On his blog, Ben posted some of his thoughts about modern worship in a post titled Community and My Glorious:
I’ve basically been at the forefront of a movement in our church to move to a modern worship style. There are a hundred reasons why I’ve argued that this is vital to our church, but over this past week, I’ve started to question them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of stuff lately, as well — as a worship leader, you tend to do that, especially when you’ve lost members of your worship team over issues of style. Go read Ben’s post first, but even if you don’t, the following will still be plenty readable. What follows is the comment I posted on his article, but I thought it might be good to capture my thoughts here as well.
Good thoughts. I’ve always thought that people who want a church to only do hymns are virtually no different from people who want a church to never do hymns. I lead worship the way I do because that’s who I am, and that’s the way God made me. That includes my background both as a kid raised on hymns, and as a teenager yearning to be famous in a rock band.
That said, I think there is something to be said for staying current and relevant. Most of the great hymn writers were controversial in their day, especially the ones who broke new ground in terms of arrangement, harmonization, accompaniment, terminology, rhythm, or any other number of things. And most of those changes were in response to the church holding onto a style that had lost its relevance to the community because the modern culture had moved on while the church stayed right where it was.
I see it no differently than new translations to the Bible. It used to be that all scripture was read from the Latin Vulgate — it was a difficult transition for the church to move into using translations that the common person could understand in the form of the King James Version, which dominated outright until a new controversy broke out in the 1970′s with the release of new translations. Thankfully, the Christian community, as a whole, is much more accepting of a new translations now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
In the same way that we need to update the translations of the scriptures every few years, I think we need to update the language of our music. I see it as no different.
The reality is that what some see as “holy” in terms of song selection, music style, or presentation, was considered by many to be blasphemy when it was introduced. In the same way, when rock music was creeping into the Christian culture in the 80′s, it was considered blasphemy. It is beginning to be considered “holy” now, and will one day lose its relevance to the wider culture, but will still be held firmly in the grip of the church that won’t let it go.
Instead of trying to mimic modern culture, I think the church should instead be leading it. We should be controversial not because we’re picking up remnants of the modern culture, but because we’re challenging the modern culture, and revealing Christ through our cultural leadership.
But we’re not going to do that by demanding only traditional hymns and sticking with styles that were popular years and years ago — neither will we do that by forsaking our own history and repeating our prior mistakes. We must learn from our past — both in accepting new musical styles, and in not treating them as anything other than what they are — simply another “translation”, that is used as a tool. Musical styles come and go, and the sooner all of our church’s generations embrace that, the sooner we can move on to the real business of being that community of love that the world so desperately needs us to be.
“but because we’re challenging the modern culture, and revealing Christ through our cultural leadership.”
That’s really good. I think a large oversimplification is to say that we have to speak a language that our culture and community understands (a language that might not fly in a sbc environment). I wholeheartedly agree.
I also think you are wise to focus on church history. The entire perspective changes when you stretch the timeline past the previous 15 years. I think all of us would approach faith and community a lot differently if we knew more about church history.
Now back to community. What I am still wrestling with is whether worship like this means much unless there’s a community in place like I was talking about in the last couple sections of my post. And also what it takes to cultivate this community…
Church is supposed to be about community, so if that doesn’t exist, then worship in the church means very little. Sure, you can have individuals who worship, but you can do that at home. The point of communal worship is that you do it together. So you’re right — if the community isn’t there, if we aren’t united, then there’s little point.
This is exactly why people who demand worship in their preferred style are dangerous to the local church community. As worship leaders we should be bringing people together in worship, not isolating one group because their styles are either too new, too old, too “worldly”, or too “holy”. As much as possible, we should include everybody.
My problem is, that doesn’t fit nicely with two of the other things I’ve said — one, that I lead worship the way I do because that’s how God created me. My life experiences up to this point inform the decisions I make as a worship leader, and of course my preferences (and capabilities) both direct and limit what I do as a worship leader. But my response to that is that as long as I am open to worship as a team effort, letting other leaders get involved, have input, and direct things, my limitations and preferences aren’t imposing.
The other problem with trying to be all-inclusive is that it doesn’t fit with trying to be cultural leaders. If we’re truly doing what God calls us to do, we will be controversial, and that includes in our own church. Sometimes you know you’re doing the right thing because people are complaining. The more Jesus challenged people around him, the more the cultural establishment complained.
So while I want to be inclusive of everyone I can, I also want to temper that with an eye towards cultivating passion, zeal, reverence, and intimacy. In this sense, we Mooneys are well geared for this task, because we have a tendency to challenge the status quo.
I think we have to evaluate motivations. What is the motivation for moving towards modern music as the language of worship in a local church? If it’s about moving towards the things I mentioned above — passion, zeal, reverence, and intimacy — then I’m fully behind it. If it’s just about getting rid of those “boring” hymns, forget it. There are plenty of kids today who already find my style to be “boring”. What they need to see is the passion, the zeal, and the love within the community to back up what they see their parents and youth leaders sing about, to know that it’s authentic.