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We started a poll a couple months back asking, “In general, how should worship music relate to culture?” Here are the results, which show % of total voters, not votes, since you could choose more than one answer. (That’s why it adds up to more than 100%)

• 34% – Counter-cultural in some ways
• 29% – Uni-cultural in some ways
• 16% – Counter-cultural in every way
• 12% – Subcultural in some ways
• 9% – Uni-cultural in every way

I agree complete with the top 2 choices, in some ways our worship music has to be counter-cultural and in some ways should be uni-cultural. The subcultural choice is difficult and perhaps many voted without reading the kick-off post which defined subcultural as being “unconcerned with the dominant culture it finds itself in.” I’m going to give those voters the benefit of the doubt, but I think most of the church that defines itself as having a “contemporary worship service” fits into this bucket.

What frightens me is that almost 16% of people who voted think that our worship music should be counter-cultural in every way. I’ll explore what that really means and why I think that’s a bad perspective. When we say “every way” here’s what that means to me:

• Spiritually – spirit residing in the musicians, spirit communicated and proclaimed in songs, doctrine believed and communicated and spirit in the congregation
• Stylistically – what our worship music sounds like, instruments used, production, songwriting, etc…
• Usage – The how, when and why music is played and sung.

Spiritually we must be counter-cultural

Our hearts our regenerated and now desiring to see the name of Jesus glorified. Our music should be born of that spirit, no longer seeking to glorify ourselves or our sin. What we sing in our sings should be counter-cultural, the message of the cross is foolishness in the world. And lastly the congregation, those listening and joining in song should be counter-cultural from crowds in the world. Those seeking comfort, peace, excitement, joy, transformation of some kind in the music and performance. Our worship better not be that kind of idolatry, we better be counter-cultural and using music as a unifying tool and biblical expression of our worship of Jesus, not as any mediatory avenue.

Stylistically uni-cultural with innovation

I’m a firm believer in contextualization in musical style. There is no point in human history that reached a perfected musical form that is moral and the rest now immoral. Obviously 16% of the people on this site disagreed with me, they view that anything the secular world uses in music stylistically is bad and should be rejected. I would argue that a style or musical instrument or tool carries no intrinsic morality, but that it is amoral and could be used for God or idols.

Contextualizing our style and being uni-cultural with innovation means we assess our culture, see what musical style is grabbing the worship of the lost and redeem that style, innovate and point people to Christ in it. The result is a church that has some relevance to it’s community and culture but is distinctly counter cultural in spirit and message. Why should our worship music style be a barrier to entry in our culture?

The innovation aspect is important here because we don’t want to just copy secular music. One aspect of secular culture that the church should just receive is innovation. Remaining relevant while innovating is no simple task, but there’s an attitude of progression and experimentation that needs to be present in our music. Find boundaries and press them creatively. Acoustic guitars and piano are not the only means to unify a body of Christ, you can be musically innovative and not leave behind your congregation.

Usage should be counter-cultural

The lost, and to be honest a lot of the church as well, use music in many idolatrous ways. Here are a few:

• Comfort – We let songs minister to us to make us feel better, music becomes our priest instead of Jesus.
• Motivation and Inspiration – Not only do we use music to motivate and inspire us but then often times the object of our motivation and inspiration is music in itself, meaning music has become not just the means to an end, but the means and the end.
• Healing – Not just Marvin’s sexual healing, but we use music to heal our hearts, minds and bodies.
• Confession – Here again music can become not just the mode of confession but the object that receives our confession.

I’m going to go deeper into the points above on a follow up post, so I will explain and give examples of all those soon. Many churches are sub-cultural in their usage by ignoring all of these points which leads to ignorance and inability to address the music culture. In many cases the church ends up in the same sin the world is with our worship music.

The church should be counter-cultural so we address the points and make sure we let God redeem this, change and mold our hearts so that Jesus is our only comforter, motivator and inspiration. Jesus is our healer and hearer of our confession and profession.

If you voted and would like to talk more about your vote or if you disagree with me, please leave a comment and let’s hammer this out.

I guess there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just really cheesy. My friends and I had joked about a christian version and we should have known it was happen sooner or later. Rocking to Chris Tomlin just isn’t going to have the same feeling as Clapton, SRV or AC/DC. Reports that ‘Guitar Praise’ comes with an acoustic pretend guitar instead of the usual axe, 5 tambourines and streamers are denied by the company. Although apparently there is a prophetic mode for the game where whatever you play, no matter how awful, is rewarded with points in heaven. There’s also rumored to be a “Inappropriate conversion of secular song to worship” mode, aka Rick Pino mode, where you take songs in Guitar Hero and attempt to redeem them by cleverly changing a couple words.

No word on what songs will be on the game. Game goes on sale next month at GuitarPraise.com. Would any of you consider getting this? I won’t make fun of you, at least not publicly…..well maybe I will.

The Catholic church in Rome are going to meet the lost where they are this summer, and that’s at the beach. They have a 98ft long blow up church that will be staffed with priests ready to take confession. One of the priests who spearheaded the operation said,

“The concept of a beach-convent is something that is appreciated by vacationers and the nuns themselves,” priest Antonio Rungi, who helped spearheaded the initiative, told Italian news agency ANSA.

My complaint on this is an obvious mis-understanding of what the church is. Guys, leave your building and goto the beach, this isn’t reaching out to the lost. It’s trying to make it more convenient for them to reach out to you, the church. Stop hiding in your inflatable building, take off the robes and put on some swim trunks, pop that building and love some people.

What’s Next?

This one question I am asking various worship leaders and pastors. The context is what’s next in corporate worship but beyond that no guidance has been given for appropriate response. For part 4 of this series I spoke with recording artist and worship leader John Mark McMillan.

John Mark is currently finishing recording on his follow-up album to “The Songs Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down” which is best known for the song “How He Loves.” John Mark has led worship across the country and for many large conferences including The Call. I spoke with him about his new album “The Medicine” and this audio portion of the interview is his response to “What’s Next?

 

 Standard Podcast [7:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’re new to this blog you’ll notice I like doing a poll on a certain topic before I take my thoughts to the world. The idea of how worship music should relate to culture is one I’ve wrestled with for a long time and still do now. I’m interested to see what kind of thoughts we have out there on this. Let’s make sure we have our definitions agreed upon first.

• Countercultural – Purposefully exhibiting behavior in opposition to the dominant culture which it resides in.
• Subcultural – Behaving as a distinctly different culture which exists within another culture and that has not been assimilated. A subculture tends to be oblivious to or unconcerned with the dominant culture in which it exists and just carries on in its own culture bubble.
• Unicultural – I made this word up. What I mean by this is exhibiting the same behavior as the dominant culture in which it resides.

I’m letting you choose more than one answer because I know I would. Obviously the “every way” choices are mutually exclusive so only pick one answer if that’s your choice. I’d love to hear your explanation of your choices in the comments. I’d suspect a disconnect in many of our ideas of what should be the case and what is the case. So let’s hear those gripes as well. Let’s get this party started.

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Hearing a talented rapper talk about the need to fuse systematic theology and hip hop and train church leaders who have poor theology is just mind blowingly awesome. Lecrae discusses the difficulties in reach a hip hop culture so rooted in idolatry and sin. These are the kind of interviews that make me excited to be in the church. I posted video from Mars Hill Church a few weeks back showing Lecrae leading a song in the actual worship service which was amazing and powerful. I could tell from his lyrics he values scripture, doctrine and real hard truth and this interview is just tasty tasty icing. What a great interview, enjoy.

Pastor Tim Interviews Lecrae from Mars Hill Church on Vimeo.

There has been a lot of mention in various blogs about the recent survey report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It was incredibly revealing, maybe not shocking though as many have seen the clear trends nationally and globally. But never the less, it was painful to be confronted with some of the facts. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

• 66% of Protestants believe there are other ways to heaven than through Christ
• 11% of Protestants who claim the existence of God is an absolute certainty, say it isn’t very important to their lives
• 27% of Protestants do not believe in hell

The survey results should be sobering for church leadership and certainly is for me. A professor from Rice University summed up the report in an article well by saying,

“The survey shows America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only 3 inches deep.”

That is just a beautiful way of describing a horrific reality. It makes me examine what I’m doing as a worship leader to either contribute or combat this. Am I leading hundreds of people every week in singing a wide variety of songs that only go 3 inches deep? Do we sing songs that confront the notion that there is no hell, that there is a way to heaven besides Christ, or that Christ life, death and resurrection shouldn’t be that important to our lives? I sure hope so.

I think the important thing as a worship leader is to get prayerful and purposeful not just in our sets but in our leadership of our teams and songwriting. We focus a lot on unity, singability, melody which are all important, but what good is unity without truth? More specifically, essential truth. What the findings in this report tell me is not just that 66% believe in other ways to Christ, but that 66% feel comfortable showing up to church with that lie and aren’t confronted by truth.

I have no desire to lead such weak and sanitized worship that the flesh and lies of the enemy aren’t offended. In the coming weeks I’m going to start a series of posts on how our phrasing and word choices in worship lyrics can contribute to essential biblical truth. No ambiguous language, no vague interpretation, no confusing imagery.

If you have any examples of worship songs you feel do this I’d love to hear them in the comments.