Sound of Worship

A handbook of acoustics and sound system design for the church

Doug Jones

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136114939
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Technology & Engineering
• Thema: Acoustical Engineering

Whether you are designing a new system or need to update and get the most out of the one in place Sound of Worship will offer essential information to guide and inform you choices. Written to give the context to help you focus your choices as well as the technical information to understand options, this essential guide will help you avoid costly mistakes when working with acoustics and the sound systems of the church.

When planning a system this book has you covered! Considering everything from building design and understanding the purpose and use of the sound system to the technical aspects of the acoustic equipment and sound specification and types.

The website has numerous audio examples to illustrate points made and tools used in the book. It demonstrate the terms used and what different choices will sound like, with before and after recordings of acoustic treatment and how it effects the overall sound of the church.

1

THE SOUND OF WORSHIP

 

 

 

 

The Christian church in the twenty-first century is a most complex entity. Indeed we may very well ask how a relatively small group of followers of Jesus Christ evolved over 2000 years into a “church” of so much diversity and schism that it is hard to recognize any kind of cohesive structure. According to Wikipedia there are in excess of 38,000 distinct denominations of the Christian church.¹ There are at least two reasons to be interested in understanding the Christian church. It is arguably the most successful religion in known history. The Church is also big business. It is a primary consumer of the services and products that acoustical firms and media systems sales and integration companies have to offer. Understanding the Church in all its complexity is critical if we are to succeed in providing the Church with services and products appropriate to its mission.

There certainly are many ways to analyze and categorize the Church. We could group churches based on a common theology, a shared history, or a shared governance philosophy. And of course any attempt at doing so would generate a considerable list of outliers, churches that defy categorization. It is also difficult because it is not at all clear, even to people who describe themselves as Christians, which groups are a part of the Church and which do not make the cut.

If we zoom out far enough, we can begin to see groupings, especially with respect to how church people interact with church buildings. If we further refine the study, and consider expectations for the way the rooms sound (i.e., the acoustics of the spaces and the way media, especially sound systems, are used), we can begin to see distinct patterns in the chaos.

As it turns out, it is the style of worship that is the most accurate predictor of the kind of acoustic space and sound system required or preferred for any given church. Of course the style of worship is rooted in ecclesiology and to some degree in theology as well. There are four worship styles that are utilized by the vast majority of twenty-first—century Christian churches in America.

The first could be known by many names, but perhaps the best is the Celebratory style. These are the churches that follow a liturgy rich with tradition that culminates in the celebration of what some call the Mass, others the Divine Liturgy. Second, we will consider the Evangelical style, which focuses on the proclamation of the Word and personal salvation. The third is the Experiential style, which emphasizes the experience of the power of God to change lives. Finally there is the Community style, which is an expression of unity and commitment among believers.

As soon as we create a taxonomy of churches, someone will discover a church that does not seem to fit. This is likely true of this taxonomy as well. There are probably no churches that fit these descriptions exactly, and many churches that may fit into more than one category. This being said, the majority of American Christian churches will fit better in one of these categories than in the others. The architect, acoustician, and systems provider will better understand the Church as a client if these four worship styles are understood.

So how do you start with Jesus and wind up 2000 years later with this “church”? To begin to understand where all this complexity comes from and why it matters, we need to look back to the origins of the Church.

End Note

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations, accessed 01/10.

2

THE EARLY ROOTS OF THE CHURCH: FROM AD 32 TO AD 313

CHAPTER OUTLINE

The Christians

Early Church Architecture

The Church Organized

The Time of Persecution

Academics often trace the origins of the church back to ancient Jewish and possibly even pagan practices. However, to the devout Christian, the history of the Christian church begins with a miraculous, supernatural event, the resurrection of Jesus. Most Christians mark the actual start of the Christian church with the event known as Pentecost, when God sent the Holy Spirit. Yet if we are to understand the development of the Church, we have to come to grips with the centrality of the resurrection. In the Christian church, Easter, not Christmas, is the most sacred day. Easter is the dynamo that powers the development of the Church and continues to energize it 2000 years after the event. It is the resurrection that makes the Christian religion different from others. The historical veracity of the resurrection is a difficult concept for modern secular minds to grasp, yet to the vast majority of Christians, the bodily resurrection of Jesus is at the center of their faith. The writer of the book of Corinthians also understood that it was difficult to accept yet critical to the faith when he wrote “if Christ be not raised, we are among all men most miserable.”¹ It is the resurrection that gave the first Christians hope.

The history of the Church is not primarily a history of architecture but rather the history of a people. For Christians, the word “church” has a very important dual meaning. Church refers primarily to the people, to the congregation, the community of believers. Only in its secondary sense does church refer to a building.

ORIGINS OF THE WORD “CHURCH”

The English word “church” with its cognate kirk comes from the Greek word kyriakon, usually translated, “belonging to the Lord.” Kyriakon can mean anything dedicated to the Lord, animate or inanimate. However, ekklesia is the Greek word found throughout the New Testament that is translated “church.” Ekklesia was used in extra biblical literature to denote an assembly or congregation of free citizens summoned or “called out” (the literal meaning of ekklesia) by a herald in conjunction with public affairs. Even in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 19 verse 39, ekklesia is translated, “lawful assembly.” Nowhere is ekklesia translated to signify a building of any sort.

The Christians

The first followers of Jesus were the 12 men that Jesus chose to mentor or “disciple.” These 12, known as the Disciples and later as the Apostles or “sent ones,” were very active in spreading the teachings of Jesus known as the good news or the Gospel. Little is known about the very early Church; however from glimpses that we have in the New Testament we can put together a mosaic of sorts of what the early Church must have been like. We know that growth was rapid. In Acts 4:4 there is mention of the number of followers of Christ reaching 5000. Later we read that the number was increasing daily.² We know that it was largely communal in nature, that many groups held their possessions in common for the benefit of the group.³ There was a strong sense of social responsibility, and caring for those in need.⁴ We know that there were leaders, but in the early days there was not a sense of a priesthood or a segregation into clergy and laity. In fact, the Apostle Peter in his first epistle, which was a general letter to all Christians, wrote, “you are a chosen generation a royal priesthood,” indicating that all believers had access to God, not just an elite priesthood.⁵ This stood in sharp contrast to the Graeco-Roman temples where there were clear distinctions between the priests who had an inside track to the deity and the common folk who came seeking some benefit from the deity. This statement also placed St. Peter at odds with the very organized Jewish religion of the day with its stratification into many levels of devotion, spirituality, and leadership. It is also ironic that a significant part of the Christian church views Peter as the first supreme leader or Pope. The early Church was much more of a grass-roots movement. It was made up of people who at first had direct experience of Jesus or were no more than one or two degrees of separation away from Jesus.

In the early days of the Church, Christians were by necessity underground. Rome viewed the followers of Jesus as threats to the empire and the threat was met with aggressive persecution, forcing the small but dedicated group of believers to meet together for mutual support. The belief that this same Jesus who was raised from the dead would return and rescue them made it possible to face the worst that Rome could offer. The dual forces of hope and persecution were responsible for the survival of the early Christians and also for the diaspora that ultimately brought this new faith to the entire known world.

In the New Testament there are numerous metaphors that are used to describe the Church. One that is frequently used by modern Christians depicts the Church as the Body of Christ.

The use of this metaphor lays emphasis on the unity of the Church, the interdependence of its members and their vital relationship with its head, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. ⁶

Early Church Architecture

In the first century AD there was no Christian architecture per se. Christian meetings were held in homes, or possibly in the burial places of the martyrs called the catacombs, although a number of historians have pointed out that the catacombs were generally far too small for any kind of meeting. The religious structures of the day were either Greek/Roman temples or they were Jewish temples or synagogues.

Three architectural elements were present in most if not all non-Christian temples of the first century. First, there was a place where the physical manifestation of the god was displayed and venerated. This was a sacred place or sanctuary in the truest sense of the word. The spiritual existence of the god was symbolized by a statue.⁷ Second, there was ritual space that was open to the priests for their practices of communion with the venerated one. Third, there was a public space open to all who came to engage in some religious activity, but only through the mediation of an elite and initiated group, the priesthood.⁸

The architecture of the Jewish temple, especially the ancient temple of Jerusalem, shows marked similarity to the pagan temple with some important differences. There was a Holy of Holies or most sacred space, but there was no physical manifestation of God. It was specifically forbidden in the Ten Commandments to make any graven image of God.⁹ Furthermore it was understood that God is a spirit and “no one may see God and live.”¹⁰The presence of God was never limited to the temple; however, it could never be shut up in the sanctuary. God could be encountered anywhere. He was present in a community of laymen who both heard his words in the testimony of the Prophets and prayed to Him.¹¹

By the first century AD there was the Temple in Jerusalem, where sacrifices could be made by the priesthood, but the synagogue emerged as the most common place of congregation for Jews. In contrast to the formal Temple, which contained space clearly designated as holy, the synagogue did not contain a sacred place. The synagogue contained a few symbols of God's presence but it was much more a utilitarian rather than symbolic structure. It was a space where common folk could gather around and hear the words of the Holy Scriptures spoken.

The architecture used in the Graeco-Roman cults and the Jewish religion of the day seem to foreshadow what was to evolve, but it would be many years before the fledgling Christian movement would develop an architecture of its own.

In th...