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Junjie's Bio

Translation in Worship

One Sunday, after a particularly cringe-inducing worship session, I came to this realization.

I am a translator. I translate normal music into worship music.

On other words, I take what may or may not work for congregational singing and turn it into what works a lot better.

I realized that only after I noticed that I was always looking at the same areas whenever the worship didn't really take off, or it worked in spite of what the musicians did, not because of it. The problems were always in the same areas. So just as a language translator would look at subject-object-verb order, tenses, figures of speech and those other technical matters, these are the areas I'd address when translating normal music into worship music.

1) Key – I'll change the keys to something singable and comfortable. The two are not necessarily the same. There are many times when people CAN sing in a lower key, for example, but because they are croaking all the way they have the freedom to sing their hearts out. I'm not really a trained singer, so what's OK for me will usually be OK for the regular church-goer as well. That's a useful rule of thumb I use.

2) Chord Progressions – I'll change any weird chord progressions to something more natural. These days there are more songs written with odd chord progressions. These progressions draw attention to themselves in an attempt to sound distinct and clever, when the congregation is better off paying more attention to the singing in the first place. I've seen unnatural chord progressions like F – G/B – C/E. I amend those immediately.

3) Rhythms – I change all rhythms to what fits the singing. Sometimes I hear songs where the melody is in crotchets and quavers (quarter-notes and eighth-notes) but the music comes in some highly syncopated semi-quaver (sixteenth-notes) kind of thing. When the melody and the accompaniment isn’t in sync, the music becomes a distraction. If the worship takes off, it's in spite of the music, not because of it.

4) Intros – I'll change the intro to something easy for the congregation to get in sync with. Or I'd create a new one that will tell the congregation when to start singing. Musically sophisticated intros, though exciting to listen to, do not always lead to enthusiastic singing from the congregation. Welcome to the real world…

5) Structure – I'll look at the structure of the song and take out gaps where the congregation would not be singing. Too many gaps and the people lose momentum in their singing. In other words, no instrument solos in the middle of the song. Musicians, do your self-expression and improvisation on your own time, not on congregation time!

6) Bonus – if after all that I still have the time, I'll work on the chord progressions even more. I hear more sloppy song-writing these days, people having the bass and the melody on the same note (a G# in the melody AND the bass, for example). This causes the music to plod along. This is fine at the end of a musical phrase, but it's sloppy elsewhere. This is something I fix if I have the time (and the musicians have the patience!).

I've been doing this for so long that, until I started formally training church musicians, it was all done instinctively. But once I began articulating my translation process, I soon started drawing flack for it. I was accused of being worldly, operating in the flesh, not walking in faith, and not trusting God, all that kind of stuff.

James 2:15-16 (NIV) – Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

This verse, by the way, makes sense only if you adopt a Word-of-Faith paradigm. We wouldn't say "keep warm and well fed" to someone in need unless we believe that our blessing would make a difference, right? James tells us to let our words of faith be backed up by our works of faith, to do something about the physical needs of our brethren in Christ even as we bless them with our words.

Applying this principle to worship ministry, what use is praying for the congregation to respond well to God in worship, or praying for God to use us powerfully to lead his people in worship, if we are not willing to manage the little, petty details that would help them in singing praises wholeheartedly to God?

Of course, there are cheap imitations of this attitude around. I'd hear musicians spout the usual church musician cliches, such as "Simple is best", "less is more" and all that. Problem is, these people then play the simple things that do NOT support the worship and leave out what would support the worship. What use is that?

We need to explicitly look at all these steps and processes. One thing about being a musician, we often forget what it's like to NOT be a musician. Yeah, it's egocentrism all over again.

I was talking with this worship leader once. She told me that she wasn't confident in leading worship because she had no formal music training and didn't know when to start singing. My reply was simple: "if YOU don't know when to start singing, the musicians are not doing their job. Because if it isn't clear to you, what makes you think it'll be clear to the people in the pews?"

We musicians would think in terms of chords and bars. In such a scenario, we'd either keep repeating the intro and try to drill it into the worship leader through sheer repetition, or tell them to watch out for the chords and the counts. "When you hear the chord V, count 1, 2, 3 then you start. Start on the quaver after the 3. Get it?"

No, they don't get it. What are you going to do then?

People carry a lot of assumptions within their communications, whether they are regular people speaking English or musicians playing their music. We don't look at our assumptions unless something breaks down somewhere.

For example, when pre-school children do something wrong, I hear many parents and teachers saying to children "Did I say you could do XXX?" Frankly, this means NOTHING to the kid unless you tack on the assumption that the kid should do ONLY what you tell them to do. Once the kid latches on this assumption (killing all sense of personal initiative and daring after that) that statement would finally make sense to the kid and bring the speaking adult the desired results.

And as I type this I wonder: did the musicians I work with have their initiative and daring killed this way before? If so it'll explain their horrified gasps and shocked faces whenever I suggest changing the chords or rhythms of the worship songs. Just some food for thought…

So if you are new to this translation business but want to get started in serving, truly serving the people of God, the best advice I can give you is this: just get started. Faithful with the little? God will entrust you with much (how do you think I started?) But if you are already translating what you hear on 'worship' albums into worship music and using that to serve your congregation, I'd like to encourage to keep doing what you're doing. Not everyone gonna be supportive or understand what you are doing. That's when you have to remind yourself what the Bible says "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we DON'T give up!" (Gal 6:9)

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