Worship music is broken. Here’s what we can do about it.
Old Testament scholar, Michael J Rhodes, recently tweeted a glimpse into his research on the Top 25 Christian worship songs, after spending months studying the Psalms. Here are his main insights (lightly edited by me for readability):
Justice is mentioned only once in one Top 25 song. In contrast, the Hebrew word for justice “Mishpat” alone can be found 65 times in 33 different different Psalms.
The poor are completely absent in the Top 25. By contrast, the Psalter uses varied language to describe the poor on nearly every page.
The widow, refugees, and the oppressed are completely absent from the Top 25. The orphan gets two mentions, one occurrence of which appears to refer to a "spiritual" orphan.
Whereas "enemies" are the third most common character in the Psalms, they rarely show up in the Top 25. When they do, they appear to be enemies only in a spiritual sense.
Maybe most devastatingly, in the Top 25, not a SINGLE question is ever posed to God. The Top 25 never ask God anything. Prick the Psalter and it bleeds the cries of the oppressed pleading with God to act. This is completely lacking in the Top 25.
Rhodes goes on to say, “Indeed, there is very little evidence that the Top 25 are ever speaking clearly about situations of social and economic harm. ‘Are you hurting and broken WITHIN’ sums up the way these songs transform the holistic nature of the psalms into songs about spiritual healing.
Worse yet, we deny the poor and oppressed the "First Amendment Right" to protest the psalms offer them. Meanwhile, those of us who are not poor and oppressed continue to refuse to learn how to mourn and protest alongside them.”
My hair looks windswept like this, cos I've been out on the mountain top again...
Church worship is one of those things that everybody loves to complain about. I take my hat off to worship leaders - who have to navigate the complaints of all the pew experts... The music is always too loud or too soft, too old fashioned or too rockin'. There's just no pleasing some Christians.
But most of these complaints are about the form of worship not the function - the style rather than the substance. Which ultimately is just personal preference.
But when the substance of our worship drifts off course, as Rhodes points out, it's a MAJOR problem. With that in mind, I want to offer 3 ways we can begin to address this brokenness in our worship…
1. Rediscover corporate worship - not just an individualistic emotional experience
My friend Ash Barker is fond of critiquing the "Jesus is my boyfriend" type of song that treats worship solely as an intimate emotional experience between me and God. Close your eyes, pretend there is no-one else in the room but you and God.
The thing is, it can be that. Worship can be a beautiful intimate moment of love between you and God. We all long sometimes for that emotional intensity in music. That's why love songs are the basis of 90% of pop music.
But that's not ALL it should be. Otherwise, what's the point of all those other people all around you taking up space with their eyes closed?
After a year of trying to worship awkwardly on Zoom, we all know that there is something powerful that happens when the People of God come together to worship Him as a group. When we sing "We worship You" instead of "I worship You" something significant takes place as three or more, gathered in His Name, choose to worship God together.
2. Embrace worship as lament - as well as celebration
A lot of churches I know do celebration really well. It's fun. It's lively. It's exhausting. They're all about the trumpets and the joy and the triumph. They love to party in God's presence! And yes, celebration is GOOD. Sometimes it is wonderful.
But as Pete Rollins points out, a church that only knows how to celebrate can become like a spiritual crack house - a place we go to get our regular fix, our weekly high (which has to get more and more intense in order to give the same satisfaction). Then we come back down to the real world on Monday morning and wait desperately until we can get our next Sunday fix.
But that's not a healthy or balanced way to live our lives with God. God calls us to mourn with those who mourn - and sometimes WE are those who mourn. Sometimes the world is all messed up. Sometimes it's a broken, evil place and His Kingdom has not yet come in full.
Those of us who work with the poor know this deeply - there are days, even seasons, when we simply need to weep. And going to a party, when your best friend just died of cancer, just feels awful.
The Psalms are fully one-third lament and yet sadly a lot of churches don't even know what that word means. When was the last time you heard a sermon about lament? I suspect a lot of us would be pretty uncomfortable if Jesus came to our church and wept. But if covid has taught us anything, it should be that we are all tied togther - in our rejoicing AND our suffering.
So let's learn together to cry out to God in pain and brokenness, as well as celebrate and party.
“Jump around. Jump around. Jump up, jump up, and get down.” (worship lyrics by the House of Pain)
3. Emphasize participation over performance
As Rhodes points out, most of the Top 25 songs are written by a handful of organizations – Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation He laments that the church has put the production of what we sing into the hands of professionals, “if those professionals keep writing songs that just edit out enormous portions of the biblical language of worship, churches will have to fire them and find other resources OR our worshiping lives will be impoverished.”
I get it - we serve God with our best. We're all about excellence. We offer our finest gifts up to Him.
But where does that leave the poor, the broken, the youngest and most vulnerable during our highly choreographed church services? Sadly, we often leave them further marginalized and relegated to being our adoring audience.
We serve a God who took a small child and placed that child in the midst of all.
We serve a God who was deeply encouraged by the pathetic offering of an impoverished old widow.
We serve a God who loved the broken prayer of an outcast more than the confident eloquence of a pharisee.
And that should be reflected in our worship. God doesn't care if our songs are off-key - He cares if our songs are offered whole-heartedly.
Sometimes our drive for excellence can end up excluding those who God calls us to make central.
As churches begin to meet again, perhaps we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to rethink how we worship. The devastation of this last year (especially for the poor) is cause for lament, even as we celebrate the good things. We now realize how much we need each other - how special it is to even be able to worship together corporately in one place (not just over Zoom). So let our worship music reflect these truths.
I’ll leave the last word to Rhodes, since he sparked this post:
“Pastors, worship leaders, song writers, professors, small group leaders: we have a God given mandate to help people learn to pray and sing. And if we're relying primarily on the Top 25 (or many typical hymnals/lectionaries, etc), we will fail. Period.”