friend recently wrote me an email asking about my thoughts on contemporary worship in relation to his church’s distaste for individual and emotional lyrics and musical styles. Here is my reply for those who are also interested in this question:

 

I will never forget an exchange I had at Wheaton College years back after I led worship in a chapel service. I introduced the service by describing our worship using a metaphor from N.T. Wright: our singing is a golden chalice in which the wine of God's presence is poured out. Soon after, I got a frustrated letter in my college mailbox from a student who criticized me for using that metaphor and then proceeding to lead a song by Chris Tomlin! How could Tomlin's song ("Indescribable") be compared to a golden chalice? She pointed me to Beethoven instead. I pointed out to this person that the Psalms and Beethoven were using ideas and musical forms that were the "lingua franca" of their particular era, rather than some exalted, timeless inspiration.

 

Yes, we should be very wary of narcissistic and nepotistic worship songs that are more about feeling and affirming ourselves than giving thanks to God. Like you said, contemporary worship can easily loose sight of the cross and suffering for an obsession with "glory" and "favor" and "victory." I think of the Kelley Rowland song featuring Beonce "When Jesus say Yes, nobody can say No." I love this song: it's super groovy, and I believe it's true. But there's something interesting that Beonce can sing this song in her glorious white toga with a beautiful gold necklace, and then sing and choreograph songs that are obsessed with self, sex, power, etc. The song doesn't seem to make any serious spiritual or moral demands. It can be sung happily and make us feel good, but it also allows us to go on living however we want. The cross isn't mentioned; discipleship isn't mentioned; our responsibilities to others aren’t mentioned.

 

I worry that a lot of contemporary music does this. The lyrics don't really make a *claim* on us, and thus they fall prey to cheap and easy feel-good consumerism. What about, "When Jesus say Yes, my life has to change"?! :)

 

That said, I'm entirely with you: the psalmists never hesitated from talking in the first person and crying out to God with love and asking for personal blessings and help. The spirituality of the Bible is intensely personal, and I would say that it is deeply "individualistic," without cutting off the individual from the community. Isn't this one of the treasures of the Western spiritual tradition, that the individual *matters*, matters so much that they can have a personal relationship with God and that God cares about the individual? This is certainly part of the core of how the Western tradition ended up affirming radical values like the universal and equal worth of individual persons (something nearly without precedent in the Greco-Roman world). All of us can pray to God and sing to God as individuals, regardless of our family or class or race or gender. We can do so personally, individually, on our own. What better example than "Negro Spirituals," which are often deeply personal and emotional? This should be treasured. We should see the seismic social, political, and civilizational implications of this kind of individual spirituality.

 

Part of what it means to be a person is to experience the depth of our own subjectivity, which includes the depths and complexity of our emotional life. As such, I don't think that "emotional" worship songs are inferior to "intellectual" ones. Again, I find this liberating and of great sociological significance: the believer can literally "pour out" their heart to God without shame or inhibition. In prayer and praise, the depth of the person is recognized and affirmed. We are people of ecstatic joy for whom outbursts of celebration are entirely appropriate. We are people of grief, for whom groans of fear, loneliness, despair, darkness are entirely appropriate. This fits entirely with Paul's language in Romans 8 and his affirmation of speaking in tongues. Again, to refer to the "Western tradition," I'm not sure that our recognition of the oceanic depths of the individual person would have been imaginable without the Psalms and Jesus and Paul and Augustine. Freud was following Biblical precedent when he delved into the “oceanic” depths of the self.

 

So, again, I think that to prioritize doctrine in worship is understandable, but it is far from the whole story of humans coming into contact with a God that Scripture itself describes as singing (Zephaniah) and being filled with regret (Genesis). After all, Paul himself said that the love of God is *deeper* than our *understanding*! So, if this is true, why should we be surprised if our songs reflect this depth, this fullness, this transcendence that finds expression in throbbing beats and soaring organ and guitar? What an extraordinary loss it would be if we amputated this part of our personhood and our spirituality in our corporate worship!

 

Moreover, the incarnation of Jesus points in this direction. Jesus spoke Aramaic, the dialect of his place and time. He didn't speak some elevated language but the language that the people around him were speaking and understood. He used examples of things that were familiar and meaningful to people. Jesus spoke about God knowing the hairs of our head and being concerned with our needs. I think this justifies the lyrics and the music of our worship being "contemporary," being deeply meaningful and resonant with the people who are singing. Of course, I think worship should also be pedagogical; it should educate us in a richer, more faithful form of self-expression and understanding. But this isn't in competition with using language and music that derives from where and when we live.

 

Culture is a complex thing. We can err and fall into imbalance. Certainly in our society, we are in danger of swerving too far toward the self, toward self-help and a consumeristic picture of happiness. I worry that many young people are attracted to "worship leading" because it's a chance to experience Christian celebrity, a kind of “Christian Idol” in front of large crowds of singing people. But we should be careful to note that our society's respect and concern for the individual and the goodness of earthly life with all of its cultural imbeddedness is a gift of God that flows directly out of the Christian tradition. Show me another society that so highly prizes the individual and the depths of our singular emotional life.

In a world still so horrifically marked by exclusion, oppression, and extreme violence toward others of the wrong tribe, the wrong religion, the wrong class, the wrong race, etc., Christians should celebrate and treasure and defend and continue the way that our spiritual tradition in prayer and song values the individual in all of their depth and complexity.

 

Yours with love and gratitude, Andrew