Praise (for something other than praise)

We visited a “Mutual Edification” church once.  (For the non-indoctrinated, that’s a near-defunct, almost-unknown twig on a smaller branch of the largest of three trunks of the 19C American Restoration Movement churches.  In other words, it’s a relatively conservative, regional branch of the Church of Christ.)  I remember that when I moved to a new state, I would curiously scan pages in the CofC directory to find out where the “ME” (Mutual Edification) churches were.  I had always been interested in them.

One primary concept of the ME (not “Methodist Episcopal,” mind you) church, as I understand it, is that there are no paid ministers; these churches are supposedly very mutual in how they conduct assemblies, not focusing on one individual.  For me, that’s an attractive idea.  Once, in Missouri (which was quite possibly the third-to-worst year of my life), we actually got to visit a nearby ME church.  A Bible class was led by a affable, 75ish gent in a celery-green suit, and the worship time wasn’t, if you know what I mean.  That’s about all I remember about the occasion. . . .

Until I caught a blurb tonight about Missouri ME churches that honored one Ellis J. Crum, compiler/editor of the Sacred Selections song book.

May I hasten to a self-defensive, preemptive comment:  I rarely intend to name names in a negative light in this forum.  I’m generally appalled by the mere suggestion of this type of writing.  I mean, I don’t even know the man, and I don’t know much about him.  But I do know his primary work, the song book, and it is not in any sense exemplary.  I’m only slightly embarrassed to say that some in my extended family referred to it as Scarred Selections.

This book is one of a few that I really don’t think I’d ever want to add to my collection of 40 or 50 church song books.  There’s just no point.  It adds nothing to the repertoire, and it takes away plenty.  What really gets me is not that Crum was honored, or that there is a tiny subset of churches in a nationally insignificant denomination that apparently has a nice, little tie to Crum.  I’m sure he’s a nice man, a respectable man, a sincere believer.  The problem is that — and here I adopt an orthodox Jewish wailing and moaning posture, beating my breast — no church in my heritage seems to manifest much idea of what praise and worship is.

The phrase that really set me off tonight?  The engraving on the plaque:  appreciation was expressed to Crum for his “literary and musical efforts to help the church praise God.”  I realize this sounds as childish as anything I’ve written here so far, so I’ll just continue on this path.  Gimme a break!  Sacred Selections contains so little praise content, and even less musical quality, that it repulses me.  And we CofC Christians fiddle around with tripe while much of the rest of Christendom at least eats snack foods, and sometimes has a salad or some grilled fish!

Maybe mutual edification isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Or maybe it, just like corporate worship and most other things we humans get our hands on, is just messed up.