Do You Have To Have A Praise Band to Worship?
Greg Gilbert has a very thought provoking article over at Church Matters on music in churches. He is not coming down on one form of worship or another but calling Christians, particularly 20 somethings, to re-examine what they are looking for in “worship”. He recalls his own experience of coming home from college, where there were big worship bands and teams, to a worship setting of 30 people and few instruments.
But then I went back to New Haven, Connecticut. The praise bands were gone, I didn’t have a group of people who’d gone with me and shared that experience, and the churches had a piano and thirty people singing Isaac Watts hymns. That forced me to learn how to stoke the fires of worship with truths and words, and not just with excellent music. I’ve learned how to be emotionally affected by the excellent words of hymns whether they’re played and sung “excellently” or not.
There’s a whole generation of young people out there now, though, who aren’t emotionally affected by words, whose fires are only stoked when those words are accompanied by great rhythms, skilled instrumentation, and a certain well-recognizable mood that typically accompanies Christian “praise-and-worship.” And the result is that you have young people church-hopping around town, and one of the main criteria of their shopping is “the worship,” by which more often than not they mean “the music.” You have young Christians feeling discouraged because—despite the fact that they sit under faithful preaching of the word Sunday after Sunday—they say they haven’t “felt close to God” in so long. Maybe there’s something important going on there. But there’s also a good chance, I’d argue, that they just haven’t had a good endorphin rush since the last conference they attended.
I am really afraid that we’ve managed to create a generation of anemic Christians who are spiritually dependent on excellent music. Their sense of spiritual well-being is based on feeling “close to God,” their feeling close to God is based on their “ability to worship,” and being able to worship depends on big crowds singing great music.
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February 9th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Andy,
I think that music is a really easy target (and sometimes it is an appropriate target - not just with 20 year olds, but with all ages). Younger generations who may not like hymns or whatnot, older generations who don’t like newer music and therefore don’t want to see any change happen in “their” church. But I think that younger generations while attracted to good music, are also wanting, perhaps more, songs that are solid in what they are saying. Songs that talk about who God is. And there are hymns and newer songs that simply don’t do that, and vice versa.
And while music can be one reason that people “shop for churches” there are numerous other reasons….do they have a softball team (or some other type of sports team that will “attract” me as a consumer), do they have a good facility, do they have a great children’s program, do they have “good, and nice” people who attend, do they have a lot of activities to be involved with, and on and on….
My point being, i think there was some good stuff in the article (and some stuff i didn’t agree with)…but i just think music is an easy target…and i think he misses, somewhat, what is happening with people and music…a lot of people have returned to or started going to more liturgical churches that don’t have all the “lights, smoke, loud music, semi-pro worship bands”.