People Seem To Like It: Suing For Market-Based Peace In The Worship Wars
Recently I have had the privilege of discussing the matter of worship music with some of my fellow suburban evangelicals. My church is attempting to reorient itself away from a purely contemporary format and towards what has come to be known as “blended worship,” a format which is intended to combine the best of the old with the best of the new. Naturally, this is an occasion for Jihad. This should not be.
Let us summarize the situation. Old people and young curmudgeons like “traditional” music. This uses large choirs, organs, and orchestral instruments to support the congregational singing of lyrically complex, theologically substantive songs, many of which may be more than 150 years old. Cool people and baby boomers like “contemporary” music. This uses a small team of pretty vocalists backed by guitars and drums to lead the congregation in singing lyrically simple, emotively charged songs, preferably written by Rick Heil or Darlene Zschech sometime within the last five minutes.
How can a church unite the competing preferences of the old, the curmudgeonly, the young, and the Boomer? It is very difficult for leaders to judge accurately what the congregation really wants. There are vocal minorities, to be sure, but how well do they represent their constituencies? And what will appeal to the church’s target demographic in the surrounding community? In short, what is the ideal “blend” between traditional and contemporary forms for any given congregation?
Normally these questions are answered by guesswork and trial-and-error, colored by the prejudices of the worship pastor and his lay leaders. Given the ferocity of the “Worship Wars” of the past decade, the approach seems not to want for refutation. Wither then shall we go for our answer? Enter our faithful friend and truest ally: Efficient Market Hypothesis.
The EMH did an outstanding job calling the election last November through the agency of an online betting exchange. Its relevant proposition is that in a certain type of market (an “efficient” one), aggregated information is accurately represented by a market price. In the case of the election prediction, instead of weighing divergent polls and sticking one’s finger in the wind of the closing news cycles of the election season, one could simply look at the price of a share of Bush Victory in a betting exchange to see what the true public consensus was. It is an economic proposal on increasing solid theoretical footing, and it can lead God’s people to a more equitable solution to the problem of competing worship preferences.
I propose the creation of an online worship service marketplace. Members of a church will be able to bid for a “share” of worship—perhaps a song, a block of time, or an entire service—and then dictate their preferred worship style for that unit after purchasing it. Interested worshipers can watch the activity of the marketplace to get a sense for the direction of the church. If an old person or young curmudgeon sees many shares of contemporary worship being purchased, he or she can bid higher prices to purchase the shares and convert them to a traditional format. While the cool people or baby boomers who had owned the contemporary shares truly do desire that worship take place in their preferred style, surely they have some asking price at which they are willing to make a compromise. Likewise the other way around, when alarmed contemporary worship partisans see too many worship shares under traditionalist control.
The share prices will quickly converge on an equilibrium, resulting in just the right amount of traditional and contemporary music being played in the church’s worship services. The leaders of the church will never, over the long term, be as good at extracting all of the needed information to strike this balance as the marketplace will be. The true desires of the people will be reflected in the prices of the worship shares—nothing more, nothing less. Leadership might even elect to do away with the marketplace after prices are initially determined, deciding to fix the balance of styles in perpetuity as the market has directed. While this might be tempting, I would be quick to remind leaders that an ongoing exchange of worship shares ensures that changes in congregational demographics and large-scale worship trends are always reflected in the current prices.
Now, some objections must be dealt with, most obviously the thorny issue of high market values on worship shares. If there are well-balanced factions in a church which are both very wealthy and highly opinionated, then the price of a share of worship might well be driven up out of the reach of middle-class or working-class parishioners. Surely we would want to avoid the condemnation of James 2:1-4 under this system! This objection is weighty, but it is not without its parallels in the old, discredited system of trial-and-error and pastoral prejudice. It is not as if we live now in some idealized age of a gilded, democratic ideal where all voices are heard and weighed equally. The worship marketplace is simply a more efficient and more visible means of accomplishing the same goal pastors and Elders today strain to achieve through often elitist and unfair means. If you really want to know where people’s hearts are, just watch where they put their treasure. I say let the market work!
In extreme cases where the prices inflate to very high levels, worshippers of more modest means can reorganize into congregations in which they can expect to exert more influence. Not only does the marketplace resolve competing claims on stylistic preferences fairly and peacefully, but the age-old problem of congregational income inequality is done away with to boot! This will increase harmony between parishioners even more.
One might also wonder what becomes of the money paid into the system. Finance deacons and Elder boards across evangelicalism will hardly see this as an objection! Very rarely are churches awash in too much money, so there should be little problem in practice disbursing this additional revenue. Priority should be given to more powerful amplifiers (if contemporary music dominates) or new robes and chorale sheet music (if traditional music dominates), but this can be done at the discretion of the leadership. If these programs are already adequately resourced, then the perpetually under-funded Coffee Ministry might benefit, perhaps liberating worshippers from the 1980s-style tyranny of the Columbian drip and expanding into espresso and lattes, which appeal so much to the younger demographic. In the case of very successful worship marketplaces, some money might even be allocated for ministry to the poor. (If any can be found. I keep hearing about them, but I never see any around my house.)
With ever-growing evidence of the power of markets, and with ubiquitous Internet access among suburban evangelicals, the time is now to declare a lasting peace in the Worship Wars. The proposed marketplace is the only mechanism that can do a fair and accurate job of uncovering the most vexing hidden data facing evangelicals today: our congregants’ true worship preferences. So what do you say, O leaders of evangelicalism? At the time of this writing, the domain name worshipmarket.com is available. The software to support the marketplace is not terribly complicated. Any takers?
But you know, on second thought, this is a wicked idea. Maybe I started with invalid assumptions.
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- Posted by Tim on Saturday, July 16, 2005 at 11:50:54 am PDT
- Category: Religion
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6 Responses to “People Seem To Like It: Suing For Market-Based Peace In The Worship Wars”
“In extreme cases where the prices inflate to very high levels, worshippers of more modest means can reorganize into congregations in which they can expect to exert more influence.”
A time-honored tactic indeed! And it will have the bonus of allowing people to associate those with similar means, as well as worship tastes. Just think of all the traditional sorts who will no longer have to be irritated by the masculine ponytail, and better yet, those who favor Birkenstocks with cutoffs for Sunday morning need never again be offended by a tailored suit!
Brilliant. (In the sort of way that the decor in Screwtape’s office could be said to be brilliant, that is to say. A lot of light generated by SOMETHING, that is for sure.)
Not having spam is nice, but will we really have to enter TWO security codes with every post? It’s an exhausting thought.
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 18th, 2005 at 6:29 am |Yeah, I not sure this particular antispam plugin will live forever. There’s another CAPTCHA-based solution out there, which I may try soon. But remember: those who register can bypass the security codes altogether. (You should test this for me! I registered through a different mechanism, so I’m not sure how end-user comment registration really works.)
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 18th, 2005 at 7:38 am |Help out the dense here:
How does one register? Nothing is obviously presenting itself.
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 19th, 2005 at 7:07 am |pentamom:
One probably doesn’t just yet. My fault. Just ignore that outburst, and at some point in the next coupla weeks, I may have a registration feature exposed to the world. (This stuff is hard for me to test, since Wordpress usually thinks I’m “logged in,” but is somewhat flakey about making that determination. It, or a simply CAPTCHA system, or both, will get my attention soon.)
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 19th, 2005 at 8:56 am |I should say this is a modest proposal in quelling the contentions and vagaries regarding The Peoples’ Preferences. The subtleties in implementation are what really make this a equitable solution: by breaking down the trypical service into its component parts, not only will the market reveal the desires of the consumers but it will generate a genuine sense of human involvement and investment in the very makeup of the local Worship Experience. Even if a consumer block does not have the liquid assets to secure its preferred, say, invocation, initial song set, or offertory music, it surely will be able –regardless of means– to secure something like bulletin paper color or benediction ending (”Amen”, “Have a Good Week”, “Y’all scoot, now!”). Surely this will go a long way in establishing a true feeling of ownership in their local Worship Community.
Of course, breaking down the Worship Experience into minute parts may cause initial difficulties in implementation (”Did the market call for kneeling, standing, or twirling during today’s congregational prayer?”). But this will only demand a minor increase in scheduling and communication over the detailed charts and plans extant. This raises another objection: that the market forces will dictate strange behaviours. What if the Sermon is secured by a consumer block desiring Garrison Keillor-like monologues (complete with sound effects), or an invocation involving balloon animals? To this I say: thusly will the church shake off its elitist, top-down management style and learn to give expression to the sincerely, heart-based languages of the people.
Finally, as to these theoretical “poor”: are we talking about OUR churches or some speculative demographic in Calcutta? The last thing we need to introduce into this promising dialog is “foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels,” for Titus’ sake. If some of these hypothetical poor should actually show up in our houses of worship, they can always sit in those empty seats on the front row and play with the little pencils if they don’t care for the worship style.
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 23rd, 2005 at 9:10 am |Tim,
I’m thinking we need to take your marketplace investment plan a little further. I imagine the marketplace will demand this in time anyway, but I see right away that more distinctions are immediately needed.
For example, in the curmudgeon camp you will surely have historically astute hymn purists who realize that, for example, many of Isaac Watts’ hymns in their original form included 10-24 stanzas. So, for years the hymnal editors have been bringing the cookies down to the floor, giving us the weany 4-verse Kindergarten renditions. For all the talk about substance and doctrine, there may be some who truly will want the “full meal deal.” You don’t like the “hell” versions, well we’ll need a way to delete verses 17-21.
Meanwhile, in the “cool” camp, there will be many who will make a distinction between the Krispy Kreme hot songs of Rick Heil as being performed immaturely and arrogantly, while their heart really connects with Darlene Zschech’s zesty yet humble heartcry. Further, for example within the “Passion” movement, there will be those who love some of Chris Tomlin’s scriptural and kickin’ guitar songs, while ignoring others, and rejecting virtually all of Charlie Hall’s minimalistic bluster. Believe it or not, there is a lot of discernment that takes place within those last 5 minutes of time testedness on the new songs.
So, I propose we hit the marketplace first with “W-Tunes”. It’ll be a typical Christian (come to the party 5 years late with a genuine imitation) ripoff of I-tunes. I could envision it working something like this: At the point of Membership, each person is given their very own W-Tune player. It could come stocked with greatest hits from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s (since most “historic worship” dudes still skip the first 3/4 of church history) and have $.77 downloadable singles (as Christians love both discounts and symbolic numbers). Rather than waste time recruiting and rehearsing musicians (and buying the necessary pipe organs or guitar amplifiers), during the “worship music” time, everyone can put on their headsets and dial up their favorite worship songs on their personal W-Tunes players.
Just think of the benefits! Noone will have to sing along, much less even listen to, songs they don’t like. Or hear tone deaf singers around them. With everything professionally recorded, there will be no more bad mixes or feedback problems to distract aural aesthetes. People could finally truly “worship” in complete freedom. Autonomy ‘R’ Us! Those who want to stand up and clap and even dance with Integrity’s Hosanna could do so. While those who want to meditate to chants or Bach cantatas could do that with their eyes closed in a kneeling position. 38 times through a Vineyard chorus — no one has to write the staff nasty notes. Everyone is in the driver’s seat. Nobody bothers nobody because everyone’s fully immersed (sprinkled?) in his or her own professionally privatized worship experience. Noone can complain at a worship leader or anyone else about the worship music. All it takes is another $.77 to find personal satisfaction.
Tim, we gotta get this to market fast. Or someone else will be bound to beat us to it. There’s money to be made and church wars to end.
I got another variant as well. Since not everyone always likes their pastor’s preaching, do I hear “P-Tunes”? …
– ASAPH
Comment Permalink | Posted on July 31st, 2005 at 10:23 pm |