Today in our church we did only Southern Gospel style for our worship time. Back in the 1930s is where we begin to see this style emerge. The old Stamps-Baxter "gospel quartet " brought on all night "gospel sings" and published scores of small gospel songbooks which became very popular, especially in the rural churches of the South. Most of these "southern gospel hymns" were "up tempo" with a kind of call-and-response idea used by spirituals with a lot of word repetition heard in the quartet songs. This followed the "singing schools" of the late 19th century where a lot of four part harmony was taught in singing schools throughout. A lot of good musical training actually happened in these schools, taught by itinerant musicians moving around the country from church to church.
In the 1960s there seemed to be a convergence of southern gospel with country gospel, black gospel, and even gospel folk music. This brought a more celebration era to worship. It was a move away from the "liturgical" worship to a more celebrative kind of worship.
In a multigenerational church it has been interesting as I've observed over the past 22 years that southern gospel style crosses many generational lines. And, also the other style that crosses many generational lines is classical/traditional style. It would seem that the too far extremes are appreciated by the most different generations with all of the styles in between being more narrow in appreciation. I have found this very interesting in our worship. On occasion, it was of interest to me, that sometimes children and youth chose old sometimes, gospel hymns and classical hymns when we were doing a service of choosing favorites. Even today, when we do a southern gospel Sunday, I have young adults who come and say things, sometimes whispering as if they are afraid someone will hear them, "I love those old songs" or "I like that my young children are being exposed to those old songs."
Bottom line, as we have said before: We seek as the body of Christ to do intergenerational worship singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and ultimately worship is not about style, it is about Him. May we keep our eyes on Him . . . in our worship...no matter the song. The song that He put in our hearts and on our lips needs to be sung, no matter the style. mjm
