Part one is here.
Since
this is a blog and not a thesis, I’m going to make some observations that I won’t
be able to back up with statistics or footnotes to research. This doesn’t mean that my observations have
no merit or are not true. But they will just
be observations that come from my experience.
Feel free to tell me how it really is.
In
my original post I wrote, “We’ve created a culture that has mistakenly come to
believe that worship is primarily songs we sing about God or to God and that
loving God is best and most adequately accomplished through singing songs.”
I
am convinced this belief has taken root in our church culture because we have
commodified worship. We’ve found a way
to harness the winds of heaven in a way to benefit ourselves. And by “we,” I
specifically mean those in senior leadership of the Church. Worship has become
a commodity by which we secure market shares and fortify our positions.
I’m
old enough to remember when contemporary worship started to gain traction. I’m a veteran of the ‘worship wars.’ I can still recall when, “I’ve got a river of
life flowing out of me…” was both contemporary and risky to sing on a Sunday
morning. I’ve survived a church split where the style of worship was ground
zero for the pent up frustrations of two similar but distinct groups of people.
But
we’ve crossed the Rubicon, even if skirmishes continue to break out in some
places.
And
do you know when the tipping point came?
Ever
see a gas war? I used to drive through a
small town with 3 gas stations situated on 3 corners of a 4 way
intersection. They always had the same
price on gas.
Until
one of them blinked.
And
then down came the price for a time. First in one, then in the other two.
Market driven competition.
In
the worship wars, someone blinked.
Someone
told their former senior pastor they were now going to another church because
they used guitars and drums in their worship.
Blink.
It
was less an ideological shift and more a pragmatic shift. Not for everyone, but for the mainstream
folks, we went from killing the musical prophets one month to investing in new
sound systems the next. And in most
places, non-musical pastors started telling gifted musical people how to play,
what to play and with whom to play.
And
as soon as we pastors saw how the musical people created “the feels” for
people, we both feared and adored them.
We feared them for their influence and we adored them for their
influence. The fault was not in our
stars, but in ourselves.
And
frankly, we still fear and adore those who lead our worship. And so we’ve been handicapped from the start
of this adventure. Senior leaders know that those who gather can just as easily
scatter and often have. So senior
leaders do what every human is tempted to do when they are scared: they
control.
And
there are so many ways to control.
Sometimes
we control with honey. We make promises
that range from paid salaries or stipends to goals of getting your music
recorded and published. We tell you how
wonderful you are and valuable you are, under
the umbrella of our covering. Or some other non-sense that puts you under
me.
Sometimes
we control with a stick. We berate worship
leaders on their song choices, the length of time the songs took that service,
the lack of response from the congregation.
We wonder to our worship leaders if maybe they aren’t harboring some
hidden sin. We accuse them of building
their own empires or having a “spirit of pride.” And we keep those who are
wired to be sensitive and who tend towards self-doubt off balance and
disempowered. Hungry for our benevolent approval or fearful of our anointed
disappointment.
And
so we created an us vs. them world, when really there’s only ever us.
But
as soon as you’re a “them” and you’re not an “us,” it’s ever so easy to turn
you and what you do into a commodity.
Rather than I/Thou, we maintain an I/It relationship which never
produces life.
Never.
What
happens next? Tuesday…how worship came
to mean singing.
