We go to church as consumers. It’s part of how we have all grown up. It’s a cultural default I think all North Americans end up with. We expect to get something for our time and in some cases our money. We expect that God will react in the same way as parties reacting during business transactions. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing - at least not all the time - but I do think it happens.
What has this caused? Well, churches have allowed themselves to be pressured into being a party in a business-transaction-type of worship service. Without realizing it, we have invented McWorship. A product where a million people a day are sort of put through the processing plant that we call the church. Why are so many churches so concerned about numbers? Oooo! That guy’s church grew to 2000 in the space of 2 years. HE must really get what God is trying to do. Well, either that or he’s just a good business man, right? Where in the bible does it talk about numbers being important anyways?
The bible talks about being fruitful - that’s for sure. But fruit isn’t necessarily numbers - and it’s not necessarily NOT numbers either. I think sometime it IS numbers, but not always. Confused? 
There are many many intangibles that we must be willing to allow for in our idea of what constitutes the “fruit” label.So why this McWorship? It’s cheap and nasty church-based consumerism. It’s thinking of God as some kind of commodity that we the church have possession of and are going to try and sell to the masses. One of our favorite sales techniques is “the show” of it all. How good is our band? How nice is our building? How flashy is our service?
As a songwriter I think about the musical implications of McWorship. In fact when a friend of mine, Dan Poxon, and I first thought up the term, McWorship, we were thinking more specifically of music. McWorship in the musical sense is the “safe” worship music. It’s “that praise band” sound, and that “hit” worship song. How does that make sense - HIT worship songs? Hits with whom? God? Are we sure about that? How do we know it’s a hit with God? The sales numbers for CDs they are on? So we say that if something sells well, then God must be blessing it and therefore he’s a fan of it? Thousands of people are out there in the world trying to sell a million different things and some of those things sell like hot cakes. Is God blessing all those things? Clearly not. What about pornography - a HUGE business. I dare say a business not considered a “hit” by God.
Anyways… we are all McChristians sometimes aren’t we? We just soak up that latest “hit” song - sometimes without even considering its nutritional value as a spiritual food for us. Is the theology correct? Are we engaging with the songs meaning, or just the catchiness of the beat? I mean seriously. Do we consume it in just the same way we sometimes consume a McDonald’s hamburger? We eat it and kind of turn a blind eye to the whole nutrition part. I mean, how can anything that tastes so good, be so bad for us? Right? And hey, it’s ok to eat it. It’s even ok to buy it. It’s just ok to build a whole diet around.
I think us as Christians (and especially we who are in charge of picking the songs that we sing on Sundays) need to take the time to consider the spiritual value of what we are offering in our music on a Sunday. We need to get serious about providing food that church go-ers can actually thrive on. In my opinion there are far too many songs that are written to sound just like the last “hit” song and therefore have a useable life of only a month or so. People get sick of them because they haven’t gotten over being sick of the last “big” song that sounded just like the new one. What they really need is something that has some creative integrity. What people REALLY need is REAL encounters with our REAL God - not fun encounters with great sounding music or a flashy media show. I feel like I say this all the time, but it’s true. We aren’t selling a product here. We are supposed to be realizing the fact that our God is THE God and that life with out Him is empty.
The consequences of not seeking a better diet are pretty clear. If people’s spiritual food is lacking substance and just has some addictive kind of aspects to it, then eventually people will stop thriving - or worse yet, if they are new to the church they will have never had the opportunity to thrive in the first place. They will fall into a sort of Christian junkie mode where they move from spiritual fix to spiritual fix without much concern about what they are consuming and without knowing that there is something very meaningful and real out there to connect with. They will start thinking that the presence of God is about how much they liked the music. Getting lost in the music is no measure of the presence of God.
Consider that people get lost in the music of bands all the time and much of time they are lost in the party atmosphere of a mosh pit or lost in the sexual nature of a song and how it might affect a potential relationship. Getting “lost” can mean a lot of things. What we better do is make sure we are getting lost for the right reasons. How do we do that? We need to provide music and teaching that provide people with real substance. We need to believe that God is as real as we say He is and stop pulling the punch. We need to believe that these people in the seats can have amazing encounters with God that can be every bit as wondrous as anything we read about in the bible. That’s when McWorship and McChristianity turn into AAA beef steak at Chez Jesus - we’re talking Haut Spirituality now. No more empty calories - no more one-off experiences that don’t really satisfy and only leave us madly running about looking for the next fix.
My point here is that we don’t really have to make sure that the music follows the popular format. It can be its own thing as long as it’s genuine and as long as it has integrity. We don’t need to follow the trends of the mega churches with their media-rich services. We don’t even need to water down the Word of God when we preach so that the newcomers can “get it”. Doing any of these things for wrong reasons is simply another church serving up McWorship. I for one don’t want to feel like I’m just following the fads of worship music. I want to pull up a chair at Chez Jesus and know that what I’m getting is the real thing.
I find myself always torn when it comes to song writing. I work in the church and so the songs I can USE the most are the ones that are corporate worship songs. As a musician - an artist - I find that life offers so many more topics to write about than those topics normally associated with worship songs. I mean, most corporated worship songs (songs used for group singing in a church) tend to fit a few basic catagories.
- Songs about who God is
- Prayers in the form of songs to God (this would include laments and songs where we ask for things)
- Praise songs (songs similart to 1, but more focussed on ascribing holiness and greatness to God)
I could probably get picky and find more catagories. I know there are loads of sub-catagories too, but for the most part I think all the songs fit into one of these three in some why. Here’s the part that gets me…
We are taught as Christians that part of our worship is about our lifestyle. Worship can be having a friend over for dinner and serving them. Worship is sometimes defined as doing things that delight the Father - or doing things that give glory to God. Ok, so if it can honour God to simply live according to the example Jesus taught us, then why aren’t songs about life really considered worship songs? I mean, if I wrote a song that focussed on a love relationship like a marriage, or even about sex or whatever, why is it that this song can not be used in worship? Would it not make everyone mindful of who God is and what a great universe He created? Why not sing about the beauty of a lake in the summer time? Do I need to say that God created the lake in my song in order for it to be worship? Do I need to spell it out?
What I’m frustrated with is the whole idea that our lives are supposed to be expressions of worship, but songs about life are not - or at least they usually can’t be used in most corporate settings. Because of this I find myself somehow limited by being a Christian song writer. I envy those who write and don’t have to think about whether or not their song will work as a corporate worship song. I too could write like that. Once in a while a corporate song will come out and I could use it at church, but really what I wish is that I could write about life and people could be mature enough to understand that this in itself can be a part of thier worship.
A band I listen to a lot called, “King’s X” is a three piece rock group from Texas. Some of them were members of the very earliest iterations of the Christian band, Petra. Today they work really hard to avoid being labelled as a Christian band. Though the members may be Christian, they resist being corralled into only singing Jesus songs. I think I understand why. You see, “Christian” should not really be considered a genre of music. It is a way of life - not a type of music. “Christian” can be used perhaps to identify a theme in a song - or even a theme across an album, but without words, it’s all just music. It could be rock music, or classical. It could be jazzy, or bluesy, or a mixture of a few different styles. Without words, I don’t think it can be Christian. Unless we say that if a Christian created it, then it is assumed that it is an expression of his(or her) Christian life and is therefore Christian. What about when a non-Christian performs the instrumental that was written by a Christian? Is that performance Christian?
I can look at a beautiful mountain scape and I almost immediately think of how amazing God is. An atheist looks at the same view and is perhaps just as in awe as I am, but simply thinks about how insignificant he is in this huge universe. We both experience wonder - we could both be moved and inspired to write songs about it.
I just feel somewhat pigeon-holed by the culture of the Church. I feel that if I wrote an angry song and recorded it on the same CD as a praise song, I would be considered…off in some way. It’s too bad, because there is so much to be inspired by in this world. Good things and bad things.
Sometimes I feel like simply naming these things honors God because its as though we say, “God, I noticed this thing (or feeling or injustice or source of joy) in this universe and now I’m going to acknowledge it (or maybe praise it’s goodness, or rebuke it’s vileness)” As a people who is created by our God and as a person who tries (often in vain) to be like my God, when I see something in this universe, good or bad, and I think on it, I often feel that my thoughts are echoed by the Father in heaven. For example, when I feel hopelessly sad for animals that are treated horribly by man, my sense is that God doesn’t remove my sadness because He too is sad. When my heart breaks for children in war torn parts of the world, or areas that suffer under incredible poverty, I come to realize that the Father’s heart breaks also.
Do you think it delights the father when we begin to see the world as he sees it - even if what we see is bad? Do you think he delights when he sees that the heart of one of his children has become slightly more like his? Why not sing those songs then - even as a group - and name the things we see -good and bad? Why not give the opportunity for people to relate to the world and begin to see it the way we think the Father sees it?
At my church, Holy Trinity, we have begun a program called the 40 Days of Purpose which is a series of devotional readings and small grouping that are spread over 40 days. The text book is the Bible and Rick Warren’s The Purpose Drive Life.
I’m not one for programs usually. I find the way they package up God to be kind of contrived. I find them kind of like the McDonalds principal of making things consistent and making sure everyone’s experience of a program is equally as life-changing as it was for the very first person. We often us business and makreting pricipals in our understanding of our Christian life and evangelism. A scary thought if you look at it. Shouldn’t it be the other way round. Shouldn’t Christians use their Christianity to affect change in their business and marketting practices rather than our business skills shaping our churches?
Anyways, thats not really the point I was after tonight. I found this very interesting quote that really jumped off the page at me today when I was reading.
“It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God’s will. If you can’t get it all done, it means you’re trying to do more that God intended for you to do (or, possibly, that you’re watching too much television).” Rick Warren - The Purpose Driven Life p. 31
Doesn’t this just leave you wondering what the things are in our lives that we are desperately trying to cram into our lives that God just never intended for you to spend your time on? I’m one of the few people who actually work for a church, and I’m absolutely crazy busy almost all the time. I know I’m over doing it. I know I’m in for issues later in life if I can’t manage my time better and figure out how to do less. As a guy who tries to do just about everything I do at work as a ministry, I realize that though the things I do may LOOK Godly and necessary, if I’m too busy, then it follows that there are many tasks I take on that go against what God has intended for me. For me this could be serving on City prayer events and that kind of thing. The point is that in order for me to regulate my life, I not only have to get rid of the bad stuff that I waste time on, I also have to find the good stuff that God just never intended for me to do.
Once I identify those things, I need to walk away from them and trust that God will call someone else to them, unless He never wanted those jobs done at all. Sounds like submission and giving away control, doesn’t it. Ick. Who wants to do that?
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