Now that David Crowder covered “How He Loves” pretty much everyone in the Christian music scene knows the song, which is great because it’s an incredible song that needs to be heard and sung. Fewer are probably aware that John Mark McMillan wrote the song (not Kim Walker) and that David Crowder changed a lyric that some in the church viewed as somewhat inappropriate. Out of that a silly little Christian controversy over the lyric was created. Here is the original lyric:

“So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest”

David Crowder changed the lyric after consulting with John Mark (which was a really cool thing to do by the way) to this:

“So heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss and my heart…”

I personally appreciate the original line in its correct context. The people that have issues with it typically take it out of context and that’s too bad. I’ve had numerous exchanges on this blog explaining the context of this lyric and why I do not change it when I sing it.

It’s unfortunate John Mark needed to come out and clarify but I think it was an incredibly humble and mature thing for him to do and he did it very well. You should go read for yourself what John Mark has to say about the “sloppy wet kiss” but here it is simply and succinctly:

The idea behind the lyric is that the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth converge in a way that is both beautiful and awkwardly messy. Think about the birth of a child, or even the death of Jesus himself. These miracles are both incredibly beautiful and incredibly sloppy (“gory” may be more realistic, but “Heaven meets earth like a gory mess” didn’t seem to have the same ring).

I think it’s a brilliant line that attempts to illustrate the love in God’s sovereignty though many times we fail to see his love in tragedy, it’s there. I love John Mark’s heart for Jesus, I love that he makes us uncomfortable with his lyrics, his songs are a gift to the kingdom but more importantly HE is a gift to the Kingdom.

For the 3 of you out there who haven’t seen the original go check that out first. Now here’s David’s version…

Bwack, for those who don’t know, is David Crowder’s drummer. Always the innovator, Bwack built this 7ft, 750lb MPC style midi controller complete with mac, 22″ screen, 10 knobs, 8 momentary switches, 2 mod/pitch wheels and 16 led back-lit silicon pads.

Sally Morgenthaler literally wrote the book on Worship Evangelism, she also co-wrote Emerging Worship along with David Crowder and others. So she is somewhat of a worship authority in the church. I have heard of her and read a few articles on her, but I’ve not read either of those books, for sake of full disclosure. I did recently read an article Sally wrote explaining how she shut down her worship resource site and is now trying to fix the unintended consequences of what her book help create. As an aside I don’t personally hold her responsible for anything, especially since nothing I’ve done in worship has been because of any direction from her.

I have become more interested in her books now because of the pragmatic approach she has now taken. She never meant for worship evangelism to become a Christian subculture outreach where it only witnesses to the churched. It amounted to merely better stage designs, safer contemporary music, and an all tenor choir. She says this in her article about the state of the contemporary worship service:

“No sad songs. No angry songs. Songs about desperation, but none about despair. Worship for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren’t interested.“

I couldn’t agree more with her assessment. It raises an important issue, one we take very seriously at Life Connection Church. Who are we here for and how are we reaching them? Our life is worship, so I believe all evangelism is worship evangelism. So we’re either doing a good job worshiping God or we’ve twisted our worship and our outreach suffers. When we seek to contextualize our worship it’s for the lost, not for the church drifters or church shoppers. I’ll be honest, I look at mega-church worship services and I get a little ill. It’s the cheesiest, most manicured, safe, clean, polished music you can ever witness. That’s not life, it’s not what the lost are experiencing, it’s not even what the saved are experiencing.

I heard a pastor say that after 9/11 the church had no songs to sing. I remember the sunday service after 9/11 and feeling the exact same way. What on earth are we going to play? We’ve sanitized our worship and left a huge slice of human emotion and human experience out of our worship. That certainly isn’t how Psalms was written. We should capture all of life and seek to glorify God through it all. That is currently my focus in my songwriting. Many in our church are struggling with disease, pain, death in the family…how can God see glory in that, how can our music creatively capture that and raise it to God’s ears, his heart. It won’t be pretty and clean, it won’t sell on TBN, but will God be lifted and will the lost feel like God is relevant in their pain? That’s my prayer. One of the greatest sicknesses of the church is avoiding the questions that the lost are asking, I refuse to let that be the case in our worship.

I encourage you to read Sally’s article. I admire how she’s basically put the brakes on what she feels partially responsible for creating in the church, a holy huddle in worship. That isn’t our heart at Life Connection Church, again I’ll use the words of Keith Green,

“I repent of ever having recorded one single song, and ever having performed one concert, if my music, and more importantly, my life has not provoked you into Godly jealousy or to sell out more completely to Jesus!”