I hope that this post finds you well. This is written as my own ideas and I’m not a person who remotely enjoys debates, This is for pure enjoyment.
Recently while looking through the local music store at things I’ll never afford I ran into a great guy musician/song-writer/worship leader/friend. I always enjoy talking to Kevin he has great insights and an honest heart. He had asked me about music therapy and how it relates to congregational worship. I get this question asked often. It is an interesting topic, and it helps me to reflect on what I do as a worship leader and what I do as a music therapist. In this post I am going to explain my thoughts of why congregational worship is not music therapy, and what can be done to move towards a MT model in worship. I will dig into the word therapy a bit, show the similarities of congregational worship and music therapy, what differences there are and finally how we can better serve congregations if we would use more of an MT model.
Many times we incorrectly use the word therapy when we really mean to say beneficial. Take for instance these three; retail therapy, golf therapy and my favorite, steak therapy. These satisfy the Desire of I’m frustrated,I’m hungry and I’m bored. All of these serve an immediate resolution to our current desire but depending on the size of steak or the $amount at the end of the bill, your left hungry for more very soon. There is none of the lasting fulfillment that I’m looking for.
When I use the word therapy, I am referring to fulfilling a goal, usually over time. There is a beginning and a proposed end. There is a resolution to a problem. There is also a relationship implied to me, that there is a client and a mediator. When I add the word music before the word therapy, I am referring to using music as the modality of the therapeutic relationship.
In most clinical definitions of music therapy it includes three components; 1) the client, 2) a trained music therapist, and 3) the music. Each one is connected like a tripod, without one, the tripod would fall and is not music therapy. It is a really interesting concept and I have a lot of ideas of how it fits in the church but I have to pace myself here.
Some obvious similarities are; music is being played, there is someone leading the music, there are other participants. Some other similarities are when people come up to me after I lead worship at church to comment on how the music really helped them out, or how they were touched by the music. We can see here that it is beneficial, but is therapeutic? And is it music therapy let’s go down the checklist to see. 1) Is there music? Yes! 2) Is it being led by a trained music therapist? In my case yes, as a whole, no. Many church musicians are trained professionals in music, or many are just volunteers who know a couple chords. So depending on your definition of trained, this one is sub-jectable. Are there clients? Maybe, it depends on how the congregation. Are they there to better themselves spiritually? Are they willing to work on their discrepancies to a fulfilled spiritual walk? or are they there to sing some songs, here a word and go home? Because two of the elements of the tripod are pretty shaky, I would have to say it is not music therapy. However I don’t want to just leave it at this point.
Here are the areas of focus I work on while doing music therapy work; Communication, Academic, Motor, Musical, Emotional, Spiritual, and Social. For an example if someone is having a hard time with hugging people inappropriately causing his classmates to not like him, this would fall under a social domain. To fix this I would start with some music to get familiar then we would enter into a therapeutic relationship, and set up a goal like; Client will progress from a baseline measurement of inappropriately hugging people 10 times a day to an end result of 0 inappropriate hugging occurrences after a time period of 10 weeks. The duration can change but the end result stays the same(limiting inappropriate hugging), during session we may find other sub goals or other areas to work on. Using music we may, create a hugging song including lyrics like, “I can say hi with my words, if I get too close, would you please say, Joe no thank you.” I would teach the song to the client and his classmates and track his progress. What about the church? What are the goals that people may be coming in with? Can the church focus on the same goals as MT?
Lets look at the first domain: Communication. Many people come to the church wanting to hear from God. Can this goal be tracked, can it be helped during congregational worship? Sure thing! It takes open communication on behalf of the worship leader, or other leaders in the church and the congregation, then modifying the worship to reflect the needs of the church. Some ideas would be; play songs with the theme hearing from God, write songs with the congregation that reflect their desires, having breaks in the set list of songs to give space for people to hear from God. It is similar to calling someone many times and every time they pick up the phone we hang up to simply call them again, if you’re calling God than in faith you should give God some time to speak back! Another idea would be to hand out comment cards that rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how well they feel they hear from God, or leave a comment about how they feel about the subject and then tally the results and collect the comments to review on a monthly basis. Check to see if there is an improvement.
Isaiah 35:5-10 Blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears unstopped, Lame men and women will leap like deer, the voiceless break into song. Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness, streams flow in the desert. Hot sands will become a cool oasis, thirsty ground a splashing fountain. Even lowly jackals will have water to drink, and barren grasslands flourish richly.
I believe that unless the congregation is heard, they are virtually left voiceless. People want to be heard! As a worship leader are you listening to the congregation as you are leading? What are the themes that the church may be focusing on during worship, what are they singing loudly with conviction, are they zoning out during consistent themes? Are they singing a chorus after you’ve stopped playing? Open communication is so important to ensure people are heard.
Another way to look at the whole idea is that the Holy Spirit is the Trained professional, we are all the clients and the music helps us facilitate the communication. In that sense yes what we do is music therapy! or more appropriately God does.
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