I know that I am one with strong views on the subject of worship music and my views are not the same as some that I work with. I ran across this article in Relevant Magazine online that speaks to the subject and read it with great interest. I agreed with much of what was said and disagreed with other parts. I have major concerns about worship music, particularly what we are doing with youth. Why? Because Pete Ward convinced me years ago that what we do in the youth group today is what we will do in the church tomorrow. Well, not literally but you probably know what I mean. It is the old axiom that “what we win people with, we win them to”. So a few thoughts on worship music and why I think them…
Several years ago at a YS convention, they were honoring a guy who had poured his life into his youth group and they showed a video clip of him leading the group. While most people were focused on the emotional aspect of them honoring this guy in front of 2500 peers, I was stunned by what I saw. His youth group consisted of at most 20 people (with leaders) and five or six of them (youth pastor in the middle of this picture) were on a stage complete with a sound system, microphones, amplified guitars, etc leading the remaining dozen or so members of the youth group in praise music. Why did that stun me? Simply because I was watching this little group experiencing worship as a rock concert and the youth pastor as the rock star. The latter was less of an issue for me as the former. My gut said that no group of that size needs a stage and PA to worship God. In fact I struggle with any group of less than 100 doing worship in this way. My reaction then caused me to pause and think about what I was feeling and why. Had I become an old man or just irrelevant to “what the youth want”? Probably not. My own taste in music is incredibly diverse and not typical to people my age. I don’t listen to oldies or classic rock much at all. I love concerts and I love finding new and upcoming artists and sounds. I just don’t feel that worship should be a rock concert.
A few of the most profound worship experiences I have had were totally outside the musical realm that I normally listen to. A few times it was electronic “chill” or dance music led by a DJ. One time it was obscure ancient hymns rewritten for guitar. Another was done with gregorian chants. There seems to be something about stepping outside my normal music taste that I guess catches me off guard enough to just let go and have a profound musical worship experience. A few other worship experiences I have been deeply moved by did not contain any music at all. I value that at times.
It seems too easy to perpetuate the idea that music is the pinnacle of worship. I don’t find that to be true in scripture. Yes, there are lots of references to singing or praising God with song but God seems to be very concerned with how we worship Him and the New Testament examples of what the church was up to places the apostles teaching and prayer as the major focus of worship. We read throughout the New Testament the exhortation that leaders must proclaim the gospel and teach the scriptures and that seems to be the prime task of leadership. So, when we run youth groups and tell the students “now we are going to have a time of worship” (a phrase that irritates me to no end for semantic reasons) and we launch into singing, we do nothing less than perpetuate the error. In Anglicanism, and other liturgical traditions, we have far more to offer than simply music for worship. While I don’t want us to raise a generation who cannot worship apart from liturgy (something I encounter in some churches around here), we must not forget all that we have at our disposal for teaching students how to worship.
Recently at a lunch with Rob Rienow speaking, I was excited to hear him say that we who believe that the Bible is sufficient often don’t look to it to tell us how to do ministry. We believe it to be sufficient for leading us to Jesus and growing us in our faith, but we don’t act like it is sufficient to show us the way that ministry should be done. It raises the question… are we looking to scripture to inform us as to how we worship and then teaching students to worship in that way? It’s not an easy task because we end up with a lot of work interpreting the Old Testament teaching on worship and applying it to today. But if we did the work, what would worship look like in the context of youth group?
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