Worship Views

I have been thinking about worship music some lately. Many of you know that I served on a worship leader search team at my church for 2 years before I moved to Madison--so worship is something I have thought a lot about.

One of the things that I took a lot of flack for in this role was that I was always downplaying music as a form of worship. I kind of got labeled as a music hater--probably for good reason. I want to set that record straight today.

First, I must say that I love music. I consider myself a musician, though not typically in front of people but in back at the audio console. Although I don't have much of an outlet these days, I was also active in band and choir throughout high school. I often cannot have music on in the background because I listen to music actively as it commands my attention. So please know that I love music. I love its beauty, its communication and its technical aspects (notes, chords, etc).

Further, I love worship music. I like to sing praise songs and hymns. I think that music is an excellent corporate and personal way to worship our God. I am not and have never suggested that music should be completely removed from Christian life (even though I have suggested this for short periods of time).

So, then, why am I so hard on music? Basically, its because it has gone too far. It has taken center stage in many churches and fellowships. It has replaced true worship in so many places (or at least, narrowed our minds on what constitutes worship). It usually features the styles and forms that are favorite to the people leading the worship, instead of allowing people in the church to bring their own styles.

I do need to say that I think this is the case with contemporary music AND traditional music in the church. I believe they have both gone down this path

Worship is only singing?

I agree with Louie Giglio in his book 'The Air I Breathe' where he makes the case that worship as something we always do, no matter what. Times that we aren't worshipping God are simply times that we are worshipping some sort of idol. Who or what we worship is evidenced in what we spend our money, time and energy on. Everything and anything is worship--you are worshipping when you drive, work, eat, sing, draw, type, whatever.

However, I believe that many people compartmentalize worship to singing or playing an instrument and that is a problem because it gives us an excuse to worship idols whenever we aren't singing or at church.

Diversity in corporate worship.

One of my church pet peeves is when a worship leader or pastor feels the need to lead worship at every corporate worship gathering. To me that is like buying CD's from only one musician or only looking at paintings by one artist. How can a church build diversity into its music style if every service is lead by one person. They are always going to interject their personal favorite styles into the music, even if their heart faces towards diversity.

Instead, I believe that music needs to be as diverse as the people in the gathering and a worship pastor needs to simply be a person who empowers these people to bring their styles to the table. I mean EVERY style to the table. (I will extend this beyond music further down). If there are people that love country music, rap, punk, techno or folk music--they must ALL be given an opportunity to lead worship their way without the pastoral staff or leadership smoothing it out to things that won't offend or be too loud.

Further, the church has all but forgotten people that worship in ways other than singing. Even when other artists are used in a church they are reduced to creating things that simply support the music program (i.e. art on the background of a PowerPoint song slide, a reading that segues between songs and a lighting design for a concert stage) and a commodity (many churches buy images for the PowerPoint song slides when there are painters and photographers in the congregation or hire people to design lighting, websites, etc).

I believe that we need to regard all communication forms as potential worship elements--in and of themselves. Even though most don't agree with me we don't need these 'in addition' to a musical program, but they should be regarded on the same level and get the same airtime as music.

Corporate worship mush

Oh yeah, I dislike blended worship too. Let me put it this way--hamburger tastes good, ice cream tastes good and coffee tastes good. If you put them in the blender all together and mixed them up, it would not taste good. The same is true for music and other corporate worship forms. If you are going to allow diversity in church gatherings, you need to make the liturgical services liturgical, the hard rock services hard rock, the country gospel services country gospel--not some blend of them. People in our churches just need to expect that they will not like every thing that they see or hear in a church gathering (because it is likely that someone really doesn't like their style either)

Ok, enough for now.

I'm not going to delve too much into what I think the solution is at this point. I need to get on with my day and it is good to leave something for future posts. I will leave with this, though today. I simply think that music has taken too much center stage in today's Christian life. It has become the focus in many places (even places that don't intend to).

Music can and should be balanced with other corporate and personal expressions of worship. So, because of this imbalance in groups I have been a part of, I often suggest that music should be put aside for a while, until we can learn to worship in other ways. This doesn't go over well, though--which, to me, just reinforces my feelings on this subject.

More to come another day…

Mike