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Calling a Truce in the Worship Wars

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WorshipOver the last year, one topic has arisen on more blogs than any other: proper worship. The tenor of these posts is typically aimed at how to do worship right, with the writer explaining why his/her token method of worship is THE ONLY KIND THAT WORSHIPS GOD IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH. Like so many aspects of the Faith, we’ve turned worship into a tangle of pointing fingers. Rarely do we claim any higher ground than to contend that our higher ground is loftier than someone else’s.

Yiddish speakers have a name for this: Oy Vey!

There’s no better place to start than the battle between modern worship choruses and classic hymns. Nothing will split a church faster than forcing people to take sides on which is better. Advocates of modern worship choruses tend to be younger, middle class, with less history of long-term church attendance, and a greater affinity for Third Wave and Megachurches. The Vineyard churches get a lot of press—good and bad—for being the nexus for the trends in church music today; a Vineyard moldy oldie like John Wimber’s “Isn’t He” is a classic example of a modern worship song. The Pentecostal church I attend favors this kind of music, and as the drummer on our worship team, it’s what I’m used to playing for church music.

On the other side are those who advocate the old hymns. These folks tend to be older, were raised in the church (usually in a conservative congregation) and tend to be from churches that are either wealthy/upper-middle class or dirt poor. On the Web, most of the Reformed bloggers are fans of the old hymns; they tend to be the most vocal critics of modern worship choruses, too. I grew up in the Lutheran church (and spent time in an old-fashioned AoG and modern Presbyterian church who supported the hymns) so my history is also with the hymns.

If you listen hard enough, you hear the arguments pro and con for one side or another, but I want to cut through the rhetoric and tackle the common talking points we hear on the Web.

Modern worship songs are theologically shallow.
Yep, many of them are. The hymn supporters get a point there. Unfortunately, they lose it, too. The problem? The hymns we commonly sing today are a tiny fraction of all the hymns that have ever been written. Only the best have survived the test of time. In defense of the modern worship song camp, time will have the same pruning effect on worship choruses. A hundred years from now, we may still be singing some of them. Chances are that those that will have survived will be the ones that have the deepest theological meaning—just like the old hymns.

Now this doesn’t excuse shallow lyrics and brain-dead melodies in today’s worship music, but we need to apply standards fairly. There have been many hymns that were popular in their day, but have since vanished from our Sunday repertoires because they weren’t all that deep. They played into the era’s popular music styles, corresponded to theological fads that have since passed away, or weren’t all that great to begin with. Sounds a lot like modern worship songs and the deficiencies noted by those folks who love to criticize them. Outcome? Draw.

Worship music (and the people who write it) must reflect our doctrine.
Oh really? Let’s look at the facts.

  • If we believe that the only source of revelation is Scripture, then we must oppose singing “How Great Thou Art,” “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” “This Is My Father’s World,” and a whole host of other hymns that have lyrics that support the fact that God’s creation speaks—apart from the Scriptures—attesting to His glory. If we’re part of that group of Christians who believes that it’s all going to burn one day anyway—so why not cut down the rainforests now—then these hymns must also be verboten. That’s a tough loss; a lot of people really like those hymns.
  • If we believe that Christian mysticism is just another word for apostasy, then we’ve got to cut out hymns like “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” by Catholic (uh oh, there’s another problem) mystic Bernard of Clairvaux. That puts a serious damper on Good Friday services, now doesn’t it? Clairvaux also wrote the popular hymns “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee” and “O Jesus, Joy of Loving Hearts.” Too bad. He and all the other mystic hymnwriters are out.
  • If our eschatology is not postmillennial, then we must no longer sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and just about any hymn that came out of The Salvation Army movement. That’s a big chunk of hymns in the 1865-1890 timeframe, too.
  • If we’re Reformed and reject books written by Arminian authors, then in order to remain consistent we should also reject hymns written by Arminians. This is particularly painful since that means all hymns by Charles Wesley have to go. Considering he wrote more than 900, that’s a big loss. Say goodbye to “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” We also have to reject “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” because not only did Wesley write it, but George Whitefield changed it so that it was no longer Scripturally accurate to the Luke 2 passage Wesley based it on (because nowhere does it say that the angels were singing.) The two fought bitterly over the change, and we can’t be supporting two Christian brothers fighting, now can we?
  • If we’re Arminian and can’t stand what Reformed hymn writers have to say, then we’re probably Dave Hunt and could care less what this blog has to say about anything anyway, nevermind my comments on hymnody.
  • If hymns written by the unconverted and apostates are out, then we need to delete “O Holy Night” from our Christmas services. The lyricist was a Catholic who later renounced Christianity and became a Marxist, while the music was written by a Jewish composer. That song contains political overtones, too, by dealing with the then current issue of slavery. We all know that politics and hymnody should never mix.
  • If we oppose Catholic theology, then besides all the Bernard of Clairvaux hymns we must stop singing, scratch everything written before the Protestant Reformation. Wow, that’s a lot of hymns we need to chuck!

At issue here is that the same people who are unwilling to stop singing the hymns listed above are the same people who rant and rave against writers, pastors, and whomever doesn’t toe their doctrinal party line. That’s profoundly hypocritical no matter how we look at it. It’s even worse when we apply those filtering criteria to modern worship songs and their writers, while giving the hymns a pass. Yet we seem to do it all the time. Call it just another case of selective memory on the part of Evangelicals. Just be consistent—that’s all I’m asking for here. If we can’t be, then we need to stop judging other houses because we can’t get our own in order.

Too many of today’s worship songs sound like nothing more than “God is my boyfriend” songs.
You know what I mean, the “I love you, I love you, I love you” kinds of worship choruses that never point out who the “you” is. We could be singing them to our sweetheart or to God…who knows?

This is a favorite argument among hymn supporters and there’s a legitimate beef there. However, my experience is the amount of these kinds of worship choruses is highly overinflated by those who oppose them. I looked through all the worship choruses I’ve played in church over the span of three years and only one or two fit this accusation. If you ask me, this argument is a non-starter.

If there’s a legitimate beef against “God is my boyfriend” worship music, it’s actually the modern worship chorus fans who have a better case against the hymn supporters. Any perusal of hymns written in the hundred years between 1800 and 1900 shows a fascinating tendency of hymn writers of that era to portray an overly feminized Jesus who resembles a sort of sensitive 1980’s man. Hymns like “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling,” “In the Garden,” and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” were often criticized in their day by clergy who believed they were softening the manliness of Christ. When compared with hymns that came a hundred years before them, it’s difficult to argue against that criticism. Later Church historians can point to these and other hymns of their day as one of the sources for the long-term feminizing effect on the Church in this country, a problem cited by many of the same people who sing those very hymns and defend them tooth and nail.

Our worship needs to be Scripturally based.
Do we really believe this? I mean truly? If so, where are the loud crashing cymbals, tambourines, and dancers?

Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!
—Psalms 150:1-6 ESV

Some would argue that this doesn’t represent a New Testament worship sensibility. However, if you do worship-related keyword searches on the New Testament, there’s not a single Scripture that would imply that the early Church negated psalms like Psalm 150 above in order to dial down to some different form of worship. The early Church worshiped in the temple, right? Would that worship not include Psalm 150 styles of worship? Unlikely.

I hear far too many Christians negating the kind of worship styles that their brothers in Christ might use. Whenever I hear some stone-faced believer saying that his church doesn’t provide “entertaining worship,” I look at Psalm 150 and ask myself how it would be possible for those worshiping with trumpets, dance, cymbals, tambourines, stringed instruments and pipes not to find that stirring!

True worship involves ________.
That’s a pretty big blank. Some things that can fill that blank include:
* Our minds
* Our emotions
* Our cultural identities
* Our confession before God
* Our personal histories

No matter what we put in that blank, true worship involves our whole man, driven by the Holy Spirit alone. When we read this oft-quoted passage

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
—John 4:23-24 ESV

we use it to justify our particular form of worship without asking if it means something totally different. Truthfully, worship that is done in spirit and in truth is worship that proceeds from the Holy Spirit alone. The Holy Spirit is the one who enables us to know God, and knowing God is what leads to true worship. Jesus’ rebuke of the woman at the well for discussing the means by which people worship is the whole point here. The focus is not on externals, yet so often this is all we can note when we hold our own ways of worshiping up as the only way, while deriding those who worship in ways we don’t understand.

Is it possible to worship the wrong way? I believe it is. Like I’ve said a trillion times here, discernment is always needed. The Holy Spirit will not guide true worshipers into worship that is not true. But the Spirit is not so concerned with the cultural trappings, which is why a lot of us are going to be shocked when we get to heaven and see forms of worship that are not familiar to us culturally. Our worship wars are based on cultural trappings more than anything, and that’s too bad because that’s a very narrow slice of reality that we bring to worship. The true worshiper of God is content in all worship environments that are driven by the Holy Spirit. Such a worshiper is equally at home with an a cappella choir, an amplified worship band, a pulse-pounding black gospel group, a classical quartet, or any other musical expression that is fueled by the Holy Spirit.

Worship isn’t just about music, but you would think it was all that matters from all the furor over its musical aspect. I’ve talked only about music in this post, but all of worship incorporates this same common sense. Worshipers with hearts focused on God, worshiping by the Spirit, can sing (and dance) to any kind of music and God will be pleased with their offering.

Why do we strain so hard to define what is appropriate? We want to honor God. We want to do the right thing. But the right thing is focusing more on God and less on our methods.

Series Links for “The Church’s Brave New Brain”

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The three-part mini-series is listed here:

Enjoy!

For 2006: The Church’s Brave New Brain—Part 3 (Conclusion)

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In the previous installments of this series (#1, #2), we examined the increasing role that right-brained thinking will take in our era and what that means for an American Church largely given to operating out of the left hemisphere.

Having been increasingly disenfranchised by Evangelicalism in America, right-brained thinkers fled to other non-Evangelical Christian sects or abandoned the Church altogether. The Human BrainThe irony of this flight is that conservative Christians have lamented the death spiral of our culture, fighting tooth and nail against the threat of degraded culture, a culture largely derived from the vacuum created by the same conservatives' inability to keep the right-brainers in the pews.

Now the world is changing and left-brainers aren't adapting well. The transition from the left-brained Information Age to the right-brained Conceptual Age is creating a paradigm shift so extraordinary that churches in this country will need to adapt or find themselves increasingly marginalized as what is deemed essential in communication shifts from data, facts, and logic to relationships, art, and narrative. The problem facing the Church in this dramatic shift is that the whole of Christendom can't find a balance point from which to address this change. We've been so long in the left-brained aspect of Christianity that incorporating right-brained thinking in our message smacks of compromise to some. But right-brained people, long disenfranchised both inadvertantly and calculatingly, want to know Christ, too. And in many cases, our heavily left-brained presentation of the Gospel hasn't gotten through to them. Jesus is our model. Note his teaching method in the following:

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his talk. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

—Matthew 22:15-22 ESV

What we find in Matthew 22 is a classic case of logical teaching addressed to the left-brained intelligentsia of the day. The Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes who were constantly trying to trap Jesus into saying something that violated the Law were operating out of their tendency toward facts, data, and logic. Most times in the Gospels when we see people marveling at what Jesus said, more often than not it is a left-brained teaching He has given; He's trumped the intelligentsia at their own game.

But that is not the only way He taught:

And he told them many things in parables, saying: "A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear." —Matthew 13:3-9 ESV

Here we have narrative, the backbone of right-brained teaching. The images, in stark contrast to the Matthew 22 passage, are metaphorical. Jesus ends by saying that those who can understand should understand—not a left-brained summation at all. In most cases we do not see Jesus teaching the intelligentsia using parables—those are usually shared with the common people.

Jesus taught both ways: literally and metaphorically. If He truly is our model, we need to understand the balanced model He gave us. The pendulum is swinging from left-brained to right-brained. Where we Christians need to be wise is that we can't jump all the way over to the right-brained side, even if the world goes that way. But neither should we hoot about being dragged to the middle because, frankly, we need both approaches if we are to model the Gospel to the world in the same way that Jesus did.

"Change" becomes the word of agony and ecstacy here. Left-brainers have long viewed change as meaning that the Gospel will be changed. They have every right to fear losing the heart of the Gospel to overly nebulous and metaphorical language. On the other hand, I would offer that our failure in America (and other parts of the West) is that we've presented the Gospel in a way that is too left-brained. The result is that we've inoculated many people against Jesus.

Where this comes into play is when we start talking about changing the way we present the Gospel in 2006 and beyond. Large swaths of our culture are inoculated against the Gospel because they've heard it as nothing more than a set of facts for so long that they're immune to it. In the days of the early Church, no one had heard the message of Jesus. Today, though, people in America who have not heard of Jesus are a rarity. Because of this, the way we present the Gospel to that inoculated group must change to add more right-brained presentation. This does not mean that the Gospel is changed or compromised! Only that we consider enhancing our message with narrative, empathy toward others, the arts, and the other hallmarks of the right brain.

No longer can we rely on left-brained methodologies alone. The left-brained approaches worked okay (but not perfectly) in a culture skewed toward left-brained thinking. But as we've seen, the left-brained world is surrendering its crown to a brave, new, right-brained world.

We must also raise up the next generation of Christian right-brain thinkers to take back the cultural lead in the arts. Christians once dominated the arts, but do so no longer. Our lack in this area is telling to the lost. We've inadvertently sent the message that Christianity is the antithesis of all that is beautiful and creative. This clearly dishonors the Lord! Why should the lost be attracted to a warped Christianity that has so fervently stomped on the creative community the last hundred and fifty years? We look like we hate life.

Sadly, we look like we hate each other, too. I've blogged many times in the last year about the Traditional Church/Emerging Church war. That this war is left-brained versus right-brained should be obvious to anyone who is willing to stand back and look at the two sides objectively. The selling points of the Emerging Church are directly out of the right-brained handbook: community, arts, relationship, sensory experience, and mystery. Likewise, the Traditional Church's talking points have long been doctrine, knowledge, tradition, individuality, and certainty. Where the two sides cannot agree is that their strengths are both good! And the weaknesses on both sides are terrible—easily ignored by the afflicted side, too.

If the Church is to be all Christ desires of it, then we must take action to resolve this battle of the left and right hemispheres. One of the most memorable ads of the 20th century went like this:

    {While eating their favorite food, two people walking down the street collide.} "You've got chocolate in my peanut butter!" "And you've got peanut butter on my chocolate!" Two great tastes that taste great together…

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, right? We all know that one. Many of us will agree that chocolate and peanut butter blend nicely for a taste that's more than the sum of its parts. I like peanut butter and I like chocolate—but I'm crazy about them together. When the Traditional Church and the Emerging Church fight, it's a little bit like "I love my peanut butter and hate your chocolate!" and "Oh yeah? Well I love my chocolate and hate your peanut butter!" Meanwhile, we're missing how well they go together when mixed properly. It's like that with our brains, too.

I got the idea for this series from the story of Jon Sarkin in Reader's Digest (January 2006). Sarkin, a chiropractor (left-brained), suffered brain damage after a botched surgery. Part of the left side of his brain was destroyed. What was unleashed in the aftermath of his trauma was a buried artistic skill that has since been featured in The New Yorker and snapped up by art collectors. Yet while he gained something post-surgery, he also lost something.

The Church is not meant to live like a stroke victim. We can't gain a skill at the expense of another. God made each of us with two hemispheres. I believe that Adam expressed himself well out of both sides of His brain. More to the point, the Second Adam, Jesus Christ most certainly did. Not only did He teach to both sides of the brain, but His chosen profession, carpentry, is expressed through the rigor of facts and the grace of creativity.

The corpus callosum is a band of nerves that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. If ever we needed someone to be that part of the Body of Christ, it's now. We need people who can bridge that gap and bring doctrine and beauty, facts and mystery, and community and individuality together. Those might sound completely incompatible, but to a bridge person, they're not. The Church's brave new brain must work completely out of both sides if we are to fully reach the world for Christ and live in the fullness of what Christ gives us.

With the world shifting toward the right hemisphere in the way it thinks, we better beef up that side of our own if we are to bring the whole Gospel to the whole Man. Even then, just being in our right, earthly minds is not enough. We need to incorporate the mind of Christ, a mind that goes beyond earthly thinking into the realm of faith, the invisible, and the impossible.

But that's a whole 'nother series.

Thanks for sticking with this one. Hopefully it challenged both sides of your brain!