indigenous need

The present-day Mongolian church is both young historically and made up mostly of young people. Some estimate 80% of the believers are under the age of 30. In areas of music and worship styles, the churches naturally gravitate to Western approaches to worship due to the Russian influence through communism. One church purchased a number of Australian and American worship CDs and videos, prepared Mongolian translations of the imported worship songs, instructed the praise teams not to bother writing any original worship songs for several years, and instead, construct worship times imitating exactly what they saw on the worship videos.

More recently, older missionaries and believers identified a need to encourage more traditional and indigenous expressions of Mongolian worship, along with the use of Mongolian traditional instruments. In May 2002 a team and went to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to lead a music- and song-writing seminar.

seminar

The five-day seminar brought together 20 musicians. Some focused on contemporary worship and others on traditional forms of worship. Two particular musicians, both pastors, added great strength to the song-writing workshop. Both demonstrated prolific composing skills and wrote songs continuously throughout the seminar. The younger pastor played guitar and wrote songs in contemporary music styles. The older pastor played more than a dozen Asian instruments and composed in traditional styles. He also employed "throat singing," a unique technique in Mongolia and other nations whereby a singer manipulates his vocal and facial muscles to produce melody with both low (drone) and high pitches (overtones) at the same time.

During the workshop, the class wrote about 15 new Mongolian Christian songs, most based on Scripture. The younger pastor led most of the contemporary song-writing teams, and the older led most of the traditional songwriters and instrumentalist teams. As part of the teaching sessions, the HSI song-writing facilitator suggested the idea of writing new compositions based on the popular song forms used at the "Three Manly Sports"-- wrestling, horseracing, and archery events. Quite effortlessly the older pastor took the art form praising the attributes of the winning wrestler and recast that into a great piece on "God's Praise Titles" chanted in that form using imagery such as that from Revelation where Christ is victorious over Satan and throws him into the lake of fire. He also did a similar piece in the genre used to praise the winner at the end of a horse race, using passages like "run the race with endurance to get the eternal crown." At another session, the class was reminded that not all songs written were necessarily meant for public use and were challenged to each write a song expressing personal devotion to the Lord. One of the most appreciated songs from the entire course was one of these "private devotional" songs written to be sung just to the Lord.

demo recording

Making a demo recording of the songs came next. In all, more than 20 songs were recorded on minidisk, the majority being indigenous songs. The course then concluded with a "premiere" public concert of the newly written songs, held at the local Bible Seminary. Christian TV staff were on hand for interviews and taping of some of the songs. Plans were underway to get copies of the demo cassette to each of the participants to introduce the songs in their various churches. It is likely that this demo tape will include some of the very first Mongolian worship songs based on traditional styles and utilizing traditional instruments. The desire is to see the cassette sold widely in churches throughout the nation as a means of promoting new worship songs.

The head of the Bible School summed up things nicely, commenting on the indigenous songs that just premiered at the Bible School:
"For years I've been teaching about the need to add traditional approaches to worship in our churches. Tonight it happened."