worship music
I admit it, when the whole "modern worship" thing really started taking form in the Christian music industry around '99 & '00, I was totally behind it. Delirious, SonicFlood, Matt Redman, Passion...They definetely had my support & excitement. I tried as hard as I could to get my old church's worship pastor to join the fray, & soon enough our church was singing the same Top 20 worship hits the rest of the country was singing.
6 years later, & I'm totally "worship music'd out." More & more, it just seems like noise to my ears. Especially after working in a Christian bookstore for a few years, I got sick of it. I got sick of the industry, the commercialism, the same song being redone by 20 different artists making their "rendition" of it. I can't stand the thought of taking something so simple, and making it so complicated. Sure there's a Bible verse about singing a "new song," but can we take that too far or misinterpret it? Was that verse really supposed to find its ultimate fufillment in the modern worship industry?
More & more, I'm finding a lot of respect for churches that aren't buying into the whole Top 20 worship hits thing. Churches need songs that reflect who they are, their values; songs that are birthed out of the things they experience together as a community. I talked to someone recently who went to a church that sang pretty much only their own songs. This person was disappointed this church wasn't singing the songs other churches were. I thought to myself "Excactly! Kudos to that church for not playing the game."
So in my recent worship music frustration, I've been finding much hope & refreshment in hymns. I think hymns have the power to take us out of our commercial-driven mentality and really connect us with the larger Body of Christ, past & present. As always, share your thoughts.
posted by Anonymous @ 5:28 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
ok well i can agree with you to an extent. my church does several songs writen by members of the church and i think that is a truly beautiful thing. but jesse, i think you're becoming a little too judgmental and maybe cynical. there are TONS of crappy worship songs where the focus is on the worshiper and not the One being worshipped. And there are TONS of songs that are just overdone. However, there are some very powerful and amazing songs that can be adapted into different styles and I don't see anything annoying or wrong with that. Chattanooga Vineyard does a lot of original songs, but also takes certain "top 20 worship songs" and adapts them to our style to fit our community. I don't see why that deserves an eye-roll. And I actually think it's sort of pretentious for a church to exclude wonderful songs just to make some sort of statement. Like they're just too good and too cool to sing certain songs just because other churches sing them. I find that action more annoying than several churches doing the same song different ways. I see what you're saying, but I don't completely agree.
traitor...
go to my xanga now. i came here
www.xanga.com/sergemann
you will like that site, i promise.
I've been e-mailing Robbie Seay back & forth a little bit. He's the worship pastor at Ecclesia in Houston. I hope it's cool with him, but here's what he said to me when I was venting some of my current frustrations:
"my two cents is that music and worship must be rooted and birthed within that community..
christianity is full of copycat churches that are hollow and stale..
i would encourage you to encourage your community along those lines..
be vulnerable in our times of music..be theological..be honest.."
Wow, I was hoping to finally get around to weighing in after a long drought from time to think and write, but it seems pointless to say much after that underground nugget from Robbie Seay. "Be vulnerable in our times of music..be theological..be honest.." I like it.
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