I’ve been thinking about the kind of worship that doesn’t take place in the confines of our head. As Christians we are people of The Book and our obsession is with ideas, in fact one particular idea: The Truth. But our respect for the Big Idea of the Gospel can limit our expression of worship by reducing it to a mental exercise. Love the Lord your God with… What comes next? That’s right, “all your heart,” then “all your soul” and finally “all your strength.” Matthew replaces “strength” with “mind” (Matt 22:38) and Mark retains “strength” but also adds “mind.” In any case, all of the writers are speaking to a totality of expression. Our love for God should encompass the heart and the body, not one or the other.
When we set about analyzing worship we have a tendency to approach it like an exercise in literary criticism. For example, look at the lyrics to this praise chorus:
Sing hallelujah to the Lord.
Sing hallelujah to the Lord.
Sing hallelujah. Sing hallelujah.
Sing hallelujah to the Lord.
There’s really not a lot of theological or intellectual content to those words. But if you have ever sung this song with men leading out and women echoing it is absolutely beautiful. The sound of the voices and the harmonies and the haunting melody all come together to affect you powerfully.
This brings up the question: Is it OK to enjoy the feeling of a worship song? The rhythms of some songs are exciting and make your heart beat faster. Other songs have such beautiful melodies and harmonies that we actually love the music without reference to the lyrics. A pipe organ can shake a building and those vibrations are spiritually uplifting. In all these cases, we as worshippers are expressing ourselves in physical ways (voice, clapping, dancing) and the act of worship in turn affects us physically.
It seems almost scandalous to try to validate “sensual” worship. But in keeping with the command to “love the Lord your God with all your strength” I extend the meaning of “strength” to include “physical senses.” Can’t we experience holy things with our sense of touch as well as our sense of hearing? And how about our sense of smell? Stained glass windows, the cold walls of a cathedral, beautiful banners and flower arrangements can all be vehicles of worship. Even incense and candles, or “smells and bells” as one of my friends calls it, can be instruments of worship.
I attended a church recently in which before the congregation was allowed to sing “O For A Thousand Tongues” the pastor admonished the flock to “not get carried away by the tune.” Is there any reason that believers shouldn’t be free to express themselves emotionally and physically in a worship gathering? Why do we tolerate muddle-headed sermons but despise awkward physical and emotional expressions? A purely cerebral spirituality is no more healthy than a brain in a bottle.
[...] Posted on January 23, 2008 by ElShaddai Edwards Lingamish continues thinking about worship styles, asking a great question: Is it OK to enjoy the feeling of [...]
Absolutely and amen.
This is a very profitable line of inquiry, and I look forward to seeing where it takes you.
100% yes. Lyrics certainly can be powerful in a worship song, but on top of the wrong music, they can fall to deaf ears. The actual tune of a song, even without words on top, can definitely lead someone in worship. That is the beauty of music. It can sometimes speak what no word can. For example, a “minor” chord sounds sad. How can a noise sound sad? I have no idea, but it does. Music conveys emotion.
Funny enough, I was just talking about this with my pastor’s family this a.m. One of their sons was proudly showing me the books he bought with a bookstore gift certificate. One was titled With All My Mind. I commented that I wanted to see a book like that as part of a series, with a different person writing each one: With all My Heart, etc…. Why hasn’t anyone written those other books, I wondered. My pastor’s wife said, “They’re probably still trying to figure out what those words mean.”
Interesting about the mind/strength variations. Are those words somehow semantically related in a way I don’t get? Or is it really a list of four things and a couple of the authors leave one out?
On the one hand, I think feelings, music, and “smells and bells” (I like that phrase
) really are (or at least can be) a part of worship.
On the other hand, there is a part of me that gets frustrated with the part of me that responds on those levels, because I wonder, Am I just programmed in a Pavlovian way to respond this way and I am I only responding in worship because the right buttons got pushed and everything lined up just right to create the response I happen to call worship?
I don’t really make sense to myself on this one, because I do get caught up in worship, in adoration, in the feelings of loving God, being in awe of him, being in awe of his faithfulness, mercy and grace to me. But, there’s still this part of me that wonders….What IS it that goes on in my brain when I worship? And is the worship cause or effect? And how much of it is choice and how much of it is just the right neurotransmitters getting set off at the right moment by the right memories, etc.?
My particular concern in this area has to do with the manufacturing of “worship feeling” by song leaders who purposefully pick or order songs based on the reaction they believe they’ll get from the congregation.
For example, do you arrange the order worship songs so that you build to a ballad that asks the congregation to stand and lay themselves bare, then follow that with the offering call? or prayer and a message of hellfire for the unrepentant?
I certainly can’t deny that music has the potential to generate all kinds of feeling in us – that’s part of our physiological makeup. And an honest emotional response to a turn of phrase or melody shouldn’t be deprecated. But when the organ grinder turns the crank in just the right peculiar way, do we feel closer to God or emotionally used?
El Shaddai,
I think that probably gets close to the root of the tension I have with this. The question of “have I just been messed with?” is one that I care a lot about. I’m glad when God moves and touches my spirit. I’m frightened by how easily it is for other people to concoct scenarios that push buttons to generate very similar feelings in me. And I don’t always trust myself to know the difference.
A couple of weeks ago we were in a new town and I wanted to attend church where the worship was a bit “lively” so I asked the Christian proprietor of the guest house (who I suspected of mainline tendencies) if there were any “charismatic” churches in the area. I wondered later why I had chosen that term. But he perfectly understood what that meant and directed us toward a “guy with a guitar” kind of service.
I wonder if these “charismatic” worship services are targeting the “sensual” element which I’ve written about above. And are such worship experiences some how inferior to more semantically-rich “hymny” song sets?
Thanks to all of you for chipping in on this topic.
We are hard wired, so that would be God wired, for music. Every known tribe and tongue and village ever found has had some sort of music. It brings us into communion with the creator, even if we disagree who that is.
It is awesome, and I think sould be encouraged, to let music move our emotions, our senses and our intellect all in the same direction…towards Jesus. The Holy Spirit flows through all those faculties.
I agree with the previous assesments about music that has sappy sentementality. We need to watch for that stuff and make sure it is not taking up all our worship time. We need spiritual meat!
Lingamish, I am with you on this one – although my church has left Graham Kendrick behind in the 1980’s, more into Matt Redman these days.
ElShaddai, I understand your concerns about musicians manipulating congregations in this way, but are you similarly concerned about pastors, preachers etc doing the same kind of manipulation? Of course all of those involved in leading a worship service, including the music leaders, should work together to facilitate the aims of the service, which should be to help the congregation to meet God and vice versa. But where is the boundary between their legitimate role as leaders and the manipulation which you rightly decry?
The boundary between manipulation and assisting us in our relationship with the Lord will be influenced by the degree by which the worship leader, the pastor, the author, or even the blogger is led by The Spirit. Anything we allow into our mind should be to help us meet God and become closer to him, as you have pointed out. Usually we can sense if we are being manipulated, or being led by the Spirit. If it is manipulation, then we should confront the source in a manner to help them see that that is the way it appears to us. If the worship is drawing us closer to God, then we should thank the leader for their sensitivity to the Spirit.
But where is the boundary between their legitimate role as leaders and the manipulation which you rightly decry?
Doesn’t it come back to the discussion that we’ve had on several fronts about the focus of worship? That is, if worship points people’s emotions and attention toward/on God, that’s the right direction. If it focuses their attention toward/on themselves or the worship leader or the pastor or the offering or even the church, then we’re not really worshiping God, right?
Do pastors manipulate through the pulpit. To be sure, but that’s also why I’ve been most attracted to pastors who teach of and from scripture as opposed to life application teaching. Give me the nuts and bolts, and teach me how to read the manual, and I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to be building. Don’t preach on the outcome “benefit” – that’s of God’s providence, not of my doing.
I wonder if these “charismatic” worship services are targeting the “sensual” element which I’ve written about above.
Of course they are. Almost every contemporary worship service describes itself as for “today’s generation of worshipers”. They want to speak the musical language of the people in the seats, to connect and build community. If people don’t feel connected for the time that they’re “in church”, it doesn’t matter how many donuts or cups of coffee you ply at them before or after. If they don’t feel something that stirs their heart, mind or soul, they won’t come back.
A problem is whether this abundance of choice is fragmenting the church instead of creating communities, e.g. we’re creating a multitude of small groups that aren’t drawing on the common experience of a larger congregation.
My current church has a traditional service, a contemporary service, a youth service and an alt/folk service for those completely alienated by “church”. I worry about all that. The senior pastor is the common element of the first three, but I miss having the high school kids sitting on the side doing their hand motions and rocking back and forth while the band plays. Interestingly, I’ve been told that the traditional service is the fastest growing service, as more and more churches in our area move to exclusively contemporary styles.
I think you’re onto something, ElShaddai. There are sensual worship experiences that creat community anbd there are those that create barriers. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which one is which.
When there is a teen or even early twenties person in your family, it may be necessary to forego the more hynm and liturgy churches and attend a youth-oriented rap and rock music church.
lnxwalt, a friend of mine in his 50’s made his teenage son his excuse for attending the youth-oriented rock music service – but gave the real game away when he still came when his son was ill!
I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed this church more than I did the liturgical one.