In Part 1 I discussed how dangerous it is for our worship to be uninspired and in Part 2 I talked about how often our worship music can be cheap and its impact on the gospel. In Part 3 I discussed the prevalence of the fear of man in our often safe worship music. In Part 4 I discussed the importance of being pureposefully and missionally original. For the conclusion of this series I’m going to discuss the danger of our worship being inauthentic.

5. Inauthentic

There are 2 primary ways our worship can be inauthentic, one way is how our worship presents or describes our object of worship, Jesus. Another way our worship can be inauthentic is in our engagement and life with Jesus in worship. Bad art will take some vague idea and attempt to represent it in the cheapest way possible to achieve an intended emotional response from viewers. Neither the artists engagement or representation of the object of art is authentic it’s just utilitarian. I’m going to use 2 definitions of authentic to illustrate this idea.

Authentic Jesus

• def. authentic: conforming to fact and therefor worthy of belief

If our worship is not conformed to truth, the person and work of Jesus, then what we are singing is not worthy of belief and shouldn’t be sung. Our worship can lead us and others astray from the gospel by either being generously vague or acutely false. And honestly there are great examples of both in popular CCM worship. John Owen wonderfully said,

“We must not allow ourselves to be satisfied with vague ideas of the love of Christ which present nothing of his glory to our minds.”

And I love how Bob Kauflin puts it,

“If most of our songs could be sung by Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus, it’s time to change our repertoire.” -Worship Matters

We have to be careful about crafting songs that are vague and presenting an inauthentic view of the very specific and clear demarcation of Christ and anything other than Christ. Our job as worship leaders is to point people to Christ, not an “elevated idea” or even an idea about Christ, but Christ himself. If you’ve read any previous posts in this series or any other posts on this blog really, you’ll know how I value creativity. I think there are many ways to creatively point people to Christ and imagery, poetry and the arts in general can be used in a way that present clearly, the authentic Jesus. So I’m not saying art = vague, both simplicity and creativity have the same potential to miss the mark, use them both with wisdom.

Not much needs to be said about acute false statements, descriptions, ideas of Christ in worship. They exist unfortunately, and they always will until Christ returns. This is typically what separates worship pastors and music leaders, entertainers and shepherds. A pastor seeks to lead the congregation to Jesus and remove every obstacle in that journey including bad lyrics, but a entertainer seeks bring something of themselves to the people in the context of church, but not Christ. Don’t be an entertainer.

Authentic Worshippers

• def. authentic: genuine; undisputed credibility; with authority

In other words, believe and live what you sing and sing what you believe and live. Paul urged the Colossian church to “walk(live) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work…” How careful we should be singing something we don’t believe or have no evidence or fruit of believing in our lives. Our religion is so transparent at times that we get used to operating in it without even seeing it.

Our worship should be saturated with humility and repentance when we start singing things we know we struggle to believe or live out. This is why I seldom make it out of a worship set without crying. Glorifying God for who he is in worship forces me to see the separation in sin, the short comings in my life, and moves my heart and affections more towards Christ. Being an authentic worshipper doesn’t mean having it all together it just means we are continually asking Christ to knit and hold us together in him. It means that not one word escapes our lips where the cost hasn’t been counted because we’ll have to give an account for every word, every word that we sung but didn’t mean.

I pray that all of us as worshippers would be authentic, that our hearts would be genuine in our praise, confession and words of adoration.

In Part 1 I discussed how dangerous it is for our worship to be uninspired and in Part 2 I talked about how often our worship music can be cheap and its impact on the gospel. In Part 3 I discussed the prevalence of the fear of man in our often safe worship music. For part 4 I’m going to discuss another aspect of worship that can turn it into bad hotel art — unoriginality.

4. Unoriginality

This is a delicate topic because in some ways our worship is intentionally unoriginal. We are singing the praises of an unchanging, everlasting God, who gave us the greatest revelation man will ever know 2000 years ago in the cross and chose to make his word known through scripture that should never be added to or subtracted from. So at some level we certainly shouldn’t be looking for anything new there, that content remains the same. But the methods of delivery continue to change and that must be purposefully and missionally original.

Let me define the phrase “purposefully and missionally original” as it relates to worship.

Someone who’s inspired and informed by the gospel through the Holy Spirit to reach a specific people with the message of Jesus in an effective way through music and the arts.

The art in my hotel room was copied all over the country or all over the world, no thought was given to the different contexts it might be displayed in and if there might be a more effective art piece in different areas. The thought being if it worked in Beverly Hills it must work in Omaha, or Denver, or Miami, or Puerto Rico. Seems silly right? The culture, the idols worshipped, language used in those areas is so different.

But how silly are we in the church when we say the same thing? If it works in Australia at Hillsong, it must work in Phoenix, or in Santa Barbara. We attempt to carbon copy the missional expression without doing any of the evaluation or prayer to see if that expression would be effective in our mission field.

Being purposefully and missionally original requires worship leaders to find how best to use music and the arts for the people in their mission field through prayer, study and practice, for the glory of Jesus Christ. All being attractionally unoriginal requires is a CCLI license and a few hours of band practice to cover the latest CCM hit.

I’m not saying that Hillsong or Tomlin won’t work in multiple churches, locations and cultures, I’m just saying don’t blindly assume they will. And then perhaps you can find an arrangement that better suits your church rather than just ripping the cd.

Let’s be purposefully and missionally original.

Earlier I posted a video of a new song from Jesus Culture called “Burning Ones.” I really dug the vibe of the song and thought the melody was really cool. This past week I started evaluating it to see if we’d do it in service and step 1 of evaluation was writing down the lyrics. Verse 1 was kind of innocuous.

Here inside your presence I’m taken by the wonder of You
Here inside your glory we give our lives wholly to You

Moved on to the pre-chorus which was a simple “Holy, Holy are You” which was good and all. But then I hit Verse 2…

Your love it burns inside our hearts are satisfied by You
Your love is our reward it’s why we ask for more of You

What?!?! God’s love is our reward? Let’s look at the definition of reward to make sure we are on the same page here:

reward: “a recompense for worthy acts or retribution for wrongdoing” or “fair return for good or bad behavior”

It seems entirely ridiculous to me we’d have to dive into this much for us not to see the foolishness in this line. This isn’t extra-biblical this is entirely contra-biblical. It violates the core of the gospel. I don’t like to rant, but folks this line is simply not truth, and I’m shocked and saddened that it would be sung. Here’s what the gospel says about our reward for our actions:

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So our just reward for our actions and fair return for our behavior is death, not God’s love. But the glory of the gospel is the cross, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. We received grace instead of what we deserved, death. Here’s how God’s love really works:

Romans 5:6-10 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

We did not and cannot earn God’s love, repeat, we did not and cannot earn God’s love. 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” We can keep plowing through scripture, there is no shortage because it’s the entire narrative of the gospel.

I don’t know Chris Quilala, I don’t know Kim Walker, but I believe they are Christians brothers and sisters who love Jesus and I don’t mean to bash them. In fact I bet you if I asked them, “do you think you earned God’s love or did he love you first, while you were a sinner?” That they’d answer, “no, I didn’t earn it.” Which is why I’m so puzzled that they’d sing just the opposite.

I’ve tried to think of any context that line works in and I can’t, I just can’t. Working in the second half of the line only confuses me more, “that’s why we ask for more of You.” I haven’t a clue what this line means. If anyone has an explanation by all means step in here in the comments and let me in on it, I truly feel like I’m missing something.

In Part 1 I discussed how dangerous it is for our worship to be uninspired and in Part 2 I talked about how often our worship music can be cheap and its impact on the gospel. For part 3 I’m going to discuss how safe our worship music can be.

3. Safe

The ugly art on my hotel room wall was meant to be as inoffensive, innocuous and unspectacular as possible. It’s vanilla, bland, no rough edges and probably shown to a panel of people making sure they see nothing that could possibly be misconstrued as inappropriate or offense. Hmm this is reminding me of about 90% of the Christian music I’ve heard, despite us writing for and singing about Jesus, the most offensive and divisive person in all of human history.

Music

Many would argue that our worship music should be safe, that the music should be as broadly appealing as possible. I understand the argument and even agree with the intention, but I don’t believe having a band play bland music accomplishes the desired goal. Safe, bland, plastic worship music may not offend your congregation but it certainly won’t captivate them either. I much more appreciate strong reaction to music either positive or negative, as opposed to apathy.

If we’re reaching diverse people in our community you can imagine how much diversity you have in music taste in your congregation. I’ve found trying to have a single band appeal to all those tastes is a lesson in futility. In my church context we hope to present multiple bands that each excel in their music style and don’t play safe. In that collection of bands hopefully we show that Jesus is glorified in through many different styles.

But whatever the style, if the fear of man (congregation’s response) is the motivation in your music rather than the gospel and the passion gifted to you by God, and safety and refuge are found in human approval rather than Jesus, well that’s an incredibly dangerous position to be in.

Lyrics

A quite similar situation is found in our worship lyrics. It’s almost like we want our congregations to be able to zone out and sing without even thinking about what they are singing. Why else would we have such a narrow context in worship and use so much stale language to communicate the glory of Jesus? When I listen to a lot of Christian music it sounds like the words were written during their lunch break at work. I don’t often get a sense of toil, struggle and meditation in worship songs on what should be sung and how best to deliver it lyrically. You can’t read the Psalms and not hear the struggle and toil in those words and stories.

One huge reason for this is the sense that many songwriters have that as long as it’s from the heart it’s good. Spill our guts and God is glorified. Can we engage our minds in the process? Can we worship with all our heart and all our mind? You can’t read the Psalms and not see David’s mind spinning around the majesty of God, the metaphors that bring it to light, the examples found on earth, the implications of it on our lives. God is so rich and when we take the safe, well traveled path lyrically I think we’ve disengaged from the wonder of God in either our hearts or minds, and sometimes both.

Example

Your congregation is really struggling to deal with the recent diagnosis of cancer among members of your congregation and leadership and your pastor asks you to write a song about it. The safe thing is to sing about the goodness of God in heaven, God is the great physician and will heal, that we should cast fear aside and worship in joy. All true, but is there even a greater truth to be sung here?

The dangerous thing to do would be to sing of the goodness of God in cancer, sing of God as our healer and whether we are healed in the flesh or if we die that he’s healed our spirit and Jesus has reconciled us to the Father and that we fear nothing but God himself and worship in joy, but also through our pain, disappointment, sickness, success, failure, through all of it because we are obsessed with his glory.

Conclusion

Worship leaders, remember you serve the church and it’s not about you, it’s about Jesus. Serving them doesn’t mean gaining their approval though. Serve them by glorifying Jesus by singing about all of who God is. Do the music God has gifted you to play, given you the authority to play and given you a passion to play. Push yourself creatively in your music and lyrics to find new ways to tell the story of the gospel and majesty of Christ. Some people may hate your music, does that bother you more than compromising the conviction in your spirit? Some people may love your music, does that give you more joy that the smile of the face of God? Stop fearing man more than God. Stop seeking the applause of man more than the delight of Christ.

Previously I discussed how our worship music can easily become uninspired or inspired by something other than the gospel and the person and work of Jesus. For part 2 I wanna focus on the cheapness of bad hotel art, how our worship music is very often cheap and how that impacts our presentation of the gospel. I will go through 3 reasons this happens, though there are plenty more and each reason below is probably worthy of its own post so hang with me.

2. Cheap

The value of the art hanging in the hotel is a direct product of what went into making it. What did it cost the creator of this art in time, effort and material? That value determined how much it sold for and to whom it was sold. What if each art piece was commissioned and an artist labored over each piece, meditated on what was required for the room, what would fit the context it would be displayed, what the audience needed to be presented with and how best to capture the beauty that was his inspiration? Well those art pieces would be much more valuable.

Worship leaders very often cheapen the gospel through our cheapened worship music and this happens due to a few reasons:

• We don’t invest prayer and labor in our songs as on overflow of inspiration for the glory of Jesus and edification of the body, but instead seek the fastest route to receive our earthly payment.

For some the earthly payment might be an immediate emotional response. If you’ve been in church any length of time it’s not hard to perceive what people respond to in worship at an emotional level. There’s nothing wrong with an emotional response because it should be there, but it’s cheap if that’s the depth of the response and engagement, purely emotional. This kind of worship is very much like the seed sown on rocky ground(Matthew 13:20-21), it’s received immediately with joy but has no root in our spirits and when met with trial, fades away. I find this to be the evil, ripened, low hanging fruit in front of most worship leaders, especially those who serve in a charismatic environment.

Our earthly payment could also be industry success and respect amongst our peers, creative goals accomplished, the praise of our audiences, the list goes on.

• We write music out of emotional desire and spiritual angst but never get around to presenting the gospel and the treasure…Jesus.

Our songs end up consisting entirely of supplication or even demands on what we want and what we feel. There’s not a problem with supplication and emotional expression as long as we don’t stop there, that should be prologue to the truth. We’ve presented the conflict but not the eternal truth in response and if we do that what’s the point? We’re just whining at the throne instead of worshiping and pointing people to Jesus.

If our worship songs do more to make the congregation empathize with humanity instead of see the splendor and majesty of Jesus than we’ve wasted our time and cheapened our worship.

• We present a limited view of the character of God to suit the mood we wish to create and maintain in the church and worship service.

If our idol is joy, then we write and sing songs all about the joy found in Christ. But never sing about the cost paid for our freedom, the wicked deceit in our hearts and sin we must repent of. There’s bright lights, plenty of dancing and shouting, but never bowing, weeping and mourning.

Conversely we could idolize earthly dignity and cultural relevance and never sing for joy in the midst of trial and tribulation. Those in depression could walk in and engage in worship feeling comfortable in our somber presentation of the cross but never get confronted with the joy and victory in the resurrection.

In order for us not to cheapen our presentation of the gospel we can’t ignore aspects of God’s character just because it makes us or our congregation’s uncomfortable. If we do we’ve carved our own image of God and just in case you haven’t read the left hand side of scripture, it never ends up good for those that do that.

I pray that we labor over our worship songs for the glory of Jesus, that we’d present the gospel and our treasure Jesus in every song we sing, and that we wouldn’t carve our own image of God to worship but worship Him for all that He is.

As I was sitting in my hotel room in Boulder CO this week I noticed the just awful art hanging on the walls. It got me thinking why on earth would the hotel put this kind of art up knowing full well how appalling it is? As I thought about it, I realized the reasons were exactly the same reasons why much of worship music can so easily become “bad art.” I want to dive into those reasons and like any average blogger I’ve divided those reasons up into 5 separate posts. First way worship music can become like bad hotel art…

1. Uninspired

The art in this hotel came from no deep well of desire or conviction, no sense of calling, honor or worship to anything great. It’s just something to get the job done efficiently and fill wall space.

As worship leaders very often in our own song writing or leadership we operate not from an overflow of the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts, but from a desert and dependence on our flesh and we end up filling space just the same. We fill that space in our hearts with idols and we fill space in worship sets with things that satisfy the flesh. We can end up doing nothing out of a holy spirit inspired conviction, thirst and desire to see Jesus glorified, but more to see that the obligation is met and that people are satisfied.

When leading worship becomes an obligation instead of an honor, we’ve likely either forgotten what Jesus has done or we hold the ultimate prideful, sin infested position that what he’s done is not enough to warrant anything better from us. Romans 12:1

“Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.”

Maybe we’ve lost view of God’s mercy, maybe God’s grace is no longer sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9) and something else is now inspiring us and motivating us. Idolatrous inspiration has a lot of deadly fruit, the least of which being bad art. If the gospel isn’t motivating and inspiring us, then our works are useless, they’re death to ourselves and at the least, quite harmful to others.

Inspiration and motivation is a heart issue, don’t fill space with idols, let Jesus ruin you and the gospel inspire and motivate all you do.

One thing I love about Matt Redman is his passion for truth, for the gospel and for worship to be Christ centered. In this brief interview clip Matt discusses the over use of romantic imagery in worship songs and how that may negatively impact men in our church. I believe that to be true and to that point I remember attending one popular conference where at the end they played some worship song as people held hands and skipped down the aisle singing “we’re getting married”, an illusion to Jesus being the church’s bridegroom of course. It was one of the most uncomfortable worship moments of my life.

What are your thoughts on what Matt has to say here?

I mean it…literally. I know playing songs your congregation doesn’t want to hear sounds like a horrible idea and flies in the face of many years of your contemporary worship training, but I don’t know when our job became more about pleasing man instead of Jesus. Now before you get all huffy, let me explain.

First, I don’t mean purposefully playing songs that your congregation doesn’t like stylistically. Although if people only worship Jesus when they hear a Chris Tomlin song then I’d say you have really big worship and idolatry issues to tackle and then maybe purposefully *not* playing Chris Tomlin is a good idea.

Secondly, I don’t think being a contrarian is a sign of leadership maturity. I’m not advocating simply doing the opposite of what other churches are doing, or constantly trying to throw off your congregation in worship simply because seeing them squirm makes you feel like you’re really doing God’s will.

Here’s what I am saying. As worshippers we are constantly battling idols taking the place of Jesus. Idols we’ve torn down will take new shape and present themselves as something new and more worthy and acceptable of worship. If anything takes our worship but Jesus it is idolatry, sin. Colossians 1:18 “And he[Jesus] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Our congregations worship a lot of things over Christ and we have to expose idols in our worship, tear them down and place Jesus above them as our focus of worship.

Probably not too many of you have any problems with the above paragraph, but here’s where it gets messy…

For the families that worship their own comfort, rest and individualism by showing up 30 minutes late do you think they want to sing about how there is no rest outside of Christ, that even in our sleep we toil, or that they’ve forsaken the gathering because they worship their individuality and comfort? Show them by singing that we only enjoy peace and rest in Christ because of the bloody, violent, death of Christ on the cross and that now they’ve been saved to community, the body of Christ, to sacrifice, serve and worship together.

For the college kids that show up right on time because they love the music, but spent last night partying hard, indulging in their sinful passions, do you think they want to sing about how they are slaves to sin, deserving of death and that unless they get a new heart in Christ their posturing in worship, the jumping, the singing, the Hillsong “woa-oh” chants are worthless clatter. That they worship themselves and can’t atone for their sins by singing loudly. Show them by singing that Jesus is their propitiation, that they are dead in their sins, but that there is life in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That if they truly encountered Christ they’ve be given a new heart, and that they’d no longer desire to live a life of sin.

For the religious church couple that just walked in dignified, that has no reason to get uncomfortable because they were “saved” at a youth camp at age 10 and baptized in the pool so their salvation is secure. Show them by singing the psalms that our hearts cry out, our soul thirsts for Jesus, that we fall at the feet of Jesus and cry “Hosanna”, and that if they don’t, don’t they know even the rocks, even the pews they comfortably sit in, would cry out for Jesus. That their dispassionate hearts show they worship their dignity, which all through scripture is shown to be folly.

Worship leaders, don’t make yourself a petty entertainer. Don’t seek to satisfy your congregation’s idols. Lead your congregation to worship the real Jesus, show them who Jesus is, what he has done and if they get that, they’ll see themselves for who they are, repent and become new creations in Christ. Sing the songs their flesh doesn’t want to hear, sing the songs that wreak havoc in their hearts. Our worship should be a dance of repentance, praise and honor. Worship leaders, seek to have Jesus preeminent in all things, all things.

What songs are you playing now that challenge the congregation and confront their idols? Do you even think about that when choosing songs?