Common Grounds Online: Interview with Leigh McLeroy, author of The Beautiful Ache, Part 3 of 3

This is part 3 of the interview with Leigh McLeroy, author of The Beautiful Ache.

GL: Leigh, my next question is going to irritate a lot of readers and you will see why in a second. I know your gracious instinct will be to demur at answering or to soft-pedal your answer because 1) you’ll see me pulling you into a controversy and 2) you’ll know the potential to irritate believers with different preferences.

But I’m not doing this for the sake of controversy nor to get a few jabs in. Rather, I want to press my serious question as part of doing life together. Doing life together in the Christian community requires, in part, asking honest, hard questions…pushing back with graciousness, seeking truth in love. So my goal is not to irritate, even though my question will irritate many. My goal is to engage the subject of hymns versus contemporary worship songs with one specific thought in mind: in terms of character formation.

I suspect almost everyone would agree that the primary purpose of singing is to glorify the Lord. As Louie Giglio memorably phrased it, “Worship is our response to God for who He is and what He has done.”

But a secondary purpose of worship is to form us as believers. The liturgy—literally the work of the people—acts back upon us by shaping us.

For example, in your chapter titled “The Ache To Worship” you tell how hymns were the soundtrack of your childhood, and how today when you yearn for the Lord’s presence you’re as likely to sing “Come, Thou fount of every blessing” as you are to whisper, “Dear Lord….” Later in the chapter you tell of the time when you were in a cabin far off from civilization and felt pulled into worship. And so you sang, from an ‘invisible hymnal,’ hymn after hymn until you were prostrate before the Lord.

Your experience speaks to me because I wonder if a little eight year-old girl today, with whatever worship tunes are popular at her church at the moment, will have those words etched on her mind and heart decades later. Is there sufficient staying power in contemporary worship songs to cause etching to happen?

Next, I want to push the question further. Leigh, I’ve known you for years and I can say based on what I know of you that you—your character, your mind, your heart—have been formed by Scripture, by God’s community, by the Spirit of Christ working in your life and….by hymns. Who you are, what your character is has been indelibly shaped in significant part by hymns.

Let me put the two strands together. Even if contemporary worship songs were sung long (I mean long in terms of years, not repetitions in a single worship service) enough to be etched in a person’s heart and mind, are they of rich enough, stout enough stuff to serve well the task of forming us. Will the little eight-year old girl at thirty-eight have been formed as well by the contemporary worship songs of her childhood as she would have been by the rich depth of hymns? Do the praise choruses and Top 40-like worship songs inculcate theological truths as well as the great hymns?

Okay, what do you say to all this?

[Qualifiers- not for you to respond to, Leigh. Rather, these qualifiers are for clarity for readers who are puzzled by my questions or who find my questions disagreeable.]

1. I’m not saying that contemporary worship songs don’t teach theological truths; they do.

2. Not all hymns are great, and some are practically unsingable.

3. Some contemporary songs are good and will be durable.

4. Old is not necessarily better than new because the Spirit is always bringing forth “a new song”.

5. Hymns of, say, Charles Wesley are likely quite different from the ways that Israel sang the Psalter so I don’t think 18^th century hymnody is a uniquely privileged genre of singing to the Lord.

6. Related, there is not ‘one way’ to sing. However, not all types of melody and lyrics lend themselves to 1) congregational singing and 2) character formation.

7. Emotion is an important aspect of singing to the Lord because we are to love Him with our hearts. It’s not all cognitive. Likewise, mind is an important aspect of singing to the Lord because we are to love Him with our minds. It’s not all emotional. It’s both head and heart.]

LMc: Oh, Glenn. This is a huge question, and one I’m not sure I can do justice here. Honestly, others have spoken, studied and written quite extensively about this. Compared to them I’m a pedestrian, and have only my opinion to offer – which as you know, can be a dangerous solitary vantage point from which to speak.

Let me try to answer in part, at least. First, I count it one of the richest blessings of my life to have had not just believing, but church-going parents. The fact that they got my sister and me up every Sunday morning, dressed and ready for church, is a testament to their values, and was a gift to us. I actually remember as a kid praying for flu or flood or something so we could just stay home one Sunday and my dad could make pancakes! (It rarely happened.)

It grieves my heart that very few children today would share in my experience not only of hearing great hymns sung week after week – but of hearing teaching early-on that was way, way over my head. I’m sure “children’s worship” has its merits, but so did hearing a sermon I couldn’t begin to understand, and learning the discipline of sitting quietly through it out of respect and, okay, a healthy fear of maternal pinching, as well.

Will today’s worship choruses be etched on the hearts of a generation of children? For better or for worse, I believe they will. I base this solely on the unscientific proof that I can recite a vast array of lyrics from very bad 80’s disco music without even trying. Music has a way of infiltrating memory that defies reason – or even choice! I never tried to memorize the words to a hymn or a Wham! song – but have managed to retain both. So maybe the question is not will “etching” take place – but will it be true and worthwhile and soul-shaping etching? Probably not a lot of it – because much of today’s church music feels utterly void of mystery.

So many choruses and worship songs today seem unchallenging, both poetically and spiritually. They state the obvious, over and over, and then state it again. Can I sing along? Yes! Do I enjoy singing along? Yes! Do I ever go home and turn a line over in my brain wondering what it might mean? Rarely. I remember as a child pondering phrasing from hymns like, “Lord let me never, never outlive my love for Thee,” from “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” and wondering, what would that be like? Or, “Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee,” from “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and wondering first, “What’s a fetter?” then “Why is it goodness that might bind my heart to God?” I love those words. They’ve done something to me over time that I can’t imagine getting any other way.

I do believe there is music today that is touching deep chords like these. But it may not be congregationally “singable” the way so many old hymns are. Derek Webb’s music takes my breath away sometimes at its stark and challenging presentation of grace – and Rich Mullins’ poetry can still move me to tears. Chris Rice is another writer whose sense of mystery, creativity and rootedness (is that a word?) in Scripture resonates deeply with me. Some of these writer’s songs will no doubt stand the test of time. And they are shaping me today.

But generally speaking – not many modern writers appear up to that challenge. The hymns are a treasure worth revering and loving and revisiting often. I can’t say enough about what they mean to me. A friend of mine, when she married for the first (and only) time in her early forties, came down the aisle not to the bridal march, but to “The Church’s One Foundation.” I love that…and I understand why. “From heaven He came and sought her/To be His holy bride/With His own blood He bought her/And for her sins He died.” Tell me that she didn’t understand, through this hymn, that her marriage was an earthly illustration of a heavenly reality!

GL: I would love to pursue this topic back and forth for hours more. Hopefully we’ll come back to this topic some day in the future. [For readers curious about whether hymns can be sung today, especially with ‘young’ people, check out the Indelible Grace website. Countless thousands of college students and many more post-college adults sing these hymns in worship each week.]

Leigh, let’s move on to writing. You’ve been a ghostwriter and you’ve handled all kinds of written communication in various professional occupations. But this is different. The Beautiful Ache is your idea, your creativity, your stories, your writing. How on earth did you get a publisher? I have been told by people who published the book that Ben Young and I did that “distribution is key”. I.e., a name, a platform, a waiting receptacle of thousands who will buy it just because of the name on the book. Publishing is a business and writers who can basically guarantee sales can get book deals.

To my knowledge you don’t pastor a church of thousands.

So…how did The Beautiful Ache get published? How long did it take from the time you proposed it until you got a contract? How many “no’s” did you get along the way?

LMc: You’re quite right…no church of thousands here. In fact, I don’t even attend a church of thousands! I was un-agented when I wrote my first book as “myself” – Moments for Singles. I can assure you I would never have chosen to write a book about the topic of living the single life, yet that was the first book I was asked to write as me!

“Moments” was one of a series of “felt-need” devotionals planned by NavPress, and the editor of that series was and is a long-time friend of mine, well known and respected in the publishing business. He and the head of the ministry who co-distributed the book were both represented by the same literary agency, and through that process, I met my current agent. I got up the nerve sometime during the deal to ask him if we might talk when the “Moments” assignment was over about some other ideas that I had. Over the course of several months he pressed me to refine the concept for The Beautiful Ache, and his agency took me on, which is something of a miracle, because I am basically an unknown, unproven author. Then he shopped the proposal and some sample chapters, and we heard plenty of “no’s” before Revell said “yes.” How many “no’s?” It seemed like a lot. Some really wonderful people turned us down.

I’ve decided one of the advantages of having an agent is you get to hear “no” second-hand, and he always made even the “no’s” sound encouraging. I think from proposal to contract was probably three months or so, then I turned the manuscript in five months after contract, and it will be a year from final manuscript to publishing date. So as you can see, this thing has been gestating a while. It’s not a process for the impatient!

I can’t say enough about the folks at Revell. They’ve been absolutely delightful to work with. I just turned in another manuscript to them that will be out in Spring ’08…and now I’m working on a couple of other ideas for proposals. Believe me, I understand that this is a business…and it still stuns me sometimes that I’m in print, at all. I know it’s not always about good writing, but about what is saleable. (So…if folks like this book – they need to make some serious noise!)

GL: We’re circling back to our discussion at the beginning of the interview about how you developed as a writer. If I may, I’d like to ask you one final series of questions about writing as we conclude the interview.

After college, what steps have you taken to fan into flame your gift? I suspect some of your development has ‘just happened’ with living life but I also suspect that you’ve probably put thought into how to deepen and broaden your ability to write ‘right words’. What has been helpful to you personally? What other recommendations for aspiring writers turned out not to be so helpful for you? If an aspiring writer comes to you and say, “Teach me! Help me!” what would you tell him or her?

LMc: I could answer this in four words, the brevity of which I’m not sure would satisfy you, or anyone else who might ask this question – but here they are: Read. Write. Listen. Live. These are the things that have been most instructive to me as a writer. So if you’re running short on space, you can cut it off right here.

Reading, because it stretches me. It is not passive, and yet it’s transporting. Emily Dickinson said, “There is no frigate like a book to take us worlds away.” So my instructors have been poet-ships like Emily, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Herbert; and writers of fiction like Marilynn Robinson, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Wendell Berry (also a poet!) and even Garrison Keillor. Non-fiction writers like Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Eugene Peterson, C.S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Peter Kreeft, and Ken Gire. (Almost everyone I just listed in the non-fiction category has written fiction, as well.) These are only a few of the writers who’ve instructed me.

And writers write. They don’t talk about writing, they scribble lines on envelopes and napkins, and they journal and write real letters and blog. They capture words in their moments and days, somehow, and save them up to use when their real use become evident. (This can take years.)

They listen. They listen to their lives (Frederick Buechner coined this phrase) to others, and to the voice of God. (This is not the same as hearing voices!) Listening to other writers talk about their craft can sometimes instructive…but not always. From Madeleine L’Engle I learned the value of beginning badly – a very important lesson. From Anne Lamott I learned that large tasks are completed in small pieces, “bird by bird.” Dan Allender taught me that my own story is shot through with the divine – even the parts of it I’d rather forget. Probably the most profound instruction I have ever received at one time and in one place regarding writing came from Eugene Peterson, in a lecture he gave several months ago at the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, Colorado, called “What are Writers For?” It is archived on the Alive Communications web site (www.alivecom.com) and I highly recommend it – in fact, it should be required reading for any believing writer.

Finally, live wide awake. Four years ago I gave myself the exercise of writing 500 words each week about how God shows Himself to me in the daily-ness of life. Some 200-plus essays and over 100,000 words later, I’m convinced He’s a lot more evident than I ever imagined, and hopefully – I’m more attuned to His presence in my own everyday life.

Eugene Peterson said “Language at its core creates and reveals, brings us into personal relationships, establishes intimacies. We live what we speak. And if we don’t live the words, the words die, and our spirits die. The salvation life is to be lived, not just talked about or written about. Writers have a special responsibility to weed out inauthenticities in our language, to detect and guard against “godtalk,” to defend us against the language-deadening and speech-flattening effects of disconnecting God from actual life.” To this, I can only add a humble “Amen.”

See Part 1 and Part 2.

Leigh’s website for the book (here).

From Amazon buy The Beautiful Ache.