Worship Leaders – Music Can Get In The Way Of Worship
“A professional musician can miss reading the moment. And worse yet, a worship leader can fall into executing the songs instead of leading the worship.” - C.Leaders
He’s on the right track, but it’s interesting what’s missing from this piece: any effort to define what worship is biblically. The author is correct that “the heart” is key, but why and in what way and what does music have to do with that? When you get that straight it changes everything you do with music.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron, your link is behind your firewall. (feel free to delete this comment when fixed)
I’m still of the view that music in the church is many things, but it is not strictly speaking worship. Now I know the church has been using the term “worship” for music and any number of things for centuries, so tradition is against me here, but the main words for worship—shachah and proskuneo (Strong’s 7812 and 4352) —denote prostration and radical submission. Call me weird, but there are a limited number of things I can do musically while prostrated.
Hence I would suggest that perhaps a good starting point for what music ought to do would flow from the nature of its poetic and musical forms—it serves to impart God’s Word to God’s people in lyric form, and then offer His people an outlet for response. So we would infer that if collectively, the songs chosen for a church did not serve well to impart His Word to them in a meaningful way, or if they did not allow a response by the congregation, the song-leader would need to go back to the drawing board.
One might even infer (this is one of my strongest criticisms of modern music) that if the music were solely about imparting God’s Word and had no outlet for response, or if it were solely an outlet for response and had no didactic function, that the song-leader would need to go back to the drawing board for that one, too.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Regarding the article, first of all, a repeat of my first thoughts. It’s praise, it’s music time, it’s response time, but strictly speaking, it’s not worship.
Going further, to a degree what Aaron notes. There are some songs where four chords for a long period of time does help the message. There are others where the repetitiveness really hurts, and all in all, my objection to a lot of praise music is not that it’s overly musical, but is rather less musically played than it ought to be. The chief errors I see are with regards to lyrics:
- Lyrics that are true as far as they go, but really would be singable by “Air Supply” if you changed 5-10 words—and thus the half the congregation with a Y chromosome gets really uncomfortable. Examples: “Breathe” and “I need you”.
- An excess of emotive response songs with little or nothing theological to respond to. See songs listed above.
- Lyrics that don’t make use of the poetic devices that help memorization. I once went to a CCM band’s concert and realized afterwards I couldn’t remember a single thing they said. When I looked at the lyrics, it made sense—the meter was all over the place. Free verse is OK if you’re ee cummings, otherwise it’s pretty risky.
On the music side, the key issues are:
- Everything is played at about the same tempo with little heed to the subject matter—is it enthusiastic/conquering, contemplative, or….?
- Everything is played at about the same volume with little heed to the subject matter.
- Musicians are added, but not harmonies, counter-melodies and the like, as if adding more people playing the same thing makes it more musical.
- Instruments are often used effectively as a metronome—playing the same note 100 times in a row. You bought that $25000 baby grand to use it this way….why…?
- A general fear to let the drummers and bassists do what they’re supposed to do—lay down the cadence/beat and provide a “foundation” for the rest of the praise team.
All in all, there is a reality that some people can become detached from the audience, but as a rule, greater musicality improves the situation.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I’m probably commenting too much here, but a good way of summarizing my thoughts on music/praise is that at its root, all music is about communication. Truly skilled musicians understand “better than average” how to communicate, and the question is really whether those singing and playing are trying to communicate something that’s actually Biblical. And if the singers are theologically “on task”, then, their musical fidelity to the message will tend to be pretty good, too.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I agree with most of your multiple posts, Bert. I’ll add my own, so you won’t be guilty of hogging all the comments. My only question is your opening assertion that music is not worship. If I understand your definition of worship, which seems to be an overly literal understanding of the Greek word, then nothing we do in “Corporate Worship” would qualify as worship. (Unless you prostrate yourself in the floor during pubic prayer or preaching.)
Surely the prostration intended is of the heart, and includes singing along with prayer and the ministry of the Word.
G. N. Barkman
GN, I’m simply going with the major uses in both Hebrew and Greek. The typical church usage is almost to the point of “worship” meaning about everything that goes on inside church walls—and really a great deal outside—and the trouble with that is that the majority use means something pretty different. Part of it is because the same English (and I believe other languages) word is used to translate at least two different concepts, “prostration/radical submission” and “service”—“avodah” and “latreia” are sometimes translated this way.
So in a nutshell, my contention is that we ought to use “worship” to reflect its majority use, and there are any number of other words we can use to describe totally Biblical concepts like “service”, “praise,” and the like. Conflating all these simply tends to result in our neglecting the central meaning, IMO.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Praise is worship. It’s a form of verbalized prostration, the flip side of confession, which is also verbalized bowing before God.
Both can certainly be done to music, as the Psalms demonstrate.
I’d summarize like this: music is not worship but worship can certainly be done musically.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Discussion