I was reading a blog this week about modern worship music, and I wanted to share it and get some thoughts from you. I will post my personal thoughts in a few days.

This is from: The Search by Brett McCracken:

"So, as you can see, I have issues with modern worship music. It really pains me, because I want to like it; I want to think that God is pleased by it. But I can’t get over the fact that it is mostly just mediocre, conservative, and stuck in a box. Worship is so much broader than just a “genre” of music that can be “entered in to” as a corporate, religious activity. Worship is much bigger than that—so much so that perhaps the question we should be asking is what isn’t worship?
Here is my non-traditional definition of what we might call worship: Any music, art, or experience that moves us in a transcendent way.
This includes things made by Christians and things made by secular hedonists.This includes wordless music, formless painting, and R rated movies.This includes books, poetry, and just talking. Yes, just chatting with friends.This includes silence—the simple, still, do-nothing, unmediated experience of God."

What are your thoughts on worship as defined by Mr. McCracken? Is he right in his definition?

Here are a few other thoughts he has on modern worship:

• It’s 90% crappy, knock-off Keane or secondhand U2 (i.e. it is usually very predictable and unoriginal)
• It’s an industry. How bizarre and kind of disgusting that branding your music as “worship” and selling it as an “experience” earns the most money in CCM.
• It’s a very fickle, trendy industry. Every month there’s a new “it” song that eventually filters down to every evangelical church across the world… only to be replaced by a new “it” song a month later. No more standards, no more canons.
• It turns its nose up at good writing. Most worship music wallows in bad water imagery, fire metaphor, or pseudo-sexual verbiage (“Jesus your love is ravishing, intoxicating, orgasmic, etc).
• It’s more about creating an emotional response than eliciting a profound spiritual reflection. The measure of a good worship leader is often how many in the audience stand up or raise their hands out of their own volition.
• It’s much too happy and self-satisfied. “Make a joyful noise” does not mean “don’t worry, be happy.” Some of the most beautiful (and yes, joyful) hymns have come from places of sorrow and brokenness (e.g. “It is Well With My Soul”)
• It’s much too focused on the words. Can’t the music be worshipful on its own? Could not an all-instrumental song be just as worshipful as one with lyrics?

Tell me your views, whether you agree or disagree. Are words important to worship? Is it too much about the emotional response?

McCracken, Brett. "The Tragedy of (Most) Modern Worship Music." [Weblog entry.] The Search. 26 Aug 2007. (http://stillsearching.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/the-tragedy-of-most-modern-worship-music/). 16 Feb 2009.

Worship for a new generation

When I was attending a church planters roundtable at Allison Park Church last year, Mark Batterson said something that I will never forget.

"There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of before."

I firmly believe that there are sounds, instruments, and ways of doing worship that no one has ever tried before. It is my desire to find those ways and creatively bring worship in a new way to my Savior.

In this quest, I emailed David Crowder and received an email back surprisingly fast.

I wrote: "You have a lot of interesting beeps and sounds in your music. How would you get someone to learn to make music unique through experimenting with new sounds?"

His response was: "I would suggest a computer program such as Abelton Live, Logic Pro, or Reason. If someone digs into any of those programs, they can stumble onto the beeps and blips pretty readily."

I would love to hear from anyone who uses any of these programs in their worship sets. Let us know how it adds to your sound and worship experience.