Singing in Church is Bad Praxis; Here’s What Churches Should Do Instead

1.) It Doesn’t Accomplish Anything (and Actually Might Hurt the Cause)

The Horror

Americans are becoming less religious, and church attendance is plummeting (especially among mainline and progressive churches).  I’ve written a lot about this before.  I myself have yet to find a church that I’m happy in.  One reason is the singing.

I don’t mind singing in theory.  I’m a musician, so actually, I love singing (in certain contexts).  But the problem is when churches define the word worship mostly through music, as so many do.

Worship shouldn’t be about appeasing a deity.  Worship should be about spiritual transformation that leads to material transformation (because faith without works is dead).  Singing, in most cases, does not do this.

I have a close friend who recently told me that the only time they believe in God anymore is when they are singing during worship services.  Some may point to that as evidencing the profound power and importance of singing in church, but I rather see it as pointing to an embarrassing lack of spiritual content outside of singing and outside of the church building.

Tricking your brain into feeling spiritual when you sing isn’t tapping into some higher power; it’s muscle memory.  When “worship” is defined so narrowly and inoffensively, it becomes hollow and meaningless.

What Churches Can Do Instead

Do you know when I feel closest to God in my daily life?  There are a few very different situations that, to me, feel like worship.

One is when I sit down to eat with people I love.  Jesus understood the power in a communal meal, and it’s something that a wafer or tiny slice of bread and splash of terrible wine can never replace.

Another is when I stop in the streets to talk to one of the many, many homeless people I see in Chicago.  I can’t afford to help many of them, but I always stop when I’m not in a rush to talk to them if I can.  Once in a great while, I’ll sit and eat with them.  It makes me uncomfortable, so I don’t do it nearly as much as I should, but where in the Bible does it say that worship should be comfortable?

Ministry to the poor shouldn’t just be passing around a collection plate and donating half the money to charity.  Congregants feel spiritually empty because they aren’t participating in the mission.  Make it mandatory – yes, mandatory – that everyone is involved somehow in directly ministering to the needy.  Nobody is going to say no; nobody wants to be the guy that stopped going to church so he wouldn’t have to deal with homeless people (and if they do, you don’t want them there anyways).

Get your congregation out of the pews and into the streets.  Protest injustice.  Go join a picket line during the week, or make and pass out leaflets together highlighting issues of injustice in your community.

The reality is that far from being complements to worship, direct action and justice work are actually themselves acts of worship.  People stop going to church because the church isn’t fulfilling them spiritually, and churches are failing at this because they use music as a substitute for concrete spiritual action.

So, churches, if you want to give people a reason to actually show up on Sunday (especially millennials like me), stop singing.  Just stop it.  Get your people out on the streets where people can see them, fighting for the Kingdom of God.  The more you get outside of your church, the more people will want to come to your church.

But if You Really Must Sing

When you’re done mobilizing your congregation to actually change the world; when you’ve stood outside for hours preaching the Kingdom of God to the poor and downcast; when you’ve let society know you by your works; and when you’ve truly followed in Jesus’s footsteps by getting your asses kicked by the cops for protesting, you can go back to church and sing together.

I recommend something like this.