Many ministers come to me asking advices to what might be done to improve the musical departments of their churches. Usually the music is too high in grade, rather than low.
Most churches select their music committee from among the ultra-musical folks of the congregation. They select their choir leader and organist, and insist on a musical program fit ting their musical understanding and appreciation. While a minister is longing for music that will create an atmosphere in which he' can do his best preaching, the music committee, the organist, and the choir director are thinking of music that will meet the approval of the trained musical people of their congregation and community.
Many of them never think of making the music a real part of the worship of the church. But they want it to be of such grade and character, carrying the names of such composers, that when their programs are printed in the papers, theirs will be more attractive than some other church in the community.
In other instances many of the musical programs are built for entertainment rather than for worship.
Some of our critics of gospel songs have picked out numbers for censure that seem to them ridiculous and foolish. We will admit that some of the songs have been below par, but we can go to the musical programs of many churches and pick out anthems which they have used that are just as weak, ridiculous, and foolish as any gospel songs ever written.
I believe the church should attain the world's highest standards of music. I believe our singers should study oratorios and the great classics. I believe we should use the great music in our churches when we have choirs that can sing the music. But I believe we can find a happy medium with the use of lovely hymns of the church, and at the same time make room for beautiful gospel songs, and in that way create an atmosphere which will be helpful to the minister and to the congregation as well.
I love the great hymns of the church. I love the oratorio. But when a church sings nothing but music of this kind, the average layman gets musical indigestion.
We printed a special series of gospel songs in sheet form with more elaborate accompaniment and more artistically arranged than is possible in the songbook. I sent some of these to a very prominent singer in one of the churches on Fifth Avenue in New York. This woman wrote and thanked me for them and said, "Mr. Rodeheaver, I have been singing some of these lovely gospel songs; and for the first time in my life people have been waiting for me at the foot of the choir stairway to thank me for the song with tears in their eyes."
The place and purpose of the gospel song in worship may be illustrated by this story. In the city of Denver I went to play the trombone and sing for the people in a tuberculosis sanatorium. One of the nurses said to me, "Mr. Rode heaver, would you go in and speak to a very sick patient on the upper balcony? I am afraid he cannot live very long." I went, of course, and found there a Swede who had been a big muscular man, but now was wasted by the ravages of that dread disease.
As I talked to him he seemed bitter and sad. He explained to me that all his friends had for gotten him. They had not even sent him postal cards or letters there at the sanatorium. I said, "Well, the friends here forget easily, but there is one friend who never forgets."
He asked, "Who is that?"
I said, "Jesus Christ, my Saviour and yours, and if you let Him-be, my friend and yours."
"I don't know about that," he replied.
Then I said, "Let me tell you about Him." I took my little Testament out of my pocket, read him some of the great, rich promises; and before very long he gave me his hand and said he would accept the Christ as his personal Saviour. Then I sang for him the song "Jesus Remembers When the World Forgets."
The next morning the nurse called me and said, "Mr. Rodeheaver, your big Swede went out about two o'clock this morning to meet that Friend you introduced him to; but he went out with a look of hope instead of despair and dis appointment on his face—a look of expectancy, because he had found a Friend who would never forget."
Now, as much as we love the great anthems, do you know one that would have brought a message of comfort and peace to a man at a time and place like this? That is why we need more gospel songs in our church programs— because there are always anxious, burdened hearts in every audience.
