Church May Not Provide Support for Depressed

So a study says---here is an excerpt from a PsychCentral article:

Church May Not Provide Support for Depressed
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 2, 2009

An ongoing study by a well-respected Baptist university has found that local churches may not be the best place to receive counseling or support for mental illness.

Baylor University researchers built upon a 2008 study that found nearly a third of those who approached their local church in response to a personal or family member’s previously-diagnosed mental illness were told they really did not have mental illness.

In the new study, investigators discovered individuals experiencing depression and anxiety were dismissed the most often.

(Read the rest: Here).

This doesn't bode well for the church as a whole. The church should always provide support in times of need but then you have fundamentalists denying peoples' psychological problems. See this sermon by John MacArthur for example: Elements of Joy--Part 1. We must work to correct these problems. John MacArthur also believes biblical counseling is the only true way to treat mental health problems but this is just foolishness---spouting off random scripture verses in an attempt to exorcise one's psychological demons will only lead to further mental health issues.

See: Christian Counseling, http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?14,12133,page=1, "The Day Gods Word Went on Trial" and http://wordofmouthministries.blogspot.com/2007/07/john-macarthur-and-kenneth-nally.html for example. In order then to correct these problems---the church must admit the reality of mental health problems and be willing to aid those suffering from such in positive ways. The church must also extend it's hands where needed while encouraging the role of psychologists where they are needed. I think this would be a step forward in providing support for the depressed and other mental health patients in the church.

Should Bob Dylan Become The Church's New Hymn Writer?

Faith And Theology has an interesting post critiquing church music: Faith and Theology: Are our hymns becoming stupider?---here is the first few paragraphs of that post:

THURSDAY, 12 MARCH 2009

Are our hymns becoming stupider?

In a spirited polemic, John Stackhouse complains about the stupidity of contemporary Christian hymns: “We are the most educated Christians in history, and yet our lyrics are considerably stupider than our much less educated Christian forebears.”

I sympathise with Stackhouse’s complaints. But in all fairness, I think the majority of hymns have always been pretty stupid. If we think the 19th century (for example) was full of great hymn-writers, it’s just because our hymnbooks today include only the highlights from that entire century. And let’s face it, even the highlights are usually pretty atrocious. Hymns typically suffer either from painfully bad lyrics or from a trivial, no-less-painful sentimentality.

The great hymns – and there are so few great hymns: if you subtract the Christmas carols and Charles Wesley, there’s hardly anything left – are always the exception. For strange and mysterious reasons, these hymns awaken our feelings of reverence and love and thanksgiving and joy. In spite of the fact that they are hymns, they somehow manage to communicate truth and to evoke deep feeling.

Of course, there’s no single recipe for writing a great hymn. And similarly, bad hymns can be bad in several different ways. They can deploy metaphor ineptly, or they can mix metaphors in ridiculous ways (my favourite examples are hymns that get hopelessly muddled over the two different words “Son” and “sun”). They can use rhythm badly, so that the wrong kinds of words and syllables are stressed (this is most noticeable when the end-of-line stress falls on a banality). They can use horrible words with no poetic capacity (for example, I once heard a contemporary praise song with the line “this is my priority in life” – any hymn that uses the word “priority” will immediately be very very bad). And as Stackhouse observes, they can also fail to rhyme properly – although in my opinion, this is actually the least problematic feature of a bad hymn, since rhyme is far less important than the function of rhythm or metaphor or word-choice.

(Read on: Here).

I agree with Ben Myers' assessment---a lot of hymns are really bad poetry set to even worse music. Take for example this "gem" of a hymn:

Immortal, invisible

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
But of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.

All laud we would render; O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.

In this example, it is bad poetry set to bad music: , but in this example it is bad poetry rescued by sublime acapella music:

So in light of the bad poetry of most hymns and the master craftsman that Bob Dylan is with words---I ask: should Bob Dylan Become The Church's New Hymn Writer? Compare the above hymn to these Christian songs of Bob Dylan's:

When He Returns

The iron hand it ain't no match for the iron rod,
The strongest wall will crumble and fall to a mighty God.
For all those who have eyes and all those who have ears
It is only He who can reduce me to tears.
Don't you cry and don't you die and don't you burn
For like a thief in the night, He'll replace wrong with right
When He returns.

Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through,
He unleashed His power at an unknown hour that no one knew.
How long can I listen to the lies of prejudice?
How long can I stay drunk on fear out in the wilderness?
Can I cast it aside, all this loyalty and this pride?
Will I ever learn that there'll be no peace, that the war won't cease
Until He returns?

Surrender your crown on this blood-stained ground, take off your mask,
He sees your deeds, He knows your needs even before you ask.
How long can you falsify and deny what is real?
How long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal?
Of every earthly plan that be known to man, He is unconcerned,
He's got plans of His own to set up His throne
When He returns.

Copyright ©1979 Special Rider Music

Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Copyright ©1981 Special Rider Music

For more critiques of church music, see these posts of mine:
TheoPoetic Musings: Insipid Contemporary Christian Music And Shallow Hymns

TheoPoetic Musings: More Thoughts on Contemporary Worship

More Thoughts on Contemporary Worship

This comes by way of my friend Steve Jeffcoat's Facebook notes:

Thoughts on Contemporary Worship
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Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 12:28am

A little rant on what annoys me about the contemporary worship movement...please don't take this personally or get offended. I like singing "praise songs" every now and then, but I like other stuff too.

1. "Praise and Worship" songs

First off, who came up with this term for contemporary church music? It seems to imply that traditional hymns and even Gregorian chants, et cetera, are not praise songs or worshipful. Worship consists of way more than just singing interspersed with prayer. Communion is part of worship. Discussion and thinking are part of worship. Reading scripture is part of worship. Fasting and baptism are part of worship. Of course, dancing and singing and prayer are also part of worship, but it seems that often when people now say let's praise God or worhship Jesus, they only mean sing (with guitar, of course), and pray. "Hymns" do not just encompass songs written prior to 1975. There are many active current composers of hymns; they are not dead. The words and meaning within the hymns are quite deep and sincere, and most definitly edifying to God. Also, there are more than just 10 words in the average hymn. I'm sure God doesn't get bored with hearing "this is the air I breathe" sung 500 times like a broken record, but I get bored and irritated singing it 500 times in the same song. I wish that these contemoprary church songwriters would add a couple more verses to their songs.
Contemporary church music shares some of the same bad characteristics as a fire-and-brimstone tent revival preacher. It gets you all worked up into an emotional frenzy singing the same words over and over and over again, without even halfway paying attention to the words. For instance:

in "Holy is the Lord" how many times are you actually lifting up your hands when you sing "we stand and lift up our hands"

in "I could sing of Your love" are you actually dancing when it says "They will dance with joy like we're dancing now?"

In "Your grace is enough" why are we telling God "remember your people, remember your promise?" Are we afraid He'll forget?

Also, why is it that the same 5-10 praise songs are sung every time, despite the supposed vast array of praise songs. Even 10 years ago, it was just the same 5-10 songs every time, just different ones than today. In my church, we can go over a year without repeating a hymn.

2. LCD Projectors

These devices (and their predecessor, the overhead projector) are the worst thing to happen in modern church singing. First off, they often have typos, are in the wrong order, and the operator forgets to change the slide in time. Also, they don't show the music, just the words. Granted, that's often because the song being sung has just 1 or maybe 2 lines of melody repeated ad infinitum, but that's beside the point. If I've never heard one of the 600+ songs in the hymnal before, or a new one that's copied and used as a bulliten insert, I can use some rudimentary music-reading skills to figure out the melody. With a new praise song, I have no idea what to sing. Also, I typically sing the bass line of the four-part harmony in the hymnal, and it's pretty difficult to get good multi-part harmony without having the notes.
Even worse than any of this, however, is the churches that put traditional hymns on the LCD screen, when the same song is in the perfectly good hymnal right in front of you.

Here are some of my comments from that note:

Well reasoned rant---but check out some weird hymns like: http://dominickadamo.blogspot.com/2007/09/god-of-earth-and-outer-space.html or http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=5278. It's sad how good CCM like Larry Norman or Bill Mallonee or even Rich Mullins' other songs get left out in favor of banal pop praise songs. Part of the reason for this is because of (apologists) like (the evangelical) Ravi Zacharias and (Calvinazi) John MacArthur telling Christians to reject post-modernism in favor of dogmatic modernism: fundamentalism/Evangelicalism or anti-intellectual Christianity Lite. Although it's true fundies hate newness, they are willing to accept Praise music in the name of God-ordained American Capitalism: modernism's triumph. See they need a banal commercial in order to sell their product ie. anti-intellectualism, moral legalism, pastor worship, bible literalism/inerrancy, bibliolatry and deification of bible translators. It all boils down to capitalist materialism/consumerism. Yeah, I agree with you, Steve: " Contemporary church music shares some of the same bad characteristics as a fire-and-brimstone tent revival preacher. It gets you all worked up into an emotional frenzy singing the same words over and over and over again, without even halfway paying attention to the words."---but that's because today's church is consumer and market driven. Most traditional churches are being replaced by large shopping mall like compounds in which preachers are the salesmen selling a product (their view of Christianity) to the consumers (congregation), in which critical thinking (especially in fundie/Christianity Lite churches but occaisionaly moderate/liberal churches) is bypassed, so that a theological worldview can be quickly consumed by the masses. Thanks alot, modernism. Harry Emerson Fosdick was right, when he said:

"As I plead thus for an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church, I am, of course, thinking primarily about this new generation. We have boys and girls growing up in our homes and schools, and because we love them we may well wonder about the church which will be waiting to receive them. Now, the worst kind of church that can possibly be offered to the allegiance of the new generation is an intolerant church. Ministers often bewail the fact that young people turn from religion to science for the regulative ideas of their lives. But this is easily explicable. Science treats a young man’s mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, “Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth.” Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, “Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions. These prescribed opinions we will give you in advance of your thinking; now think, but only so as to reach these results.” My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church."

Sorry for the long post/rant---but nice note, Steve.

Insipid Contemporary Christian Music And Shallow Hymns

Henry Neufeld has an interesting post on his Blog entitled: Worship: Few Words, Boy Friends, and Girl Friends. Here are some snippets from that post:

David Ker is complaining about modern worship songs (since the 90s), and Peter Kirk has partially taken him to task about it, wondering about the air down in Mozambique and whether it causes David to rant. (Personally I suspect it’s looking at too many hippos, but in non-essentials charity, I say!) David continues with a more in-depth piece, Droning, desymbolization and Christian mantra. I think the latter is especially well worth reading, though all three will help set the stage.

Now I’m going to try to “let my words be few,” but I’ve already written quite a number of words, so that may not be easy. [Note after completing this--I failed.] Since I have an eclectic readership, let me note here that this is written to Christians. It’s internal shop talk and will probably be simply boring or weird to others.

I’m personally in sympathy with David on this from the point of view of music quality and what makes me worship. Over the years, however, I’ve tried to learn to be less critical. If I find it difficult to handle a song, I look around the congregation and inevitably I see plenty of other people who are quite deeply drawn into the crowd. If I focus on that community, I often find myself drawn in as well–to the worship, not really the music.

And:

Having said this to members of the congregation, I would like to emphasize a paragraph from David’s second post:

But, worship leaders also have a key role in this. On the stage, it’s easy to get swept away in the beauty of the music and the enjoyment of the moment and not realize that a hundred people in the congregation have their hands in their pockets and are bored out of their minds. Open your eyes, worship leaders! Be aware of the temperature of the congregation. You are supposed to be leading others in worship not zoning out in the front.

I send a separate message to leaders and congregants. Leaders, if you see your congregation bored, uninvolved, uninterested, or simply not worshiping, then you have some work to do. It’s fine for someone like me to tell people (especially myself!) to get over themselves and worship. But that’s not an excuse for some of the careless crap that goes on in worship.

People treat a stumbling presentation of the liturgy as a joke, something nice and folksy about the church. Communion is done so frequently that many pastors don’t take time to connect it to the message and the rest of the liturgy. One gets the feeling of “oh yes, we’ve gotta hand out some bread and wine” from such presentations. Worship leaders don’t pay attention to scripture or theme.

Rather than being folksy and fun, such things make the congregation treat worship as something unimportant and casual. If the minister can’t even find one sentence to insert in the communion liturgy at the appropriate points (marked conveniently with asterisks in the United Methodist hymnal), or the worship leader can’t be bothered to communicate with the minister and provide musical settings with a sense of connection, then the worshipers are justified in concluding that somebody doesn’t really care.

But finally, what is this business about boy friends and girl friends? Yes, I finally got to that point. It has to do with “I am so in love with you.” (No, not YOU, someone else!) I believe that in scripture one of the strongest metaphors for the way in which God seeks people and for the bond between myself and God is sexual passion. I don’t mean sanitized, hand-holding, going on a date level passion. I mean the kind of passion that makes one unable to wait to get to the bedroom before the clothes are coming off. I imagine that image offends some. Enjoy being offended.

Then read Ezekiel 16, for example, and see God’s passion for us represented as the passionate desire of a lover, while unfaithfulness is represented as the passion for someone other than our true spouse. There are many other texts. The problem with “lover” music, in my view, is not so much that we trivialize our love for God by expressing it in the form of cheap love lyrics; rather, it’s that our love for God is often so much more shallow than those cheap lyrics.

Hmmm. I intend none of this as judgmental about any particular person. There are many of you, such as both David and Peter, whose service for God indicates that they speak from a depth of passion that most stay-at-home American Christians cannot hope to match. If you’re in that situation, please don’t be offended at my suggestions here.

But if you’re just checking off the boxes of your supposed weekly activities, then give it some consideration. Is your relationship with God a casual date or a life-long covenant?

And from David Ker's post---Droning, desymbolization and Christian mantra:

Stare at the watch in your hand and repeat: “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch.” You can keep going. It shouldn’t take long. In a few seconds the familiar word detaches itself, and hardens. You find yourself repeating a series of strange sounds. A series of absurd and meaningless noises that denote nothing, indicate nothing, and remain insensate, formless, or harsh.

This process, of desymbolization disassociates a word from its meaning and is a central component of the Hindu and Buddhist practice of repeating mantras. By repeating a word or phrase over and over again it allows us to focus our minds in meditation. David Crowder Band and Darrel Evans are contemporary examples of this phenomenon. But, it is by no means an innovation in Christian liturgy. Medieval chants of Sanctus or Kyrie Elieson right through the Masses of Bach or Mozart all include reductionist prose as the basis of spiritual exaltation.

I’ll take Paul’s words slightly out of context here but I think they capture the gist of what I’m trying to say:

What should I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing praises with my spirit, but I will also sing praises with my mind.

1 Cor. 14:15, NIV

There is a place for both content-packed hymns and emotion-packed worship songs. If those leading the congregation are sensitive to the congregation and individuals are willing to enter into the collective experience, a full spectrum of musical genres can be beneficial.

Are Christian mantras an orthodox expression of worship? See here and here for proponents of this practice. Peter Kirk also responds to my previous post.

Both of these posts offer valid critiques of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and are why fundamentalist nutjobs like John MacArthur criticize it as in: although I have to say I agree with R. C. Sproul's comments in the video. Hymns can be just as repetitive as CCM is ie. Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. I agree with David Ker in that:"there is a place for both content-packed hymns and emotion-packed worship songs" and I am glad to be in a church that utilizes both styles.

Cerulean Sanctum: Are Small Groups Doomed?

In an old post Cerulean Sanctum ponders the issue. Here are some snippets from that post:

A few years back, Joe Myers, who happens to live in my general area, wrote a book called The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups. I struggled through that book in all honesty, partly because I thought it was a little too in love with its demographic studies and quotes from sociologists (pretty typical of Emerging lit) and because the studies and quotes painted a disturbing picture.

Myers’s assertions included the following:

1. A church that gets a third of its regular attendees involved in small groups does well. That being the case, it’s ridiculous to drive a church model based on small groups because two-thirds of attendees will never plug into one no matter how hard the church promotes small groups.

2. Having a small group meeting in a private home asks too much of people today. Far too many people feel uncomfortable walking into another person’s home.

More to the point, I believe that the one-third number wil increasingly shrink for several compelling reasons:

Bowling Alone Syndrome - The seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam has been quoted by every long-time leader I know, no matter what type of group they lead. Every last one laments the loss of community that once thrived in American culture as exemplified by our fraternal organizations. I don’t care what kind of public group we’re talking about—Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Sierra Club, softball teams, card clubs, even churches—they’ve all seen the number of involved members drop precipitously. People just are not participating in face-to-face interpersonal groups like they once were. To many, the commitment asks too much. Couple this with the increasingly rootless nature of a society whose individuals spend less and less time in one place. These difficult realities pose enormous problems for churches, especially those that base their ministry model around small groups.

A lack of qualified small group leaders - Too many churches that expect their primary teaching and discipleship to occur in small groups pin their hopes on people who are increasingly less qualified to lead what they teach. In many cases, the leader of a small group is promoted out of another small group who may have had an inadequate leader. Law of diminishing effects anyone? As so many Evangelical churches have gone this route, is it any wonder that so many Evangelicals display ignorance of even the most basic biblical truths? And if the people lack knowledge, they perish, right? That’s not a formula for successfully perpetuating a thriving small group model.

The Hegelian Dialectic - I’ve talked about this many times here (see this post in particular), but the tendency toward thesis/antithesis/synthesis teaching in small groups undermines genuinely fruitful Bible study more than we care to admit. Unqualified teachers create some of that problem but so does the need not to make anyone feel uncomfortable should they hold an errant view on the topic being taught. I’ve long contended that small groups may do some things well, but, for most, teaching ain’t it.

Busyness - This comprises a part of the Bowling Alone Syndrome. Frankly, I find it amazing that any small group meets at all given how overly scheduled our lives are. To the people I talk with, it’s only getting worse. In the case of both small groups I’m a part of, year over year we’re seeing more scheduling issues. I can’t recall if our Vineyard group has met as an entire group so far this year. Due to the nature of our other small group, it’s never met with the same core people from one month to the next. That makes it hard to develop the momentum needed to keep growing in discipleship through the group.

Expectations - Here’s a loaded issue: group member expectations. I think more small groups burn out due to participants’ unmet expectations than for any other reason. I also think that this was less of an issue in the past because people then didn’t know what to expect of small groups, so their expectations were low. I will also contend that too many people today come to a group with a list of expectations an arm long because we’ve indoctrinated people into believing that the world exists to meet their needs. (In truth, the modern church’s constant catering to felt needs only exacerbates the issue.) That’s a huge problem to overcome because people will flee a small group the second it looks like it won’t meet their needs perfectly. They never find a home, instead flitting from one small group to the next. Worst of all, should the group cater to couples, if one of the spouses sours on the group because of unmet expectations, it puts the other spouse in a bind. You almost always wind up losing two people instead of just the discontented one.

All these issues combine to exert enormous pressure on small groups.

Resolving these issues requires smarter people than yours truly. Several of the problems exist at a societal level, requiring upheavals that too many church leaders are not willing to discuss. That timidity, though, is at the root of the failure.