Fernando Gros

The Power To Do Something About Contemporary Worship

The past couple of weeks, I’ve been think­ing a lot about wor­ship and how we do it in church. In part that’s a result of church shop­ping, but to some extent, it’s a response to part of an inter­view on John Smulo‚Äôs blog (with Aus­tralian writer Mike Frost).

Q: When I was a stu­dent, and later worked with you at the Centre for Evan­gel­ism and Global Mis­sion at Morling Col­lege, I couldn‚Äôt help but noti­cing every now and then that you didn‚Äôt seem overly enthu­si­astic with cor­por­ate singing. You‚Äôve also writ­ten about your dis­taste for ‚ÄúJesus is my boy­friend‚Äù wor­ship songs. Can Chris­tian music be redeemed through con­tex­tual forms of music and mean­ing­ful lyrics?

A: I really hope so! But I‚Äôm not a musi­cian, so I write about this stuff as a dis­em­powered critic. I have no abil­ity to change it myself because I can‚Äôt write music or play an instru­ment. But I‚Äôm get­ting tired of singing love songs to Jesus-my-boyfriend. And frankly I feel silly when I have to sing songs so sen­ti­mental and cloy­ing they could have been writ­ten for a 1990s boy band…

…I sorely wish Chris­tian musi­cians would write songs that help to sus­tain us as exiles, as for­eign­ers in a for­bid­ding coun­try. We need songs that strengthen our resolve and inspire us to act. Not silly loves songs to Jesus.

My point is not to call out either guy here. John has an excel­lent blog and is doing real min­istry, Mike was a pos­it­ive influ­ence on me in the early stages of my min­istry (London friends, yes, this is the guy I used to talk about!).

But there is some­thing in those com­ments that does not sit well with me, some­thing that is sys­tem­at­ic­ally wrong in the way many of us have approached the prob­lems of con­tem­por­ary wor­ship (of which, yes, there are many) and it has to do with the way power was framed in that statement.

…I write about this stuff as a dis­em­powered critic. I have no abil­ity to change it myself because I can‚Äôt write music or play an instru­ment. But I‚Äôm get­ting tired of…

Anyone who lec­tures in a col­lege, anyone who trains min­is­ters, anyone who has a role of lead­er­ship in a church is empowered to do some­thing about the state of con­tem­por­ary wor­ship. It is too easy to sit back and hope someone else will do some­thing about it. This is some­thing all of us who have critis­ised con­tem­por­ary wor­ship are guilty of (myself included), some­thing we all need to address.

My first active min­istry role was play­ing guitar in a sunday even­ing wor­ship band at a large and lively evan­gel­ical baptist church. Over the course of the next decade I played a lot of wor­ship music, in quite a few churches and wound up going to theo­lo­gical col­lege. During that decade I wit­nessed a vir­tual down­pour of scorn dumped upon con­tem­por­ary wor­ship music (and I did my share of dump­ing as well). Without doubt, a fair slice of con­tem­por­ary wor­ship music is risable.

But, there was always a famil­iar refrain — ‚Äúmusi­cians need to write better songs,‚Äù “they need to work harder to give us better (more theo­lo­gical, or whatever) lyrics.‚Äù

The pat­tern of the dis­course was clear — “they,” not “we.”

But “we” are the church and there seems to be a massive dis­con­nect between the amount of debate and pas­sion we have about bad wor­ship music gen­er­ated and the amount of resources and encour­age­ment we throw at the prob­lem. I saw this to be true at both a local church level and at a denom­in­a­tional level.

I recall sit­ting in the study of a well respec­ted (by me as well) senior min­ster hear­ing him add to the down­pour. He was saying we needed people trained in both min­istry and music — a very good point. I paused, thought about the high marks I was mint­ing in theo­logy and my exper­i­ence as a guitar teacher and musi­cian and said, ‚Äúwell I have both, more or less.‚Äù This guy knew me quite well and his response was — he laughed.

In my early years in min­istry I was act­ively dis­cour­aged from put­ting to much con­tent out in the public sphere ‚Äúin case someone uses it against you.‚Äù That went for web pages, news­let­ters and by exten­sion, wor­ship lyrics. I remem­ber sit­ting in chapel hear­ing a member of fac­ulty ridicule lyrics writ­ten by a former stu­dent. Could a badly chosen meta­phor limit a young minister‚Äôs stand­ing in the com­munity? Maybe not, but why take the risk?

Is it no co-incidence that many of our con­tem­por­ary wor­ship songs emerge from the wings of the church where theo­logy is less pre­cise and spoken dis­course less scru­tin­ised and pol­ished. Those same churches tend to legit­im­ise cre­at­ive min­istry as a valid and not sec­ond­ary option and create space for those min­is­tries to flour­ish. This sends out a clear mes­sage to musi­cians and writers and those churches reap the har­vest of lots of new, fresh material.

If we want better and richer wor­ship mater­ial in our churches, then the first step is to look at the impli­cit and expli­cit mes­sages we send to our musi­cians. We need to think about the spaces we create for them to present new (and maybe uncon­ven­tional or con­tro­ver­sial) work and the oppor­tun­it­ies we give them to be sup­por­ted both fin­an­cially and spiritually.

Next week, I‚Äôll look a little fur­ther into how we can sup­port and encour­age the musi­cians in our churches and offer up some per­sonal examples from the journey.

Tech­nor­ati Tags: Ministry

This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 9:42 am. It is filed under Daily Life, Music and Music Technology, Theology and Culture, Worship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.