A small but consistent feature of our childhood was church on a Sunday morning; a small Anglican congregation in a rural village, not so much bucolic as simple and straightforward. My father, bless him, brought up a Presbyterian-by-rote, took to his first wife’s Anglicanism like a duck to water, and took attendance seriously. Moreover, and to his credit, he always did his best when it came to singing – and its something I remember very clearly.
It’s notable to me because, subsequently spending many years leading congregations in praise and music, I’m very conscious that male singing is often missing. As a football fan, I’m convinced singing itself is not the problem – all men are capable of making a noise, and with practice – I mean, by doing it, not even necessarily by training – just about anyone can hold a tune.
Writing in Christianity Today, Kelsey Kramer McGinnis correctly observes that this is partly an issue of musical tone – not just the key, but the whole tenor of modern praise and worship is geared towards higher and clearer male voices, and not the fuller baritone which most men possess. As someone with a fairly high tenor in my teens and early 20s, this suited me down to the ground; but as I’ve reached middle age and dropped a couple of tones, selfishly I too now find it increasingly difficult to sing newer songs with higher ranges, compared to the tried-and-tested settings of older hymnody. It remains surprisingly to hear modern worship in a deeper register – its why someone like Jordan Kauflin at Sovereign Grace, for example, sounds so unusual.
The other issue, as well documented, is the ’90s–’00s proliferation of…. softer? lyrical content. We tread carefully here: one of the reasons behind the rapid rise of the toxic subset of new Calvinism, particularly in the US, twenty years ago was that it was pitched as an attempt to reclaim a more masculine Christianity, and the language and outcomes of such false teaching have been incredibly damaging. Nevertheless, I suspect one of the reasons that songs with more hymn-like language, along with bone fide psalm-singing, are currently increasingly popular (again)1 in my own Irish Presbyterian tradition is because men feel more comfortable declaring biblical truths in less poppy words.
When visiting our church last November, Ligon Duncan made the claim that the only [Protestant] denomination in the United States which was experiencing growth was the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Why? One for the reasons, he said, is ‘in this kind of a culture, you better have a big God, with big truths, to be able to speak into this despair and discouragement that exists.’
So too, I think, with singing. As someone who spends a lot of the time standing at the front, looking out across rooms of people singing, I’m convinced that men feel most encouraged to sing when the musicians meet them in the middle with hymns and songs that (a) are pitched musically at an appropriate register, but also (b) with content that declares a big God with big truths.
As more and more men begin to trickle back to church, particularly amongst young adults, it is incumbent upon those who write, those who play, and those who lead to encourage the whole body of the church to sing. And it is incumbent upon men, fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, to sing. Singing teaches truth which people remember for life. Singing unites heart and mind. Singing unites us together. God sang. You should try too.2
- Because, of course, this has all happened before: for example, the rise of ‘revival’ hymns and more emotional language in the late nineteenth century in the West, before a swing back to more traditional evangelical hymns in the mid-twentieth century, before the seeker-sensitive movement of the ’80s-’90s, before the CCM-heavy output of the end of the century, and so on. Back and forth. ↩︎
- And remember: even if you’re worried about how you sound, don’t be. No-one’s listening to you – they’re too busy worrying about how they sound themselves. ↩︎