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The Worship Industry is "Killing Worship"?

21 Oct 2015

Self-described post-evangelical (and Methodist worship pastor) Jonathan Aigner wrote on Patheos recently on “8 Reasons the Worship Industry Is Killing Worship”. I both resonated and disagreed with enough of his post that I figure it’s worth a short response.

Aigner’s eight points, with my thoughts interspersed:

1. It’s [sic] sole purpose is to make us feel something.

Aigner says that the worship industry “must engage us on a purely sensory level to find widespread appeal…”

I’ll agree with Aigner here on the overall concept and disagree with him on the breadth of his statements. Does the worship industry rely too heavily on the sensory level to get us engaged? Probably, yeah. But is it affecting us “purely on an emotional level”, as he claims? I won’t go that far.

2. The industry hijacks worship.

“When the mind is disengaged and worship is reduced to an emotional experience,”, says Aigner, “worship descends into narcissistic and self-referential meaninglessness.” This point relies on your accepting his point #1, so given that I’ve only partially granted it, I’m on the fence here, too. When worship music completely disengages the brain and works solely on emotion, I’d agree that it becomes fairly meaningless. But I don’t think that’s happening quite as broadly as he asserts.

3. It says that music IS worship.

Now we’re finding common ground. In our current evangelical mindset, “worship” is too often just the music part of the service, to be joined up with “announcements”, “preaching”, etc. Our thoughtful members would probably nuance the definition if asked, but it’s very easy for anyone, including myself, when leading worship music in the service (see how I just slipped into it there?), to lazily allow just the music to be referred to as “worship”.

4. It’s a derivative of mainstream commercial music.

Yes… but.

As my wife can attest, I have gone off on many a rant about how Christian music so obviously follows mainstream music, just 5 years behind.

Say, for example, when I saw Chris Tomlin’s video of his song “God’s Great Dance Floor” (a concept that I don’t even really want to explore from a theological standpoint, but that’s beside the point), where he matches Coldplay’s Chris Martin in musical style, jacket, and even awkward white-guy dancing.

Or when I realized circa 2012 that DC*Talk’s “Jesus Freak” copied Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” down to the same chord sequence for the intro. (Points to the late Kurt Cobain for at least not adding a rap about a belly jiggling and ‘a typical tattoo green’.)

But on the other hand… all music is derivative. Commercial music just like church music. For every truly groundbreaking artist you will find a dozen knock-offs popping up a few years later. History has a way of preserving the good ones and weeding out the bad ones. So while some music is so derivative of better mainstream versions that you just have to avoid it, being derivative, by itself, isn’t killing us.

5. It perpetuates an awkward contemporary Christian media subculture.

“[Christian worship music] can’t possibly find itself in Bernstein’s five percent because it’s too busy talking about how “Christian” it is, instead of telling the story.

That’ll preach.

6. It spreads bad theology.

I’m sympathetic here, too, but this is not a factor unique to modern church music. Again, history has a way of weeding out the really atrocious stuff, but you will find theological nightmares in classic hymnody, and you will find beautiful pieces of good theology in modern songs.

7. It creates worship superstars

Aigner clarifies that he’s really complaining about the rock star persona many worship artists take on and the fandom that grows from it. And he’s got a decent point. “We the church become an audience. Groupies. Screaming teenagers for Jesus.” Yep.

That being said, when I hear “worship superstars”, my first thoughts run along the lines of Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby, Isaac Watts, J.S. Bach… We all have our superstars. The modern ones just have to deal with the modern trappings of celebrity that go along with fandom in this culture.

8. It’s made music into a substitute Eucharist.

Here’s where I think Aigner has a point that’s well worth considering - not necessarily as much for how it critiques our value of the music as it does our value of the Eucharist. I’ll quote him at length:

Most evangelicals, along with the mainline Protestants who are looking to commercial Christian music as an institutional life preserver, use music as if it were a sacrament. Through their music, they allow themselves to be carried away on an emotional level into a perceived sensory connection with the divine. Music is their bread and wine. Don’t believe me? Try telling your church, your pastor even, that we should make a switch. Let’s have Communion ever week, and music once a month (or where I come from, once a quarter). It probably won’t go over well.

That point hits home in my third-Sunday-of-odd-numbered-months-practicing church.

Overall, I appreciate Aigner and people in his camp pushing us toward theological excellence, away from the celebrity worship culture, and toward the Eucharist. On the whole, though, his discussion points might still need some work.

A Meal Shared Among Friends

27 May 2015

I’ve had the sacraments (especially the Eucharist) on my mind lately after reading James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, and then listening to the On Being podcast this morning I found this bit from Father Greg Boyle, a delightful Jesuit priest who has spent his life working with gang members in Los Angeles:

Jesus doesn’t lose any sleep that we will forget that the Eucharist is sacred; He is anxious that we might forget that it’s ordinary, that it’s a meal shared among friends, because if we don’t see that, then we’ll be unable to recognize the sacred in the ordinary, and that’s the incarnation.

Interesting to hear from a Catholic. But in my experience, this is a trap we Evangelicals have fallen into at various times, too.

Ruiz: First Church of Authenticity and Trends

26 Oct 2014

Miguel Ruiz, over at Internet Monk, has this gem:

If you can indulge me a moment of satire, what if the impression we sought to give our communities for the reason our church exists looked more like this:

“Grumpy people, bored or frustrated with life, mundane diet of dirges, dull worship, droning sermons, focused on just surviving, burnt coffee, constricting atmosphere, hiding behind a mask of formalism, and little activity outside of Sunday morning. What kind of a God would want us? Join us on Sunday to hear all about the wonderful love of a crucified Savior. We might bore you to death, but you’ll be in good company!”

The whole piece is worth a read.

Not everything that calls itself a church is really a church.

21 Mar 2014

My friend Randy posted a nice little bit of self-observation today that resonates with me:

Q – Randy, are you a heretic or something? What is wrong with you? First, am I a heretic?
No. I hold to the commonly shared beliefs of the church universal without exception. What I am is a critic of the evangelical church in the USA in our era. This church has lost its focus on Jesus and has become some kind of leisure time entertainment/marketing organization. Not that there is anything wrong with that; but of course, there is something wrong with that. Some people fail to distinguish between a local manifestation of the idea of the church and the church itself. If you fail to distinguish those two things, you might see me as destructive rather than constructive. You’ll have to believe me when I say that I love the church. But not everything that calls itself a church is really a church. … Second, what is wrong with me? Lots and lots of stuff.

I love this guy and give him an understanding nod and smile on this Friday.

How can suburban churches minister to urban areas?

18 Mar 2014

Some challenging thoughts from Christina Cleveland today:

If we truly saw ourselves as an interdependent body with a shared Head, resources, blood, and life, then suburban churches that want to love on a city wouldn’t do it by expanding their empires across city lines. They would do it by truly sharing their resources, blood and life in service to the Head. Why build a new church building in the city when you can build one for an urban church – in desperate need of a new building– that is already there doing great work? Why hire a new pastor to work at your new urban church plant, when you can give an urban church the resources to make their long-suffering bi-vocational pastor full-time? Why fund a new urban service project when you can fund the urban service projects that people of color have been running tirelessly and effectively on a shoe-string budget for years? The empire says that our church needs to be present in every community, our church has the answers, and our church’s resources are our resources alone. If we follow this path, power dynamics remain unchanged and urban church plantations ensue. The better, more honoring path requires equity – which is costly. Just ask the rich, young ruler. Jesus asked him to reject his empire approach to life, stop being so possessive about his possessions, and join the interdependent family of God.

Powerful stuff.

The proper evangelical attitude toward sinful behavior outside the church

6 Nov 2013

Here’s one for ya this morning:

The proper evangelical attitude toward sinful behavior outside the church should be one of wise resignation and acceptance. There’s no gospel call to change the world into the church by law. In fact, it cannot be done.

Roger Olson, from How to be Evangelical Without Being Conservative.

I find this thought compelling. It seems so backwards to the evangelical ear, and definitely runs afoul of Dominion Theology, but I think Olson is right.

The proper format for a sermon

19 Sep 2013

A good insight here:

…a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.

You’ve gotta love this.

First proclaim the gospel, the truth of God’s love and salvation.

Then do your doctrinal teaching.

Then draw a “moral consequence” - the “what to do”.

But get the order right.

This is just one piece of the wisdom from Pope Francis, as documented in this recently-published interview. It’s long, but a remarkable and highly-recommended read.

Does your church have room for me?

19 Aug 2013

What if I don’t have 100% agreement with your doctrinal statement, but still want to be a part of your church?