The worship of worship

What…you may ask? I’ll explain.

When I was perusing the SGN message board this morning, I came across a topic about where the old hymns have gone in the church. Apparently, it was brought up over a concern that many have about the phenomenon of contemporary choruses sung in worship at the expense of songs from the hymnals that many of us have been accustomed to singing in church for many years. Predictably, the dispute falls across age and taste lines.

One of my favorite posters there(and a reader of this blog), a Georgia pastor who posts under the name RevTabasco(I identify him by name because I want him to get credit where it is due)had a striking observation about this question, which I will share below…

I see two particular problems with the “worship wars:” Uno - we have made worship about US. It is about what we like and what we prefer, not about Jesus.

Dos - we have started to worship worship. Rather than it being a tool for us to relate to and connect to God, we have begun to make it and the experience of it the end in itself. Worship can and should take place in a variety of places and in a plethora of ways; and at times it may not include music at all.

Right on, Rev! In Fresno in fact, a couple of large churches advertise on billboards in town that they are for people who think church is too “boring and outdated”. It’s the church of today for the mindset of today. Is this a good thing? I think it’s not necessarily a bad thing out of hand…certainly the church must be a shepherd of sorts for the flock…and reaching people and speaking directly to them is certainly a part of that. And in a pluralistic culture such as ours that recognizes that people are not all the same, certainly our churches ought to be mindful of that.

But the good Rev. is especially spot on when he essentially says that a Christian church should be focused on Christ first and foremost…that is, if the word “Christian” is not simply a marketing ruse to bring people into it.

So, then, the priorities in structuring worship ought to center on what glorifies Jesus the most…not necessarily our personal tastes, often the product more of our social conditioning more than a consideration of what would please our Lord most. When it comes to music then, songs for it should be chosen on the basis of how they inspire parishioners to worship, not whether the lyrics are in a book or on the wall of the church.

And their age? I don’t think Jesus cares a whiff about that…if our songs please Him, whether they were written in 1562, 1962, or 2002 shouldn’t matter one bit!

Same with style…that, after all, is probably the most flexible aspect of our music.

And what about music anyway? Granted, it is a part of our worship that I feel is indispensable…but I think God would rather we praise him in a couple of mere words or thoughts than in whole songs that don’t even recognize His soverignty and power.

Kudos to you, Rev….for putting the emphasis in our life and worship where it belongs…on Jesus Christ. Nothing else should matter…regardless of the issue involved!

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