Worship Week: Completely Missing the Point of Worship

Worship Week begins here at Bill in the Blank with our first guest post by John Lehmberg. He is the owner of Make It Loud, Inc. specializing in web design, SEO, printing, & branding. He is also a worship music leader in his church. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

The following is a response to the post Why I’ve Stopped Singing in Your Church:

The article Why I’ve Stopped Singing in Your Church completely misses the point.

I would argue that far more of contemporary worship music is a direct rip from Scripture. For example, our church is singing a song called “Your Love Never Fails.” It’s almost word for word out of Romans 8 with the bridge/hook repeating, “You make all things, work together for my good.”  I don’t know how much more lyrical quality you can get than borrowing the words directly from the Word of God. There’s an absolute truckload of contemporary music that does exactly that.

If you want to talk about hard to sing vs. simplicity — I’d be happy to take you through a tour of any church hymnal which has some of the most complicated melodies on the face of the planet with lots of misplaced sharps and flats, that are so difficult that the sheet music is present in order to be able to sing it. If you can’t read music, you’re sunk. They’re easy to sing to many of us who have grown up in a church environment. We’ve been singing them since we were 2. If you came into them new today, as an adult never having heard them and with a veritable lack of ability to sight read music to some degree, you would find many of them immensely difficult to sing. So “trendy” is irrelevant because it is about style, and style should have zero bearing on whether or not one engages in worship.

Music is ultimately unnecessary for worship to take place.

“Mood” is also irrelevant, and is more about what is pleasing to our ears rather than God’s, which is what is most important. I could argue that many hymns have horrid “moods,” even downright inappropriate for the occasion. Have you ever sung “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” during Christmas? It is in a minor key and musically sounds like a funeral dirge in a season that should be amazingly celebratory. Talk about repetitive, too. Yet, in it’s simplicity, it declares the truth of Jesus Christ’s birth.

Many of the hymns we sing were once contemporary worship songs of their day, the melodies of which, for some, were bar songs (bars were, at the time, the place contemporary songs were sung prior to radio). Now that we are separated from that time and place, we somehow seem to think them sanctified. All this is also irrelevant.

Repetition is irrelevant. 

Many hymns also repeat ad nauseam.  In fact, in the Scriptures the angels seem to repeat the words “Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy” an awful lot when in the presence of God. Many hymns repeat, as well.  Have you ever counted the number of times the word “Holy” is used in Holy, Holy, Holy, or how many times the phrase “Great is thy Faithfulness” is sung if you go through that entire hymn?  If repetition is a problem, the angels truly have something to learn.

What worship is.

Worship is about an individual person’s heart directed towards God in complete surrender. This can be done with a good mood, in a somber mood, with a trendy song, with a bar tune, a hymn, or a contemporary worship song.  Corporate worship is the collection of a mess of individuals hearts directed towards God —  nothing more, nothing less. Once again, music is not even necessary to worship God. Worship can be done in complete silence, should not be confused with musicianship or music style, and is never a performance.

I’ll absolutely give you the fact that some places feel like a performance, on both the traditional and contemporary side of the equation — the former sounding like a symphony and choir, the latter more like a rock concert.  Both such scenarios breed epic failure with respect to worship as the environments create spectators and fans instead of devoted worshippers of God. This too is not about musicianship, but about the heart of the individuals leading the gathering and their connectedness with Christ.

I believe true maturity is the ability to engage God in any environment, traditional or contemporary, old or new. This is something the traditional worship director and I, in our church, take great pains to live and teach. We are in complete harmony on this — and I’m blessed by the synergy with her in desiring to lead others to give everything they are to Jesus Christ in worship. Our prayer is the same every Sunday morning– “Jesus, you appear, and we’ll disappear as we lead. May we do nothing but connect with Jesus and lead others to your throne.” There is no competition between us, no right or wrong, no old or new, contemporary or traditional.

Throwing stones at one side or the other does NOTHING but make believers out to be arguing idiots who NEED their kind of music to engage God in worship. This I would not call worship, but self satisfaction.

The article Why I’ve Stopped Singing in Your Church completely misses the point.

Christ is everything. We are nothing. We’re meant to worship him in any and every environment regardless of the musical style, or whether or not music is even present. Should we throw out what is past? No. Should we throw out what is current? No. If it gives Glory to Christ it should be embraced in heartfelt surrender to Him in my humble opinion.

Do you agree that true maturity allows us to worship God in any environment? What do you think of John’s take on music in worship? Leave a comment with a click here to help us all grow. 

Worship Week: post 2 ~ How Worship Music Destroyed Me: From Bitterness to Blessing

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