Over the past few days I have been a part of conversations as well seen on Facebook, a lot of talk about the problems with Evangelical Christian Worship. Some have said we are headed for a crash, maybe. Unfortunately the arguments have changed over the past 20 years. They may take different wording but they are the same. They mostly revolve around style.
Maybe because I am in the middle of church that is wrestling with this very issue when I have never been, kind of like how you buy this kind of car cause you never see anyone drive it and as soon as you have it, you notice how many others there are, so maybe I am just hypersensitive.
First, let me say that now being part of a traditional style service for the first time in my life, I have found some hymns that I absolutely love and some I hope I never have to hear, let alone sing again. That being said, here is my problem with the style wars. For centuries, the church song writers and musicians have been shaping their music around what is popular in culture. We have all heard that hymns used old bar tunes. I know since being at my new church I have sung the same hymn to three different tunes. All tunes I knew and thought they were another song. So why would we be surprised that the current song writers in the church are following the trend of modern music. Why should we be surprised that people who are not in the church have an easier time connecting with it. When the hymn writers were writing, the church didn’t like their music either. Now we hear all the time, “I just connect better with God with the hymns.” Well let me be the first to tell you (probably not the first), I connect better with God with modern worship music. Why? Because that is what I was brought up on. Reality, I have been leading worship for 20 years. The music has changed a lot in that time but I can tell you that I am not holding on to singing about his love forever or shouting to the Lord and telling Jesus to shine. Those were great songs in their day but they would not connect with the current generation.
The last thing I will say about the style wars, and this would go to people who love the hymns and people who love modern. We tend to fixate on certain songs. “I really (insert your verb here) with God when we sing ______.” Kenny Chesney says it well, “I go back”. We all have songs that mark circumstances in our lives. Good times, bad times, and when we sing those songs it floods in all the memories of what God was doing in our lives at that time. The problem, as humans we have a tendency to begin to worship the song not the one the song is about. There was a great message I heard for a conference once. I can’t remember who it was or what conference it was, if you can help me out with that, awesome. Would love to give credit. The talk about about the pole in the old testament. In Numbers 21, the people were doing what we all do best, complaining. God sends venomous snakes among them and a lot of them started dying from the bites. They cam to Moses to repent and God tells Moses to make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. So he did, they lived, they kept moving. The problem was that over time, they stopped worship the God who brought healing through the pole and started to worship the pole. In 2 Kings 18 Hezekiah, broke into the pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, of up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. They were worshiping it. Lets not worship the style or the song, lets worship the God who the songs sing about. Enough said about that.
The next argument I hear is congregational key. Like the hymns were in the perfect key for everyone to sing in and our tenor lead modern worship music isn’t. Of course you usually only hear this argument from basses and female singers who aren’t listening to Kari Jobe, seriously, I have had a harder time singing melody on some of the hymns I have been learning that most of the latest Tomlin songs. The reality is, the key the song is in does not make or prohibit a congregation from worshiping. There are so many other factors and this is very near the bottom of that list if on the list at all. I think the biggest reason we have lost congregational singing is because people don’t know the songs. Over the past 7-10 years there has been this move to make a service, especially in a contemporary/modern setting, consistent in theme and message. So as a worship leader, we would try to pick songs that went with the topic of the day. I admit that I have even told other leaders to do this and taught them how. Now, thanks to a good friend who challenged me, I have realized this is the worst way to pick songs for people to engage in worship. If you pick this way and you use planning center, I challenge you the same way my friend challenged me. Run a report to see what songs you have sung over the past 12 months and how often you sang them. When I did this, I found that we had song well over 120 songs in a year and the majority of them had been sung 1 to 2 times. No wonder nobody new the songs. We were relying on pulling out that old favorite that the people who had come to the church in the past 12 months since we sang it would just know cause we know it so well. It doesn’t have anything to do with key. It has to do with familiarity. This is the only reason why I think some people believe they connect with God better with the hymns, it’s because they are familiar. We have to stop picking worship sets thematically and become strategic it how many songs are in our catalog and how often we sing them. I challenge you to shrink your catalog to 24 songs. That is all you are allowed to pick from. Then once you have done that, you intro two songs a month. 1st and 3rd week, 2nd and 4th, it doesn’t matter. Key is, when you intro a new one, one of the current 24 has to go away. It’s harder than you think but it works. You will end up with a singing congregation that is not staring at screens and actually connect with God, not with you.
Ok, last beef with what I have been hearing this week. Worship as we know it is going to crash because it is all performance based. Let me first say, this is something we need to consistently wrestle with and every time there is an extreme post or blog about how terrible the state of modern worship is, it cause all of us to do that. So, I guess, at least thank you for that. But seriously, you go to a conference with national worship artist and what do you expect them to do? Sing all of your favorite Christ Tomlin and Hillsong United songs. If you’re seeing Jesus Culture, they are going to sing Jesus Culture songs. Are they doing this because they are performing. No, they are doing this because in the church that they serve in, these are the song they sing. The reason that conference planners asked them to come was because there is a group of people who love Jesus Culture. But I can’t expect them to bust out How Great is our God and Mighty to Save in their set. It’s not them. It wouldn’t be genuine. To expect anything different would be silly. Also, putting their face on the screen does not mean lets worship the worship leader. if you were sitting in an auditorium/sanctuary/whatever you want to call it, with someone preaching and there were 5000 people there and you were in the back, you would be thankful for a screen that has his face projected so you can infer the body language as he spoke. It is a huge percentage of his communication with you. There is not difference with a worship leader, except that they are signing and playing an instrument. Also keep in mind, typically the people who are running cameras, are not christians. They are hired and the week before they were doing Justin Beiber concert where you want all the cool camera angles of the guitar solo.
Lastly, their are many worship leaders who are in the midst of planning for a Sunday. They will rehearse with their band of volunteers. They will use songs that they never heard before from the worship conference they just went too. Songs that when they heard it, they turned to their friend with them and said, this is our church, we need to sing this song, quick record it. They are not at the conference to learn all the tricks of performing well. Many are there because they want to quit. Because theirs spouses want them to quit. Because they feel like a failure. In no way are they worried about the performance coming Sunday. They desperately need to connect with God in worship, to be refreshed. To have it done in such a way that doesn’t distract them with bad notes, horrible projections and terrible sound. I thank God for my weeks at conference. Those are the times that I don’t have to worry about pouring into a congregation and I can be in a corporate worship environment where I can focus one thing, God.
Enough rambling, just some of my thoughts on the conversations going around this week. Love to hear yours.
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