Contemporary Worship
For months now, Jennifer and I have been attending a home church, led by a called and ordained Missouri Synod pastor, and under his watch, I've continued to develop my guitar hymnal project. Sometimes, though, he is asked to preach at other churches, so we end up going there instead of his house. The church that brings him in to preach most often uses contemporary worship. I don't really tend to like worship services with a praise band, but I've seen it done well.* So I usually reserve judgment until after the service. Now, after two worship services, I lay it out here. And before I begin, I left off all the names intentionally, so don't even ask.
Below are some of the thoughts about our two most recent visits, adapted from what I wrote in my journal.
Two weeks ago: If I were ever to doubt the importance of my work with hymns, I just need to remember that tonight we never once sang the name of Jesus and never sang anything about God that would contradict a Muslim or a Deist or an ancient Stoic.** At least, not before the sermon. During Communion, we sang the old Bill Gaither hymn "Because He Lives." Not bad but also not all that good.
And man, it was loud! It was loud to the point that prolonged exposure could cause damage to my hearing, to say nothing of my baby daughter's.
Anyways, it's not enough to say that God is amazing, even if you say it loudly. Every religious person in the world can affirm that. It's Jesus--His co-eternal existence (with the Father and Spirit), His incarnation, His death and resurrection, His ascension and immanent return--that sets us apart. Generic worship is a denial of Christ by omission.
This week: The content of the songs is a bit better this week. They at least referenced Jesus (by name and various titles, like Messiah, Lamb of God, Immanuel, etc.), and they mentioned the cross. But they still centered around us--our actions, our devotion, our feelings.
But as I get a larger sampling of contemporary worship practices after several years of absence, a lot has changed. A lot of the praise songs written in the last 5-10 years have no compelling melody. When I compared the more recent songs with older ones like "You Are My All in All" or even some of the older Chris Tomlin songs like "You Are My Treasure" (just to name two), it struck me that they're not even in the same league.
The genre is now largely comprised of fragmentary concepts, incomplete sentences, boring melodies, and puzzling references to Bible passages cherry picked, seemingly at random, with no kind of larger Biblical narrative or direction. It speaks from one emotion--elation--and has no definitive object, only the numinous. This is not Christian. At best, it's Montanist, and at worst, it's Gnostic.
Even references to Jesus are often vague and divorced from the Cross. Or else the cross is given no greater emphasis or importance than any other thing Jesus did.
In Conclusion: It's taken me a while to articulate my thoughts on this matter, and I'm still kinda shooting from the hip. If my criticism seems rather harsh, please understand that I'm actually something of a moderate among others of my tradition (and even among those of the same stripe within my tradition). But there is cause for alarm.
Even though we only attend a house church, I take my role as a worship leader very seriously and strive every week to emphasize what's important and to enrich with a broad wealth details. I probably wouldn't have mentioned anything if only one week had been bad and the other week had been basically on-target. Every worship leader has a bad week, just like every pastor preaches a bad sermon. This bugged me, though, because both of my experiences with this particular worship leader were alarming.
Song is not just a creative expression of the faith but is very formative in a person's life. It is no accident that the longest book of the Bible is a book of songs and that the book entirely dedicated to romance is called "Song of Songs" and that a large portion of the prophets is in poetry. Despite the centrality of the spoken word to Lutheranism, people can recall music far more easily. Songs affect and impact people far more than sermons. So when worship leaders choose songs week after week like the ones we sang these two weeks, it reinforces an egocentric belief system and stunts our growth in Christ.
Admittedly, Chris Tomlin and I would probably disagree on what is "central" to scripture, as well as how best to communicate that message. And it's not exactly like he's saying anything blatantly false so I can't exactly fault him. The heart of the problem is that the heart of the Christian message is missing. I keep hearing this music without other songs in the service to act as a corrective or to focus us in on the central message.
*- The most notable example would be a church I attended while Jennifer and I visited a friend in California. The songs they chose, whether intentionally or not, actually came together to serve loosely the same functions as the parts of the Liturgy--Invocation (duly Trinitarian), Confession/Absolution, Introit, etc. It was impressive.
**- There are a lot of great worship songs that don't mention Jesus by name (Luther's rendering of Psalm 130 and every English translation from Luther's text, for example), and there are a lot of terrible songs that mention Jesus a lot.
Okay, my rant is over. So allow me to be a capitalist for a moment. If you're a church guitarist or know a church guitarist, buy my guitar hymnal in a few weeks, when I've sent off for them.
Below are some of the thoughts about our two most recent visits, adapted from what I wrote in my journal.
Two weeks ago: If I were ever to doubt the importance of my work with hymns, I just need to remember that tonight we never once sang the name of Jesus and never sang anything about God that would contradict a Muslim or a Deist or an ancient Stoic.** At least, not before the sermon. During Communion, we sang the old Bill Gaither hymn "Because He Lives." Not bad but also not all that good.
And man, it was loud! It was loud to the point that prolonged exposure could cause damage to my hearing, to say nothing of my baby daughter's.
Anyways, it's not enough to say that God is amazing, even if you say it loudly. Every religious person in the world can affirm that. It's Jesus--His co-eternal existence (with the Father and Spirit), His incarnation, His death and resurrection, His ascension and immanent return--that sets us apart. Generic worship is a denial of Christ by omission.
This week: The content of the songs is a bit better this week. They at least referenced Jesus (by name and various titles, like Messiah, Lamb of God, Immanuel, etc.), and they mentioned the cross. But they still centered around us--our actions, our devotion, our feelings.
But as I get a larger sampling of contemporary worship practices after several years of absence, a lot has changed. A lot of the praise songs written in the last 5-10 years have no compelling melody. When I compared the more recent songs with older ones like "You Are My All in All" or even some of the older Chris Tomlin songs like "You Are My Treasure" (just to name two), it struck me that they're not even in the same league.
The genre is now largely comprised of fragmentary concepts, incomplete sentences, boring melodies, and puzzling references to Bible passages cherry picked, seemingly at random, with no kind of larger Biblical narrative or direction. It speaks from one emotion--elation--and has no definitive object, only the numinous. This is not Christian. At best, it's Montanist, and at worst, it's Gnostic.
Even references to Jesus are often vague and divorced from the Cross. Or else the cross is given no greater emphasis or importance than any other thing Jesus did.
In Conclusion: It's taken me a while to articulate my thoughts on this matter, and I'm still kinda shooting from the hip. If my criticism seems rather harsh, please understand that I'm actually something of a moderate among others of my tradition (and even among those of the same stripe within my tradition). But there is cause for alarm.
Even though we only attend a house church, I take my role as a worship leader very seriously and strive every week to emphasize what's important and to enrich with a broad wealth details. I probably wouldn't have mentioned anything if only one week had been bad and the other week had been basically on-target. Every worship leader has a bad week, just like every pastor preaches a bad sermon. This bugged me, though, because both of my experiences with this particular worship leader were alarming.
Song is not just a creative expression of the faith but is very formative in a person's life. It is no accident that the longest book of the Bible is a book of songs and that the book entirely dedicated to romance is called "Song of Songs" and that a large portion of the prophets is in poetry. Despite the centrality of the spoken word to Lutheranism, people can recall music far more easily. Songs affect and impact people far more than sermons. So when worship leaders choose songs week after week like the ones we sang these two weeks, it reinforces an egocentric belief system and stunts our growth in Christ.
Admittedly, Chris Tomlin and I would probably disagree on what is "central" to scripture, as well as how best to communicate that message. And it's not exactly like he's saying anything blatantly false so I can't exactly fault him. The heart of the problem is that the heart of the Christian message is missing. I keep hearing this music without other songs in the service to act as a corrective or to focus us in on the central message.
*- The most notable example would be a church I attended while Jennifer and I visited a friend in California. The songs they chose, whether intentionally or not, actually came together to serve loosely the same functions as the parts of the Liturgy--Invocation (duly Trinitarian), Confession/Absolution, Introit, etc. It was impressive.
**- There are a lot of great worship songs that don't mention Jesus by name (Luther's rendering of Psalm 130 and every English translation from Luther's text, for example), and there are a lot of terrible songs that mention Jesus a lot.
Okay, my rant is over. So allow me to be a capitalist for a moment. If you're a church guitarist or know a church guitarist, buy my guitar hymnal in a few weeks, when I've sent off for them.