Medley, Or How to Ruin Two Songs

For the older crowd you may remember the "Hooked On" series of cassette tapes - basically they take the best bits of memorable songs and blend them into a long play medley of familiar tunes - very catchy. Very fast food too - who wants to listen to a whole album when you can listen to a few verses of all the best songs. With the advent of the CD with the availability to play tracks in any order and to a much larger extent, iTunes where you can put any group of songs in any order, medleys are a thing of the past. Except in a church I know.

Imagine the hauntingly moving "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" chopped into pieces with verses sung in twos with another song blended in. Now if you hate this hymn 0r don't know it - it cannot be improved by trying to sing it without another song. If you love the hymn and relate it to specific times in the church calendar, emotions or just like it because you know the words enough to think about it when you sing it, then you are stuck with a jarring experience of a whole new song. As I stood trying to pick up the tune each time we went back to the other song I got more frustrated and wondered why in the H someone would want to mess with a classic. The alternate song was a song about mercy. As my husband pointed out, who is no more musical then I am, there are already two well known songs, one contemporary and one hymn quality that were written to evoke the sorrow/joy of Christ's sacrifice by having a mournful tune in one part and a lively response in another. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Now, I don't normally like bashing the church when it comes to how we worship but this approach has appeared twice in a row now. Don't get me wrong - I have no problem with singing an entry from one song, singing a complete second song, then ending with the ending of the first selection. But interspering verses drives me crazy - unless we sing this particular version a number of times I will never be free to just sing and reflect, instead I am listening hard to the second unknown tune and trying to figure out the link in between the sound, tone, message and what I am supposing to expressing to God. At one point I was so frustrated I almost started laughing because it just reminded me of some horrible lounge singer - taking bits and pieces of other people's work and throwing it out there to see if something sticks. "Really, you've been a great crowd, I'm back on at 9:00 if you want to hear more."

But what to do? Does one register a "no vote" and let the Worship group know you don't like what they do? That seems wrong - maybe everyone else likes it. Do you just suffer through it? I've been praying before worship because I just can't connect. I can see why people change churches over worship - but that is definitely not the answer either. So, in this too there needs to be grace. I am going to remember this for the future though - openly discussing feedback allows for different opinions to be heard - the good and the bad. If I am the only one that doesn't like this style then I can live with for the sake of others, but I'm selfish enough to assume that lots of people don't like it!