Praise Problems
[Disclaimer: for anyone reading this from or after the AGM, this post was written before August inspired by events weeks ago.]
Do you ever wonder if God gets bored hearing the same songs over and over again?
Probably not, but think about this. The world is full of churches and Christians and everywhere you go it seems that they are all singing the same songs, sometimes without even bothering to translate them. Of course worship is so much more than the songs we sing, but song is a big part of worship. So, if God equips churches everywhere with every gift they need to accomplish their task, every church should have people gifted in worshiping God and leading others to express worship as well. Shouldn’t every church, or al least a whole lot more churches than are currently doing so, be coming up with their own forms of worship? Shouldn’t the creative expressions of church worship in the world be so much more varied?
One church that did so (and presumably does so) is the church where Matt Redman attends. Everyone knows (or ten years ago everyone heard) the story of how that church felt led to do away with all music for a period of weeks to rediscover what true worship was all about. Out of that experience Redman wrote the song “Heart of Worship.” It is a whole song about how worship is not about music. It was a beautiful story.
Or at least it was until they marketed the story and every church in the world began to sing this song about how worship is more than singing a song. And you still hear the song all over the world today (removed from its context usually.) There is a huge irony that is hard to escape every time you hear the chords sound out announcing the text: “When the music fades…”
We need less worship of the current top 40 on the worship charts and more churches exploring their own creative expressions.
Do you ever wonder if God gets bored hearing the same songs over and over again?
Probably not, but think about this. The world is full of churches and Christians and everywhere you go it seems that they are all singing the same songs, sometimes without even bothering to translate them. Of course worship is so much more than the songs we sing, but song is a big part of worship. So, if God equips churches everywhere with every gift they need to accomplish their task, every church should have people gifted in worshiping God and leading others to express worship as well. Shouldn’t every church, or al least a whole lot more churches than are currently doing so, be coming up with their own forms of worship? Shouldn’t the creative expressions of church worship in the world be so much more varied?
One church that did so (and presumably does so) is the church where Matt Redman attends. Everyone knows (or ten years ago everyone heard) the story of how that church felt led to do away with all music for a period of weeks to rediscover what true worship was all about. Out of that experience Redman wrote the song “Heart of Worship.” It is a whole song about how worship is not about music. It was a beautiful story.
Or at least it was until they marketed the story and every church in the world began to sing this song about how worship is more than singing a song. And you still hear the song all over the world today (removed from its context usually.) There is a huge irony that is hard to escape every time you hear the chords sound out announcing the text: “When the music fades…”
We need less worship of the current top 40 on the worship charts and more churches exploring their own creative expressions.
Good thoughts.
ReplyDelete