What is “Contemporary” worship music?  As I participated in worship yesterday morning that was a question running through my mind.  As I talked with my wife and daughter following the service it turns out that was the question running through their thoughts as well.

What helped focus our minds on this topic was our annual ritual of celebrating Christmas with the extended family.  This year the tally for the Fourth Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve, December 23 and 24, was five worship services at three churches in two days.  Throw in yesterday’s service and we have had a well rounded week of worship variety.

At one of those churches worship was “high church” or at least “high church music.”  This was not by anyone’s measure contemporary and the church justifiably prides itself on its sophisticated worship music.  As I joked with my family on the way home, “At least this year the words were all in English.”  No Latin or Medieval French this year.  But this church is no stranger to “contemporary worship,” having started a contemporary service over 30 years ago but again with “sophisticated” music appropriate to the church’s tradition.  They used material like Avery and Marsh and some of the contemporary music now found in the current Presbyterian Hymnal.  If you excuse the oxymoron, it is what I have come to think of as “traditional contemporary.”  Maybe “institutional contemporary” is more accurate.

On the other end was my daughter’s “seeker sensitive” church.  Instrumentation was “modern rock band” and selection was mostly from current Christian artists, although there was a high-energy version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” with the recognizable melody.

In between was the “Contemporary” service at a main-line (non-Presbyterian) church.  This service uses the traditional praise band, bank of vocalists, and words projected on the overhead screens.  In terms of the overall tone of worship, the usual elements of worship are present and the sermon is delivered in a traditional manner, no drama or video clips.  But what struck me about the service music, especially from Sunday December 24, was that the list and order of songs was probably the same as it was last year.  In fact, it was probably about the same as when we were there ten years ago.  In worship yesterday the songs were more varied with some that I sang twenty years ago and some are of recent vintage, according to my daughter.  It is services like these, with old and well worn music and a low key praise band, that strike me as being “just contemporary enough” that traditionalists are not too uncomfortable but the congregation can point to it as “contemporary.”

So there are three worship styles, all self-identified as contemporary, but all VERY different in their style and approach.  As my family was discussing, “contemporary” is not a clear term but can mean many different things.

In thinking about it, contemporary now seems to be not so much about what it is, but about what it is not.  “Contemporary” is not traditional.  “Traditional” is music in fixed metre and verses, played on an organ, piano or maybe traditional instruments, sung by a congregation standing in the pews using denominational hymnals.  That is what contemporary is not.

Now I suspect that there is an accepted vocabulary out there to describe these different flavors of contemporary.  But the ultimate question that I have been pondering for a while is when does a “contemporary” liturgy and style become so well established, like the main-line service that has seemed the same for the last ten years, that it is no longer truly contemporary?