Worship

The Little Things: Illegal Worship

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Magnifying GlassA new randomly posted series that I hope to birth here today is "The Little Things." The devil may be in the details, but the Bible says this:

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
—Luke 16:10 ESV

"The Little Things" will discuss those issues in the Christian life, both individually and corporately, that mark the difference between the way of the world and the way of Christ. Do the right little things and you'll be immensely blessed, but do the wrong and—well, you get the picture.

The lead for this is a testy issue: illegal worship. Now I'm not talking about unregistered Chinese house churches, but about a crime that goes on every day across the world.

Most people don't realize that when lyrics for songs are projected in public, those lyrics are subject to copyright laws. Be it a slide of handwritten words on an overhead projector or the latest top 40 Christian worship song on a Powerpoint presentation, if your church doesn't have a license to project those words to the worship song you are singing, it's against the law. Now we can debate whether music intended for praising God should be copyrighted or not if you wish, but the fact remains that almost all of it is. Christian Copyright Licensing International can give you more details.

I can almost hear the collective "So what?" ringing from the masses on this one, but what if God is displeased because we're willfully waving our hand at the whole issue? I for one don't want to think that Christians don't care about this point, but the collective shrug is unnerving. I know some people will say that control of this issue is in the hands of the U.N., the Illuminati, the Tri-lateral Commission, and (for you more liberal readers), good old Yale University's Skull and Bones, but the fact remains. If your church hasn't paid for the license to use the copyrighted songs you are singing in worship, then you are breaking the law.

Zacchaeus, noted Palestine tax hustler, on this issue:

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold."

The Lord's response was

And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham."
—Luke 19:8-9 ESV

How interesting that Jesus absolved this diminutive defrauder and declared him righteous. Zacchaeus uttered no pronouncement of faith in Christ at that point other than to offer to pay restitution. How then can we who have declared our faith in Christ publicly going on flaunting this requirement of our laws regarding paying for licensing for worship music use?

Is your church not doing so well? Maybe this is the reason why. Just another hindrance we should be laying aside. Because in the end, little things matter.

Likemindedness and Life-altering Worship

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Huddle of friendsWe talked a bit about worship this last weekend and as I was gearing up to take another stab at my series on business, I had this thought

What was my best group worship experience?

I can think of several incredible, life-altering worship times in my 42 years, but as I recall them, one startling commonality appears: Being in one accord.

Every one of the times that I felt like something magnificent was occurring in worship, I can also remember that the people with whom I was worshiping the Lord were all of like mind. Some shared trait bound us together and we all wanted to be near the Lord.

  • At 14 on the weekend retreat during which I gave my life to Christ, all the people gathered to worship during that beautiful communion time were my close friends from church.
  • At 16 on an Appalachian work project, it was the fact that we were working toward a common goal.
  • At 19 on a college weekend retreat, it was that all of us wanted to know God more intimately.
  • At 20 at the Urbana Conference, all of us were mission-minded guys.
  • At 22 on another weekend retreat at the same camp I’d given my life to Christ at, it was a reunion of many of the people from the retreat when I was 14.
  • At 26, working on staff at a camp that was having issues, it was all of us staff that were on the outs with the rest of the camp sharing a communion meal together.
  • At 27, it was being hauled off with others by the police as part of an anti-abortion rally, even though we’d done nothing wrong.
  • At 33 on my wedding day, when we worshiped God together in that happy moment.

Those were the memorable ones that seemed to tap something in me. The likemindedness of the people there in those moments captured something in our worship that made each time special. There was a connection that happened on both the vertical and horizontal level that made that communion with the Lord rise beyond the everyday.

The last group worship time I remember as being truly sweet was almost ten years ago. As I look back over that time, the one thing that strikes me is that somewhere along the line likemindedness vanished.

Now my wife and I are very likeminded, almost eerily so. But I wonder what has happened either to us or the cadre of Christians around us that we don’t see as many of those life-altering worship times anymore. I guess the sense I have is disconnectedness with other worshipers. The horizontal doesn’t seem to be as strong as it once was. Having a group of likeminded people around us appears much harder to come by.

Does anyone else experience this or even understand what I’m talking about?

Answering the Worship Question

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DrumsSomeone said it was my time to weigh in on my own question about worship. My response below started out as a comment on my worship post thread (“A Little Bit Lighter….“) and ballooned into a full-fledged post.

It’s been a long weekend (see my post “Running a Little Behind” today for the explanation), so I’ll finally try to address some things here.

Gaddabout starts with the basic in his comment: God is meant to be worshiped. Everything starts there. If we are blessed in the process, great, but this does not change the fact that God made us to worship Him.

With that basis, I think that a modern worship team needs to address the following:

1. Practice. It makes perfect. And while perfection is not what we are aiming for lest we exclude the less-than-perfect musicians from the team and create another church club, practice makes everything better. I can tell you from my own experience that the sets that are most practiced almost always lead to a better worship time.

2. Music selection. People think they can just choose songs and hymns, but I don’t like that. I think a worship band must have about two dozen options for music that can be played as the Spirit leads. I think music should reinforce the message, if possible, and that all music MUST be God-centered and edifying to the Lord. I prefer music with some depth and would like to know why there is so little effort being made today to set some of the great lyrics of older hymns to newer music. Most people today do not sing songs in 3/4 or 6/8 time. And because those lyrics to older hymns were typically written without a tune in mind, I see no reason why those lyrics cannot be used with new tunes. Honestly, I find the lyrics to most of today’s worship songs to be vacuous, while the older ones are sermons in themselves. Maybe writing new tunes is something I should start doing myself, come to think of it.

3. God honors mature worship leaders. I’m at a loss to understand why so many churches have such young worship leaders. It’s as if they need to put someone on stage who is 25 just to let people know the church is hip. And I speak of spiritual maturity, too. If your worship band members are immature in the Lord, it reflects in the music, it truly does.

4. If you have good music, repeat it. There is a tendency among worship leaders to always be trying new songs, relegating the old ones to the closet. But people like the familiar. There’s no need to debut two new songs every week. People want to be able to sing songs from memory and nothing fouls up a good worship set more than too many unfamiliar songs.

5. The worship team’s attitude sets the stage for worship as much or more than the music itself. If your team members are burned out, depressed, phoning it in, or merely not showing any smiles on stage, then it dampens worship, no doubt about it. If they aren’t enjoying playing, if they don’t have a worshipful attitude when they play, then they need to take a breather in the seats and not be on stage. If people’s hearts are far from the Lord, then they are giving lip-service to Him. That’s not going to work in worship.

A few things I’d like to see:

a. More kids being trained to lead worship at a young age. In fact, I’d like to see a focused church directive aimed solely at equipping people to worship, be it sung or otherwise. You can’t throw a rock and not hit a church where the mantra is “We’re all about worship,” and yet nothing is done to develop that beyond having a hip set selection on Sundays. That’s a grievous error.

b. More unusual instruments. I attended a church whose worship band had mandolin and electric violin players and those two instruments brought a compelling sound to worship. I personally think that we need more cellists playing in worship bands since most music today is weak in that range of sound. All acoustic stringed instruments are visceral (no pun intended) and what they bring to the sound of sung worship is important—and I don’t just mean guitars.

c. Giving people a chance. Too many churches have a botanical sprout inserted firmly in their rectal areas about allowing people to develop their musical skills. The old Lutheran church I attended in my teens gave me a chance to sing and play guitar for special music. But too many churches today have a rule, mostly unwritten, that you must have graduated from Julliard in order to get on stage. That’s a huge mistake. If we can’t draw alongside people to nurture a nascent gift, then we are diminishing our worship futures.

Hope this answers the questions and stimulates more.