting up for morning tea than there is in leading the singing of a gospel truth right. It requires a different level of interaction with how you are feeling.

Speaker 1:

And at that point you're nibbling into deconstructing faith. Talk to me about that.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I think one of the huge ways we're seeing expressive individualism at work is the amount of people who are deconstructing their faith, and it's that attitude I was talking about before, where you come into the church with your feelings and your desires as kind of the ultimate truth and you're you're comparing everything against that, and the result will be that you then pick and choose and that's deconstruction at work, isn't it? Hmm?

Speaker 1:

That's deconstruction at work, isn't it? Where in your average evangelical church, philip?

Speaker 3:

is this likely to bubble to the surface? Well, as Alana was saying, it's not as simple as pointing to one particular activity that's going on. So the person who is demonstrantly emotive in their singing might be being expressive, individualistic in their approach, but equally it might be the person who's being reserved. So I think we would say that what we need to be doing is just always looking at our motives for the way that we do music in church, whether we're leading it, whether we're singing it within the congregation.

Speaker 3:

And Carl Truman makes the point that the person who is demonstrably and emotionally engaged in a big way, he suggests that's kind of low-hanging fruit of observing expressive individualism. But we would say that's really only touching the surface of it. Really, I think each of us is wired sorry. Each of us is being told by the world all the time. Now find what is true and express that. So that's not a very satisfying answer because it really is impossible to point to one thing. I think there are trends, though we can see that there are certain sorts of songs that churches are singing more.

Speaker 1:

So you are concerned about the playlists of songs in a number of evangelical churches and leading evangelical churches? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

I can see that there's a trend towards wanting to sing songs of songs in a number of evangelical churches and leading evangelical churches. Yeah, absolutely, I can see that there's a trend towards wanting to sing songs that are more songs of adoration. Now, there's nothing at all wrong with singing songs of adoration that fits within our biblical model for singing but that should be balanced with other songs that are teaching us, other songs that are allowing us to sit and be challenged and admonished by God's word. We want to be singing songs of confession and creedal songs where our singing is doing more than just giving me a voice to express my faith.

Speaker 1:

So I'm the pastor of a church with 10 million things going on and all sorts of voices saying, if you don't do this, the kingdom will fall. Here is another problem. I've got. What's your advice to me on something practical that I can do to help my people on this?

Speaker 3:

Like. The simple answer is just listen to what God's word has to say to us about the way that we do church and the way that singing fits into our doctrine and practice of doing church. So are the songs that we're singing rich in God's word? Do they help us to teach and admonish one another? Are the songs that we're singing affectionate? Do they allow the Holy Spirit to shape our emotions and feelings and responses by the gospel? Are our songs giving us a voice for praise and thanksgiving which is driven by the word of Christ? Thankfully, those sorts of things are really clear to us and not hard for us to do if we just intentionally think about our music ministry ticking some of these key boxes about both singing but also how the church works.

Speaker 2:

And, given how much we sing in church, I think we could do with more teaching from the Bible on why we sing in church. I think we could do with more teaching from the Bible on why we sing. We come across it when we get to the books of Colossians and Ephesians, but it is just really helpful for all of our congregations to be taught that, maybe on a more regular basis, so they know what's going on when they're singing and they can really yeah, do that to its full biblical potential singing and they can really, yeah, do that to its full biblical potential.

Speaker 1:

Philip, a moment ago, painted, if you like, the positive. What's the negative?

Speaker 2:

Alana, when you're visiting a church and you see, this and you think, ah no, I mean, I guess it's the opposite thing of all of those biblical points, right?

Speaker 2:

If we take those three things. We want to be singing the word of Christ. It's whenever we see songs that are filled with kind of mumbling, very vague things, that's not actually the word of Christ in any recognizable way. That is not helping our congregations to grow in love of knowledge of God. So songs that are filled with rubbish, songs that are not enabling us to teach and admonish one another, or even a singing culture that is not enabling us to teach and admonish one another.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to point to specific kind of ways of expression because I think there are almost. All ways of expression can be used helpfully. But if you think about having your eyes closed, that kind of cuts us off from the congregation around us. So if we are singing with our eyes closed 100% of the time, we're actually ignoring one another. We're not acknowledging that horizontal aspect of teaching and admonishing one another. So some eyes closed, I think, is fine, but always eyes closed it's really unhelpful. It's an unhelpful message. And then, are we doing that with thankfulness in our hearts to God? Often, if we're making it about us and our feelings, then that isn't cultivating thankfulness in our hearts, because we're not dwelling on what Christ has done for us, we're dwelling on our feelings. You can see, it's just this horrible cycle. So, yeah, it's just. There are so many ways that it can go wrong, but I guess looking at those three areas is really helpful.

Speaker 3:

I guess we've all walked into churches where we think that we're actually entering a concert performance rather than a church service, and that just might be the way that the songs are led. It might be the volume of the band where the subwoofers are so loud that it does actually enable me to be singing to my brothers and sisters in the church. That might be a great way for me to feel that I'm in the moment and a great spiritual experience, but it's actually not growing me in Christ. It's interesting.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to a senior Pentecostal leader a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about coming out of COVID and he said the churches that have been word-centred and Christ-centred, and really the Reformed churches, his observation have come out of COVID so much better than the experience-based churches which have been. When you haven't got the experience, well, why am I there? And so I mean it's going to be very interesting to see when that flows through into the National Church Life Survey and things like that. But we will watch with interest. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing this journey that you're on and the things you've researched. Philip Percival and Alana Glover have been my guests. They lead the music team, or the music ministry, emu Music, and we will put a link to Emu on the show notes below. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. My name's Dominic Steele and we'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.

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