Uncool Worship Music

I have been more involved in the music of the church lately, and so I have been thinking about these things again.  Here are a few thoughts about music in the church.

We should aim for something higher than cool

I think that aiming for cool in church music can bring disunity both culturally and generationally.  The kind of people Jesus reaches are often not welcome at the cool table.  His love falls on the poor in spirit, the weak, the nobodies.  But when the church is built on the culture of cool, it can easily become exclusive along those lines.  The lines of exclusion from cool are very different than the lines of exclusion from Jesus.

But it can also be divisive generationally because cool has to be a moving target.  If you don't change quickly enough, you miss the bus.  For example, how cool is worship music from the 1980's?  The 90's?  Even the last decade (what do we call it, the ot's)?  Anyone still worshipping to Petra and Audio Adrenaline?

It grieves me the way we create and perpetuate a generation gap in our churches with our music.  If you can't keep up, then you are left behind and out of touch.  Rather than a rich, diverse, family of people gathering in the Spirit of Christ, we divide up decade by decade, each with our own gathering and our own music.  We need a music that expresses the unity we have in Christ rather than further serving our fragmentation.  We should sing ancient songs that have stood the test of time.  And we should sing new songs that are good, true, and beautiful.  

And what about style?  As Doug Wilson has pointed out, folk music is a music of the people.  It is not mass-produced throwaway pop, nor is it inaccessible elite art.  It is carefully crafted and accessible.  Folk music is inter-generational, and multi-instrumental.  It is music that fathers can play with their sons, music that is always evolving in freshness, but has a rootedness.  It is a music that we can unify around.  It is a music that invites others in, to pick up an instrument and grow as you play.  This is not just another cool thing to try, this is an opportunity to own, repent of, and reverse a massive evangelical trend of fracturing the church along cultural and musical lines.  We have the opportunity to work out musically the unity we have been freely given in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.  

This kind of thing takes time.  It takes musicians and artists who catch the vision and root themselves in the community of the church.  It takes people with the love and humility of Christ to listen to each other, to learn each others' styles, and to work together to cultivate something organic and beautiful and lasting.


Worship music should be music of the people

I was struck a few years ago when I attended a fairly typical evangelical church and embarrassed myself by standing and singing during the worship music time.  I wasn't trying to be that guy who has to sing louder than everyone to draw attention to himself, I just love to sing and was standing and singing in a loud voice like King David told me to.  People were looking at me.  Probably a majority of the other people were sitting down.  Some were singing faintly, I think, though I didn't actually hear anyone else singing.  Most people were gently swaying while watching the cool band up front.  
It reminded me of a Coldplay concert.  The musicians were singing for us, and we were enjoying it, and maybe softly singing along if we really liked the song.

I like concerts as much as the next guy, but they are not the same as what we are doing on Sunday morning.  On Sunday morning, the people are gathering to offer the "sacrifice of praise" together.  We don't gather to slaughter bulls and goats, but we do gather, and we do have sacrifices to bring.  Hebrews 2:11-12 tells us that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers, saying "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will sing your praise."  This is what the worship music is to facilitate, singing God's praise in the middle of his gathered people.  Songs of praise should rise from the whole people.  If what we do with instruments dampens rather than ignites the singing of the people, then we have taken a wrong turn somewhere. 

This is part of what we have inherited in the New Covenant.  Before Christ came, worship was something the priest did for you.  You went through him to get to God.  But we don't need an earthly priest, because we have a High Priest at the right hand of God that gives us access directly into the presence.  The music guy doesn't usher us into the presence of God, Jesus already did that.  For some reason, the church is always trying to slide back into a more mediated approach to God in worship.  We are content to pass notes through someone else, when God is welcoming us to behold his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.  This is part of what we recovered in the Reformation, but we give it away so easily.  When we gather for worship, we are not attending a concert that gives us the feels, we are engaging in a robust act of worship of the people, facilitated and lead by a group of musicians, aimed at the glory of God, inhabited by his Holy Spirit.  One of the specific things the Bible says people full of the Spirit do is sing.  It is easy to have a concert, but on Sunday morning we are doing so much more when we gather and sing together to the God of all grace. 


Worship music should strive to be joyfully reverent

God's presence calls forth a certain kind of response.  We have an entire book of Psalms, a rich heritage of worship music that will help to train us in what is fitting.  Psalm 2 tells us to "serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling."  Rejoice with trembling.  Have you ever experienced anything that brought about that kind of emotion?  Trembling rejoicing.  Happy fear.  Joyful dread.  Awful, awesome, reverent gladness.  Hebrews specifically tells us to worship with reverence and awe since God is a consuming fire.  Do our songs reflect who we are singing to?  C. S Lewis said it this way, 

You asked for a loving God: you have one.  The Great Spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'Lord of                 terrible aspect' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate,  nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests,  but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds.

  
There should be a dominant note of praise and celebration in our worship.  We are approaching the God who loves us, who conquered death, the devil, sin, and hell through the sacrifice of his Son.  This should move us more than it does.  We don't need to be all composed, like David wasn't when he danced before the ark.  But we need weight to our worship.  Celebration without weight is a pop concert or a pep rally.  It is not fitting for the worship of the God of the Bible.  On the other hand, weight without celebration is like a funeral procession of people who forget that we are free and glad children of light  We want weighty gladness, and as the Spirit fills us more and more, we will continue to grow into this.