Modern worship annoys me
I can’t count the number of times I have found myself in a church service and an annoyed mood rises within me. It’s not that I disagree with anything happening, or with the words being sung/spoken.
In fact I wish I was less like this. I know that a high-nosed critic of any worship service often does more detriment than good to the body of Christ, and I want to change this about myself. As someone pointed out to me once, if Christ is being exalted, then why should we complain?
I have long tried to pinpoint the exact things that have annoyed me so about the modern church era, particularly the more charismatic and pentecostal strains, and I can’t exactly figure it out.
For some background, I was immersed in the non-denominational church growing up, then moved in heavily charismatic circles with a number of missions organizations and churches, followed at long last by Bible school and seminary.
For many, if not all, of my years in the charismatic circles, I would look around me bewildered by the dancing, crying, screaming worshipers and wonder why I wasn’t stirred by God the way they were — or appeared to be.
Shouldn’t I be crying? Shouldn’t I be more passionate?
It didn’t occur to me until later that this expression of worship is great for many people for many reasons — but not for everyone. And there may be a few valid critiques of the hyper-emotional worship as well.
For one, the emphasis on emotional worship has served to feminize and emasculate the church. This may seem like a strong statement, but one needs to look no further than present statistics of the American church, which show rising female numbers and dropping male numbers. Some extreme estimates show that females double the number of men in Christian churches.
It makes sense when I consider every man I know: How many of us want to sing romantic songs about being held by another man? It doesn’t exactly get my gears going.
Where are the songs which men can equally chant with the monolithic Martin Luther, who penned A Mighty Fortress is Our God? Or the theologically rich Rock of Ages or Be Thou My Vision? Overly emotional modern worship has robbed us of the rich theology which used to infest every hymn and left us with a scene that has put more focus on the heart than the mind.
That’s not to say emotion in worship is bad.
The next segment of my own story shows this, and I hope some of you are also like me. Once I attended Bible college and began studying deeper theology and philosophy, I found that the more my mind was stimulated, the more my emotions were stirred by these things. There seems to be a fear of learning in evangelical circles, especially in charismatic strains, perhaps out of fear that learning will evaporate all of our passion.
For me, the more I learned about ontology, Platonic forms and metaphysics, the more I found myself discovering new language with which to talk about Jesus. I know this isn’t for everyone, but for me, my mind was stirred to sing praises, and my eyes were brought to tears the more I understood Jesus as the ground of my being. The more I learned about the inter-Trinitarian relationships, the more I wanted to exclaim praises!
Modern worship doesn’t do this.
Modern worship (with several exceptions, of course) attempts to stir up emotion with musical crescendos in lieu of theological depth. For millennia, the church has been the party responsible for educating her people on God, the Bible, and theological truths. In the past centuries, however, it has become the place to go to get hyped, dance around, and sing words which could just as easily appear in emotional pop songs.
I’ve seen lyrics in which believers are able to ‘touch the sky’ with God by their side, or others which talk about the changing nature of God (a blatant contradiction to long-held Christian orthodoxy…). I simply can’t sing along to songs like these, much less dance around or wave flags, because I can’t help but see how much they miss the point of worship.
James K. A. Smith points out that worship instills in us liturgies — habits — which align our minds and lives with truth. If your church is nothing but emotional crescendoes, not unlike a powerful concert by U2 or The Lumineers, then how is it orienting you away from the world and toward God?
At the end of the day, Jesus is being glorified. People are becoming undignified and dancing around like King David, which he was praised for. I can’t be upset about that.
But I can be annoyed when emotions take precedence over truth and re-orienting worship which transforms us. I would love to see worship songwriters marry the two.
It’s not an easy task, but maybe worship writing takes more than four chords and a catchy hook.
e
