The modern approach to musical worship often misses the point
Every church sings. No matter what faith tradition, size, theology, demographic, or style, singing is one of the few things that every community that calls itself a church has in common.
There’s good reason for that. The longest book in the Bible, the book of Psalms, is a book consisting entirely of songs. Ephesians 5:18 tells us, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord”. Colossians 3:16 tells us, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” Singing is very biblical, even a biblical command. So churches ought to sing.
Of course, churches definitely have different ideas about how we should sing, for how long, and what style of music. Most churches have their own style about which they’re pretty particular. The Catholic churches I grew up in used a piano with 2 or 3 full songs scattered throughout the service. My first home church had a block of time at the start of service with exactly six full songs (about half an hour). I did an internship at a Church of Christ, which doesn’t use instruments and sings every song a cappella (quite beautifully, I might add). My current church does exactly three songs at the beginning, with a full band, interspersed with a Scripture reading, and one or two at the end. Usually, the younger the demographic of a church, the more instruments and spotlights you see on stage, and the louder, faster, and more upbeat the environment.
But I have to make a confession that I, as a youth leader and a millennial myself, am not really supposed to say: I’ve never really liked the music portion of the service. I know that’s not really what you’re supposed to say. It’s not the cool thing to say. It’s okay to say you don’t like hearing sermons, or that you don’t like shaking hands with people. I hear that all the time. No one faults you for that. But music? You can’t knock that. Perhaps you can say you don’t like a particular style of music, but not that you don’t like the music portion at all. Music is the thing that most people seem to look to “get something out of.” It seems to be the way a lot of people connect to God.
Yet that’s not the case for me. I guess I’ve never really seen how standing still and reciting —slowly and in tune — words that you’ve either never heard before (and therefore can’t sing right) or have heard a hundred times (and therefore you just kind of say them without thinking), knowing that everyone around you will notice if you miss a note or even a word, is supposed to facilitate a connection with God. Then, of course, sometimes you’re expected to respond in certain ways to the music: clapping, raising your arms, dancing. And you know people will notice if you get that out of rhythm, do it wrong, or don’t do it at all. For me, even if I were a person who connected to God through music, it’s about the worst environment possible to really focus on God.
Some places have recognized that. Mostly it’s the megachurches and church camps, which tend to cater to the youngest audiences and are often on the cutting edge of new trends. So what have they done to solve these problems? They’ve turned off the lights. (No worries about people seeing you.) They’ve turned up the volume. (No worries about singing off-key.) They’ve brought in actual, record-label bands, added spotlights and fog machines, and basically turned the whole thing into a rock concert (no worries about slowness, repetitiveness, or stiffness). Go to any major church camp or megachurch, and this is what you’ll usually see (along with the worship band out front after the service, selling their CDs). These modern churches have decided they want to create an environment that will give people the kind of authentic and emotional experience that that modern concert experience is designed to create. How many people at an Ariana Grande concert rush the stage with their cell phones, jumping, dancing, and raising their arms, coming away with a deep connection to the music? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get people to jump and dance and sing with intense emotional fervor in worship to God? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to create that kind of intense emotional experience in worship?
Some people shudder at this thought. The church is becoming more like the world in order to attract the world. Fog machines and stage bands aren’t in the Bible. Of course, neither are PowerPoint or microphones, but that doesn’t stop anyone from using those. Just because it looks and sounds modern doesn’t mean it’s bad or “worldly.” Modern Christian music is, in my opinion, usually pretty good.
At the same time, though, we need to ask: What are we trying to do when we sing? Why are so many large churches trying to create this modern concert experience, and many smaller churches trying to imitate it as closely as feasible?
Let’s remember that the hit music performed at concerts usually isn’t written so people really understand what the songs are about. It’s written to make people feel emotionally connected to the tune and the beats and the general theme. I mean, listen to some lyrics of the top radio hits. Some of them are absolute nonsense. Others are so raunchy you’d be amazed they’re allowed on mainstream radio — except most listeners don’t pay much attention to the deeper meaning behind the words, because that’s not what the music is designed to do. Then, of course, at concerts, you add the darkness, the lights, a celebrity virtually worshiped by her audience, and everything else, and you’ve got a recipe for a great experience, even if you have no idea what the experience actually meant.
Is that really something we want to recreate? Is that really an experience we want to duplicate? We’ve got good Christian music with great lyrics that encourage you to contemplate God and praise him, but then we create this environment that inspires powerful emotional connection, but also encourages you to let go of critical thought and surrender to whatever waves of emotion may come? Remember that Paul said, “I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind” (1 Cor 15:14). Is that actually happening in the rock-concert environment? I am skeptical.
I admit that this comes from a place of occasional frustration. So many people talk about feeling a strong connection to God through the time of musical worship, and I don’t really get that connection. Whatever kind of experience these environments are designed to produce, I don’t get it most of the time. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s the latest Christian contemporary or old hymns. So what does that mean for me? Does it mean I don’t have as good a relationship with God as everyone else? Maybe, I guess. Does it mean I’m just not good at worshiping publicly? I don’t know; that’s probably true.
Or … is that not what musical worship is supposed to do? Maybe we are thinking of it all wrong. Maybe, when we hire record-label bands and spend tens of thousands of dollars on spotlights, a booming speaker system, fog machines, a stage background, etc., trying to facilitate the best worship experience possible, it has little to do with actual worship. Because maybe worship isn’t not supposed to make you feel good or experience a spiritual connection. Maybe musical worship is to…well…express worship.
In fact, I’m sure of it. Worship is an act of giving, not taking. Hebrews 13:15 calls our praise to God a sacrifice. So why is it that we expect to “get” anything out of worship? It would make more sense that we would get something out of hearing a good sermon, reading our Bibles and spending quiet time with God, or even being in a mutually giving and receiving relationship with other Christians. Those things are all designed for us to expect to “get” something from. Worship is the thing that’s designed primarily to give, not to get. And yet that’s where we expect to “get” something.
If you don’t feel good after worship, it hasn’t failed. If you don’t feel like you’ve gotten anything from it, it hasn’t been a flawed experience. Musical worship is about expressing yourself to God. It’s great if you do have a powerful emotional experience during musical worship, but that’s a byproduct of the main purpose of it: It’s about speaking to God, giving to God. We can see this if we take one look at the gold standard for the idea of writing music to sing to God, the Psalms, and that’s mostly what the Psalms are: expressions to God in musical form.
Let me make clear that I’m not criticizing modern Christian music. I’m not even necessarily criticizing the way megachurches and church camps do worship. The method is not what I’m talking about so much as the motive. I’m not talking about the way that we do worship so much as the reason we do it that way. We view it as an opportunity to have an emotional experience rather than an opportunity to offer God praise and convey to him what we feel about him.
There’s nothing wrong with an emotional experience or “getting something out of” musical worship. But that’s also not the main point of worship. So when we worship next, I would recommend we think not of what we are getting from the experience, or how it makes us feel, but whether we have expressed ourselves to God in a way we feel was authentic and worthy of him. I would recommend we think of it as an opportunity to give. How amazing is it that we can possibly give anything to God? Musical worship is a wonderful opportunity to do that. There are many ways to worship, but this is an opportunity to do so out loud and publicly and in harmony with others — something that’s virtually impossible to do in any other setting. So I think that should be our primary focus during musical worship — giving more than receiving — and we should consider how well we made use of the opportunity.
