Contemplating Craft and Psalms
I had a delightful time at the Calvin Symposium on Worship. It was an international, intercultural, and interdenominational feast. The music was exhilarating and sometimes challenging--and often a bit loud! I was privileged to be a resource for a songwriter's retreat along with Greg Scheer and Sandra McCracken. When I saw the stack of submissions from retreat participants, I knew that this would be a learning experience for me. All but a handful of the songs were written in a decidedly "contemporary" idiom. (I use quotation marks because everything, when it is written, is by definition "contemporary." I'm using the term here to describe what's often known as "Contemporary Christian Music," or CCM--typically guitar-driven songs, often with through-composed, non-strophic lyrics.) What would I, as a writer of hymn texts, contribute to the conversation? Greg and Sandra are far more knowledgeable about that world, and I loved hearing their wisdom