Please Do Not Reimagine Worship

"Recently I observed an advertisement for a bank and it was a commercial that talked about how their new design was “banking reimagined.” It was not the typical banking atmosphere. It was complete with a coffee shop, modern seating, and appeared to be more of a lounge than a bank. It is very common within evangelical circles to hear people talking about how they have reimagined church or reimagined worship. This typically means they have redesigned it for a modern audience with a fresh new look or purpose. It would do us well to remember that God doesn’t need our imagination to repackage worship. He has given us everything we need in the Scriptures in order to detail they way in which God should be approached in worship.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (William Temple) in the 1440s described the purpose and functionality of worship. He said, “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” In other words, while we are impacted, changed, and beneficiaries as a result of worship—we must view worship as primarily centered upon God.

The primary audience for our worship is God himself. It’s not the congregation, because the congregation is called by God to engage as participants in worship. It’s not the seeker who is coming looking for God, for that person doesn’t truly exist. The true seeker is God himself. Therefore, in our weekly worship as a gathered church—our worship is offered up to God since he alone is the primary audience. Therefore, that means that we must take our worship of God seriously.

Corporate Worship in the Youtube Era: A Brief Evaluation

"As a minister of music at a local church it's been interesting (and largely edifying) to watch the rise of the YouTube hymn/worship song culture. There’s so much to be thankful for, as we live in a time of many new songs that are theologically solid and beautifully written. It’s easy to fill an afternoon-long playlist with solid, Christ-exalting new songs. Full stop.

But I suspect that through these music videos of congregational singing, we are perpetuating the idea that physical expression while singing is necessary. I think younger believers who watch these videos, edifying as the songs may be, are establishing "visual emotionalism" as normative, and something they must work up in themselves in order for their worship to be "authentic."

Physical expression norms have changed over the past twenty years, too. It used to be both hands in the air, but this demonstrative posture seems to be slowly replaced with a more introspective one: eyes closed, head tilted slightly back or to one side, maybe a little swaying back and forth.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with such a posture, if it is coming from a heart filled with God’s Word and overflowing with gospel thankfulness. I just fear that we are trading one set of cultural norms for another, and in the process, unwittingly implying that this is what believers "ought" to do.

How Contemporary Worship Music Is Shaping Us—for Better or Worse

I am grateful for the faithful, biblical leadership that Brad S provides as he and our gifted musicians/singers help God's people worship the Lord with songs/hymns of praise.  As one travels around the world and worships you quickly realize that timeless biblical principles govern our corporate worship gatherings (Heb. 10:24-25; Col. 3:16).  

Psalm 150 reminds us that God can be and should be praised with all different kinds of instruments/sounds.  If you doubt this, you really should sign up for the next short missions trip your church takes to India, Africa, or Brazil.  

With that said, the following article is well worth your time.  It is an article that will no doubt lead to much reflection and prayer.  It considers some of the positive and negative ways the contemporary worship music culture has influenced many local church ministries.  It is not a legalistic diatribe against a particular "style" of music.  Instead it is a thorough evaluation of how contemporary worship music is shaping us- for better or worse.  May we do all that we can to worship and serve the Lord "in spirit and in truth."

"It was roughly 50 years ago that young people started bringing their guitars to church. Converts from the hippie culture, known as Jesus People, strummed a chord that would echo around the world. Modern worship was born.

In the ensuing decades, the phenomenon known as “praise and worship music” or “contemporary worship music” has seen its share of developments. By no means a monolithic movement, it has nevertheless coalesced into a highly recognizable sound and ethos, as demonstrated by the numerous parodies that poke fun at its most predictable features. The dust has settled after the so-called “worship wars” of the 1980s and ’90s, and it appears that contemporary worship has emerged victorious in many spheres of evangelical life.

Now that contemporary worship music has become not only a major feature of evangelical identity in North America but also a multimillion-dollar industry, it’s worth asking an often neglected question: How does contemporary worship music shape us?

Worship Music as Sociological Phenomenon

Monique Ingalls, assistant professor of music at Baylor University, tackles this question in her book, Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community. Focusing on the decade from 2007 to 2017, she examines modern praise through sociological lenses. Ingalls analyzes five gatherings in which this type of singing plays a prominent role: worship concerts (ch. 1), student conferences (ch. 2), one local congregation in Nashville, Tennessee (ch. 3), public praise parades (ch. 4), and the virtual “community” of online “worship-video” creators and consumers (ch. 5).

Though these social gatherings differ from one another in many respects, one thing unites them: the centrality of contemporary worship music. “For evangelicals, the use of contemporary worship music immediately marks an activity as ‘worship’” (22). Therefore, Ingalls reasons, the act of engaging in modern worship singing produces a sort of “congregation” out of gatherings not traditionally thought of as such. This has deep, often unnoticed, effects on how Christians understand worship and the church.

The main value of Singing the Congregation is its thorough description of the world that contemporary worship music has created.  Ingalls’s book is a work of musicology. Each chapter is full of anthropologist-style “field notes” and insights culled from interviews with worshipers and music ministers alike. As such, the main value of Singing the Congregation is its thorough description of the world that contemporary worship music has created. For that reason, even if musicology is a new field for you, I recommend this book to pastors, worship leaders, and anyone else with an interest in the modern worship movement—fans and critics alike.

To be sure, readers will need to look elsewhere for sustained analysis of the lyrical themes found in modern praise songs. Ingalls’s focus is on worship music as sociological phenomenon, so there is little here in the way of theological interaction with worship lyrics. Still, Ingalls’s in-depth account of how contemporary worship shapes evangelical life proves the axiom that “the medium is the message.” In other words, contemporary worship music not only reflects evangelical values and convictions about how to engage with God, it also profoundly influences those values and convictions.

For me, as a church elder, song leader, and hymn writer who “grew up” musically in a variety of modern worship settings, Ingalls’s book provoked me to reflect on the unintended consequences of contemporary worship music. Rather than proceed with a traditional book review, it may be more useful to my readers to share some ways in which Ingalls’s work has prompted my own thinking.

So here are four areas of reflection, which I invite you to consider with me.