Specifically, with respect to music, the notion of countercultural theology is not a thinly-veiled attempt (as critics might have it) to maintain a sort of status quo tradition, perhaps devoted to the 17th- and 18th- century music of northern Europe. Nor is it an attempt to define a single style of music for use in the church. The church has through the ages embraced an astonishing diversity of musical styles for its song: chant, the German chorale, metrical psalmody, the enormous repertory of English hymns, American folk hymnody, black spirituals, Taizé hymns, Gelineau psalmody–to name only a few. For the church to use countercultural music is simply to rely upon the full multiplicity of the church's traditions, and to draw on the music created by the church's finest living composers. To call on the church to use countercultural music is to state emphatically that the church's music is not to be rooted in the music of adult contemporary or soft rock radio stations, but that it is to be rooted in the church's own vital and varied traditions, of both the distant and the very recent past. To call on the church to use countercultural music is to require the church to draw widely on various traditions; Lutherans will seek out the best of Roman Catholic psalmody, of hymnody by Marty Haugen, David Haas, Michael Joncas, and others. Catholics (and other denominations as well) will look to Lutherans for the hymnody of Jaroslav Vajda and Carl Schalk, just as Lutheran chorales have long since become a staple in most Christian hymnals. Drawing on the full spectrum of the church's varied musical traditions, both historic and current, is very different from offering the people of our parishes country/western services, polka services, or adult contemporary/easy listening/soft rock-influenced styles. The latter is particularly in favor these days, and is perhaps particularly misguided, for it fails to engender that sense of holy ground. Indeed, it seeks to do just the opposite–to bring the predominant musical culture into the sanctuary, where, instead of encountering "the profound mystery of God's presence in our midst," as Senkbeil terms it, the music points us back only to ourselves, to our favorites from an entertainment, "feel good" culture.

To summarize: all too frequently of late, the church is engaging in a misguided attempt to draw "the irreligious" and "the unchurched" into her sanctuaries by providing an informal worship style filled with music that is "similar to the kinds of music people listen to all week long." This proposition fails in its expectation that the unchurched can either actively worship a God they do not yet know or passively encounter that God through entertainment. This proposition fails, as well, in its expectation that "the irreligious" should come to us, that they should fill our sanctuaries. Instead, we must realize that we need to go out to them. There are no fish to be caught on the shore; we must go out into the deep waters where the fish are to be found, as a Gospel appointed for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Luke 5:1—11) reminds us. The church must assert that there is a difference between evangelism and worship. Evangelism reaches out to all those who, in the beautiful words of the Bidding Prayer from the Christmas service of Nine Lessons and Carols, "know not the Lord Jesus, or love Him not. . . ." Worship is different than evangelism; it is the one activity to which Christians are privileged both here and in the world to come. Finally, the church must be reminded that unbelievers are brought to faith not through worship as much as they are brought into contact with the Word of God in an active program of catechesis. The best outreach will look to catechesis rather than to music.

With Phillip Pfatteicher we must renew our understanding of the liturgy as the school of the church.¹⁴ In our liturgical worship we need to foster musical expressions that are rooted in the church year and lectionary, thus taking on specific meaning and participating in the proclamation of theology. We must privilege meaning rather than style when considering music for the sanctuary. We must cease the current fixation on musical styles.