A New Song:

Five years ago, our daughter, who was still in high school then, came into the house breathlessly excited. "DOXA is starting up again!" she said. And without formal advertising and any organised fanfare, the good news was spread by e-mail, phone, word of mouth and the Central Heights church was full of young people on a Sunday night to hear a loud, high tech worship band.

Almost a hundred years ago, my grandmother apparently got into serious trouble because she used to go to the next village to sing four part harmony at youth rallies. “Songfests” they were called, and they radically broke with the tradition of having a Vorsänger (Singing Leader) who sang solo lines loudly and all participants repeated the verses after him in unison. Grandmother must have been exonerated and her music was accepted as the norm eventually, for she married a former Vorsänger from the next village.

My mother-in-law who is ninety and can recall the horrors of anarchy, famine, the onset of communism, Stalin's death camps, and eventual emigration to Canada, wonders why we don’t sing the wonderful songs of deliverance any more.

An older friend recounts with misty eyes, “I’ll never forget the time when twelve hundred people were standing in the Yarrow MB Church in l948 and singing, Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (Grosser Gott, wir loben Dich) in four part harmony. “We'll never see those days again,” he says wistfully, bitterly disappointed in the modern stuff the youth are performing in our church today.

It seems that one generation's grace often becomes the next generation's legalism.

For my younger aunts and uncles, the gospel quartets reigned. This summer one can go to any number of "old time” nostalgic gospel quartet rallies and relive those years, but we don't hear them in church anymore.

For my generation, it was choruses that kept our youth nights fresh and new. Loudly, we sang "Do Lord!" or "Wonderful Grace of Jesus" with the men going off on a marvellous tangent all by themselves. Some churches now sponsor the occasional Sunday night hymn sing for my age group.

Later we sang "Kumbaya" and "He's got the Whole World in his Hands" at hootenannies with guitars, campfires and lots of feeling. We still try to capture this at our annual corn roast, but some of the idealism is gone.

A friend from Manitoba said to me, "You B.C. people aren't even Mennonites. You don't sing harmony anymore!" In almost the same breath, she expressed sorrow that they were losing a lot of young people in their church. I couldn't bring myself to point out the correlation. Our youth are doing just what the Psalmist instructed in at least ten different verses: "Sing unto the Lord a new song”.

Our daughter used to enjoy the Sunday evening Songfest in the next village called DOXA. It was loud, noisy, full of strange instrumentation and the words were not my heart's expression. But they were hers and her generation's words, written fresh and new by those who experienced God in a new way in a very different world. The words brought hope and faith and community to the next generation of youth, and these songs and music style have become the mainstay in many of our Mennonite churches.

But the "new song" has caused very real debate and ongoing division in our churches. It is probably as divisive and controversial as the change from the German language to English in the fifties. I remember an elderly neighbour hearing us children say our night prayers in English, and asking my mother whether she really thought that God would accept them.

Many churches are coping with “new songs” by having two services, one youth friendly and one more staid, but some mourn that the important intergenerational aspect of church is gone. Others have lost their youth to churches that sing only the new songs, and this occurs quite easily where so many different Mennonite churches exist in one geographical area. Our two youngest, as soon as one of them had his license, began attending a church that sang only new songs. Their older brother was in another “with it” church which attracted a huge college and career group, and this is where he met his life's partner. Our eldest daughter moved to the city to teach and found a lively church there, where she also met her husband. Our parents, when they were still alive, found peace and solace in the familiar songs and worship, in a church close by that was full of grey heads.

We stayed in our home church which was founded thirty years ago by people in our age group who speak our language and sing our songs, but who have also adapted to modern worship teams. We thought our church was still “cutting edge” and very comfortable for all of us. “Sure, mom,” said our son, “It’s great if you're in your fifties.”