Jesse A. Schroeder

Tweet
Thinking a lot about so-called "worship" songs today - my students in our "chapel band" at school decided they wanted to bring back the 90's and play some of what I call "cross over" or "quai-Christian" songs. So tomorrow we'll be doing "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon, "Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse, and "Everywhere" by Michelle Branch. Now, other than the fact that these songs are straight out of my high school years (as disturbing as that is), the songs have really got me thinking about worship and music in church settings - admittedly the first time these songs have ever got me thinking before.

So, I think that my years at Lee conditioned me to think of "worship" songs primarily as song that direct praise to God, and more generally that bring the worshipper (I) into connection with God (Thou). The point of worship is an upwards relationship, seeing God face-to-face, encountering him as he is and as I am, in honesty and vulnerability. I think that Matt Redman's "Facedown" album would be one of the best worship albums in that sense. He sings, "Worship starts with seeing You" and I think that is true in so many ways. We sing to God, we praise God, we bless God, we encounter God and we worship him.

But what about other songs that come from the heart as accurate and true representation of our spiritual life, or perhaps even our life as a whole. What if we aren't necessarily singing to God, but are singing about God? Is that worship?

My hunch is that the contemporary Protestant circles would decline to sing such songs, and perhaps that is why the more theologically laden hymns have largely disappeared from Protestant hymnals. Instead we have "praise choruses" that are designed to be a joined expression of singing praise to God.

But the old hymns used to be sung for instruction as much as anything. Lyrics and tunes were easier to learn and remember than biblical Latin, so Luther used bar tunes. Contemporary Christian music thinks it is doing the same thing when we use the six-string and the tom-toms to "Sing, Sing, Sing" or to "Lift his name on high" - which is great to do, for sure. But what if this isn't a real reflection of our spiritual life?

I love rock songs, like Goo Goo Dolls "Let Love In" or lately, "the Fray" - I used to really hate to read in Christian meaning to so-called secular songs. But one of the things that I reflect on a lot in Emergent is that the divide between the sacred and the secular is more a creation of my own mind and sub-division of my life, rather than the reality of God's presence in the world. Therefore, it is fully possible - and perhaps I should even expect it to be a common and frequent occurance - to encounter God in "secular" (or not-intentionally-written-for-church) songs. Just like we encounter truth (Truth? God?) in movies, in nature, in the faces of people we pass on the street.

And so if singing lyrics like "He is everything you want; he is everything you need" is a heart-felt, true spiritual expression, is that worship? Can our understanding of what "counts" for worship be a lot broader than our current defintions? If all creation is singing to God, does that include the top 10 pop hits?