To start off, I agree that our worship services have gone downhill. We have shifted our attention from truly seeking to glorify God through our worship to meeting the desires of the people that we want to convince to attend our churches. Ultimately, we have marketed Christianity as widely as we can, spreading our product out very thin to hit as many people as possible. I would contend that what passes for worship music today is a largely superficial attempt to put people in the pews and feel better about ourselves. It is one of the ways that we attempt to show ourselves that use one of my favorite clichés, “God is working.” Worship leaders today are hired for their image, more than theology or skill. These “gainfully employed” worship leaders, which Justin spoke of in his last post, tend to fall into 3 camps:
1) Under-Qualified and Over-Qualified Traditionalists: These are the organists and choir directors: you know, the old-school guys and gals. They direct their choirs, buy their arrangements in the choir section of sheet music stores, and play the organ on Sundays. They tend to either be your grandma, who is the only one in town that can play the organ (unless you are in Holland, Michigan where all organists look over their shoulders out of fear that another organist is going to jump them and steal their organist positions), or someone with a degree from Eastman or the University of Michigan in Organ Performance or Liturgical Church Studies, in which case they should probably be playing in a European cathedral where their art can be fully experienced and appreciated.
2) Extremely Talented Composers… : …who don’t give a crap about the music or more importantly, the Gospel and the mission of the church. They merely write worship music to pay the bills so that they can create what they actually consider to be “Good Music” in their spare time outside of the church.
3) Dudes with Guitars: Yeah, that’s right, I haven’t seen a girl with a guitar leading worship. Get angry, ladies, you should! The job market for these guys is flourishing. Churches also love these guys because the middle-aged moms are crazy about their effeminate voices, which “comfort the heart and lift the soul to worship” (while the dads stand there thinking about the game). They play poppy, “modern” worship music which is exciting and cool to the “youngsters,” and the church has to pay them about half as much as they would an educated musician with a advanced degree. They know 4 chords and have a capo, which together allow them to play every Contemporary Christian Worship song out there. I am equally convinced that they all hide a bottle of JD in their guitar cases. (Yes, even the Baptists.) How else would they all successfully get the same contrived tenor-esque rasp that seems to plague every one of them like a crappy tattoo of your ex’s name? Don’t get me wrong, I love you guys, but could you please learn a few more chords and get off the sauce, except for the guy that did it first!
More or less, most worship leaders tend to fall into these three categories. Of course, there are some exceptions to this assertion, but most church musicians in America generally fall into these categories. Ultimately, through these models, we can give people exactly what they are COMFORTABLE with, music that sounds like the stuff that they hear on the soft-rock radio stations that they listen to while they work. Most people love their jobs, so why not have the same music in church? We also give people hyper-emotional reactions so that they know “God is working in their lives,” and that things are happy and SAFE. Or in some cases, we can give people the same music that they grew up with in their childhood, organs and hymns. They dwell in the traditions that they have always known to be the norm so that nothing changes and everything is COMFORTABLE and SAFE. Since when is Christianity a wimpy, effeminate, soft-rock-loving, childish, safe, emotional, weepy, only-chasing-safety type faith? Does this model follow the Bible? Does it even resemble the rest of our culture around us? It doesn’t even hint that we have actually read the Bible and understand the severity of our faith.
This brings me to my next point, and I’m not ripping on Justin at all here, I’m merely trying to point out an inconsistency in the Church’s thinking as a whole. Justin states:
“What I mean by that is that we have sacrificed content for style. Our music is good. It is popular. There is little difference between U2 and some of our more popular worship groups. That is no slam on U2, it is a compliment. The problem is that we have focused so hard on the style and attracting people to worship that we have abandoned that which is just outside our range of vision, God.”
This statement is completely subjective and merely based on taste and one’s view of pop culture. Many people love U2. However, they gained most of their popularity by marketing through record companies. For the longest time being the only option for some sort of theological basis in pop culture for Christians to attach to, solid song writing, and one really, really, really lucky rhythm guitarist. (They’re on my iPod, though.) “Good” is being used as a synonym for “cool,” basically to say, “It’s cool and I like this.” Again I’m not picking: half of the music I listen to I get from Justin. However, this is a statement that can only be made by someone who cannot perceive the entire spectrum of what music has to offer towards the Glory of God through worship. A severely educated musician is needed in this case. Sure anyone could do it, and high level of theological education can provided a rich understanding of worship, but it is not until that is combined with the equivalent understanding of music that in general, the full potential that we have for worship can be achieved.
I’m going to jump straight to the point. Shouldn’t we be writing the greatest, most transcendent, artistic, thoughtful, simple and complicated (insert constructive duality) art through worship for the Almighty God of the Universe? Or is He down with hearing “Sanctuary” for the 1,986,520,374th time? “Sanctuary” works functionally, but what about expressing some metaphor that speaks on multiple levels about the mysteries of our faith?
The problem begins with the fact that people, who are cannot grasp what a professional musician looks like, are the ones hiring musicians to create said worship music for our services. Furthermore, they go as far as telling them how to play said worship music. This is completely backwards. For example, when you hire Stan the Roofer to put a new roof on your house, you don’t tell him what to make your roof out of and how to put the roof on your house. He comes to your house and tells YOU what you need to do to put a solid, protective, leak-free, and in some cases hurricane proof, roof on your house. Professional church musicians should be hired for their expertise in shaping worship music artistically and in ways that represent the theology in the music. As Justin argued, good theology is paramount here. Professional church musicians should have a vast understanding and discerning heart for the Bible. Suffice it to say I would hold an elder and the worship leader/pastor to the same standard. Worship leaders should also know how to do specific things like knit the theology and the text together musically, understand and be involved in the social needs of the Church. They should be knowledgeable and able to use the liturgy, church calendar, and lectionary creatively or choose not to use it and know why they are doing so. The list could go on. When all of these qualities/tools are in place, the church should then be asking these professional worship leaders, “What does the church and specifically our church need?” Worship leaders should be hired so that we can ask them questions about our worship.
However, church leaders have been hiring the pop culture worship leaders under the guise of “Well if I don’t, then the people will leave my church.” This exposes a whole lot more then which I am not equipped or even in a position of authority to discuss. However this does expose one of the biggest hindrances and cultural perversions of Christianity. This false sense of American Autonomy has potentially damaged Christian worship in America, more than anything else. That is to say that anyone thinking that they can have God their way, worship their way, and politics their way, because this is America and God is American and America (metaphor for for “I”?) is right, is completely false and at the root of the problem, as Justin pointed out here. Basically we haven’t fenced or protected our churches, our traditions, and our theology well enough. We let it be affected by culture way too much and probably let people affect it who had no business affecting it at all.
Returning to the original discussion, capturing the depth of our faith through art, creativity, music and worship is not an easy task. It is not a task for guys with guitars, or Grandma’s organ. This is a task for the people who possess the vision and ability to create and shape art for this purpose. I can hear most of you thinking now, “Those people are so hard to come by.” Yes they are. There is no doubt about that. But where do we find these professionals that actually feel this calling? Where do we find doctors or aeronautical engineers?
First off, we need to thank ourselves for this. The church chose the burger-flipping guys with guitars over the master chef talented composers. Burgers are fast, they get people in and out. Who doesn’t like a burger? However, it takes work to appreciate and understand the depth of all of the flavors of an incredible filet mignon. I’ll tell you what, walk into a fast food joint of your choice and give every person in the restaurant a filet mignon. Then take a survey of those people asking if they would prefer to eat the filet mignon or the food that they ordered at the counter. Let me put it this way, would you ask a roofer to fix the golden gate bridge or an engineer? “But then they’ll feel left out if they don’t get it.” Have your worship leader teach a few classes, write a statement for your church website, or heaven forbid, a blog! The seeker movement has brought quite a few bodies to church, but it is also plagued by an uncanny lack of discernment. And if you can’t find a candidate, hire one that has a desire to pursue music, theology, and worship and send him or her to school! This is what the Church did through the ages. What happened? So now that I’ve thoroughly ticked you off, lets look to the Catholic Church to take us one step further with this roof metaphor.
The Vatican, that is to say the Catholic Church, hired Stan the Roofer to put this roof on a chapel that they were building. After that went up, they hired this guy named Michelangelo to paint a picture on the ceiling, consequently causing the ceiling to go down as one of the greatest artistic masterpieces in history. To put this in perspective, after reading some Steven Hawking, and barring any alien invasions, we see that Michelangelo created something on a ceiling by the grace of God, for the glory of God on this tiny galactic booger called Earth that reaches through all of time and space to give glory to the God who is, and was and will always be. That is to say that there is no other ceiling like that in the entire universe. Think about that for a while and I don’t think you’ll ever be able to sing “Lord We Lift Your Name On High,” the same way.
In conclusion, to have great theology without great music is no better than a black and white Gameboy packaged in a Wii box (I borrowed that one). Both things disappoint you.
If you don't roll your eyes at this, please check for a pulse!
This is not the biblical model anyway. Matthew 22:37, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.” This doesn’t mean that if we have our mind in the right place that the other two will follow. Good music or theology as their own entities are multi dimensional. That is it say that sacrificing good music detracts from us loving through the heart, soul, and mind not just one of them and to simplify things this way is dangerous. I once read a quote from a random Scottish pastor whose name escapes me that went something like: “With God, the end cannot not simply justify the means, but the means must also justify the end.” This is to say that elevating theology above music or vise versa creates a dichotomy that just does not exist in God’s eyes. To draw a line and say that one is more important than the other is a cop out and just plain lazy. God create both for his glory. Yes, at times we are limited by means and situation. But at some point, there comes a time to stand up and say mediocrity is not sufficient.
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