Almost all of us are aware of the fact that in the past contemporary music has divided many church congregations as they struggled over the adoption and use of contemporary music in their Sunday worship services. This is NOT what this article is about. That is to say, I am not writing about what has happened, or is happening, in our INDIVIDUAL churches. Instead, what I am writing about is a bigger, but less obvious division of THE church - all of God's churches as a whole - due to the adoption and use of contemporary music as our primary means of corporate worship at our Sunday worship services.
First, let me establish the fact that there is nothing wrong with contemporary Christian songs per se. In essence, they are no different than hymns in their purpose, to glorify God; however, they seek to do it in a different way (e.g. via a different style, beat, etc.) To be honest, I can't say that I love singing contemporary songs every Sunday but neither do I say that I "hate it." But, what I can say is this, "too much of ANYTHING (no matter what that thing is) is never good." And that, may I suggest, is where the problem lies! Or, to put it another way, I believe that our only singing, or mostly only singing contemporary songs is hurting our unity as Christians and will increasingly do so if we fail to see this as a problem and do something about it.
What, you may ask, am I talking about? As you may or may not know, I serve our region as an itinerant pastor, helping to fill the pulpit of our Asian American churches that have no pastor; or if they have a pastor, to give that pastor a one week break from preparing a sermon. The vast majority of us do not travel from church to church as I do. In general, most of us worship and serve our Lord at one church and one church only. Some of us may attend a second service for different reasons but mostly we worship and serve the one church we attend/are a member of. Thus, the vast majority of us worship with the same people, at the same location week after week except for the one, or two times a year, that we might attend an interchurch service, or parachurch conference where Christians from a number of different churches come together to worship.
I, on the other hand, am in a different church almost every Sunday. Thus, I am unable to worship with “the same group of people” every week as most of you do. This gives me a perspective that most of us don’t have….a much wider and bigger picture of what is taking place in our church worship services.
Based on the observations that I have made in the last five years as an itinerant pastor, I am beginning to wonder if our always, and often only, singing of contemporary Christian worship songs isn’t hurting the kingdom of God without our even realizing it! How, you ask? As I see it, it has hurt us in at least two different ways and the damage is growing deeper and wider by the year!
One way contemporary Christian music has hurt "the kingdom" is in the way that it has devalued Christmas, and other Christian holidays! To see how Christmas has been "devalued" read a previous commentary entitled "Why Don't Chinese Churches Celebrate Christmas?"
A second way contemporary Christian music is hurting "the kingdom" is that it is making it more and more difficult for us, as a diverse body, to feel that we are one. This happens to me every week as I enter different church worship services. Rare is the Sunday that I am able to sing every song in any particular Sunday Worship Service. Why? It is because in all likelihood I won't know some, and at times any, of the songs being sung that particular Sunday. More often than not, I/we (the church congregation) needs to learn a new song, or two or three….
The main reason for this is because our Christian song writers and publishers are, in my opinion, too prolific in their writing and introduction of new songs. Naturally, we assume their motives are good and pure (e.g. they are giving us new songs to help us worship God more meaningfully). And no doubt, most of them do have "pure" (or as pure as they can be) motives. But, when a vast array of new songs are constantly being introduced and worship leaders are constantly looking for new songs to sing or risk being seen as anachronistic, our worship services consists of a steady diet of new songs, few of which is widely adopted and fewer still are those that endure, leaving our congregations the unenviable task of learning new songs in almost every worship service. I wonder if some of our song writers and/or publishers are not more interested in producing the “next big hit” and/or making a killing in the market place. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against creativity. And I am not against new songs per se. But, the ceaseless flood of new songs being introduced each year keeps growing with no apparent end in sight.
In the secular world, this works fine because people buy songs for the purpose of listening and self enjoyment. Thus, hundreds of artist can produce hundreds of songs for the secular market place and no problem exists, or will arise.
Worship songs on the other hand, are ultimately, written for corporate singing. And that is the way it should be. But, when hundreds (and those numbers are constantly increasing) of Christian song writers are constantly introducing new songs, they present two problems. First, many of the songs written are mostly “mediocrity warmed over.” I know that that sounds harsh. But, it’s true. Just because a song can be found on a CD doesn’t make that song a quality song. Publishers of CDs can’t afford to give you only “the best of the best.” Instead, they can only give you two or three songs that fall into that category. But, they also have to give you "your money's worth." And how do they do that? By giving you the ten-twelve songs you expect when you buy a CD. That is to say, the music publishers add "fill-ins" in order to give you "all that you paid for." Most of these "fill-ins" are okay but the publishers know that, in general, these songs will soon be forgotten. The need to offer fill-ins in a CD is going the way of the dinosaurs thanks to new technologies which allows us to download only those songs that we truly want and thus free us from paying for that which we never wanted to begin with.
But, even when we have the option to download only the songs that we want, the problem remains. It remains because whenever new songs come out, every worship leader chooses what he/she likes which will likely be different from what your worship leader might like and choose and what my church worshiper leader might like and choose. As a result, next Sunday each of our churches will be learning three different sets of new songs to worship God. That's fine for each of our churches as a "stand-alone" church. But, what happens when we come together for a Christian community event (e.g. ordination service, special recognition service), or an interchurch worship service? Invariable, a portion of the people who come will know the some or many of songs being sung, but for the rest of us it's something that we never heard of before and will have to learn.
Have you ever tried worshipping God in song when you don't know the song? It's tough to get into it isn't it? But, that is exactly what is happening in our churches every Sunday. In 2008 I attended the ordination of a pastor friend. I went to the service expecting to celebrate this joyous occasion with exuberant singing. What happened ultimately was much different than what I had anticipated. Of the six songs sung that evening, I knew only one...the rest I didn't know at all. I wasn't alone. Many of those around me struggled with the songs as well. Could the ordination service I attended be considered a community worship service if more than half the time, more than half the people at the service could not worship in song because the songs chosen were unfamiliar to the vast majority of us?
I personally find this situation unacceptable. For centuries and for a good portion of my early Christian life, every church sang the same hymns that everyone else knew. Thus, I could attend ANY church service and worship God with everything within me because we all worshipped with the same songs. And that would remain true if the service I was in were an Hispanic service or Korean service, or etc. Yes, the language would be different. But, I could still join in the singing in my own language while everyone else sang in their language. Today, I struggle almost every Sunday in an ENGLISH worship service as I strive to learn the never-ceasing flood of new songs that enter the marketplace and finds its way into our churches.
There's got to be a better way. Don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that we have to go back to hymns...although I do love them for their words and their harmonies. But, the Christian church has a problem which needs to be addressed and unless we do, churches/congregations in the future will never feel united. Don't believe that? Wait and see if I am wrong. I hope and pray that I am wrong. But, what I fear most is that I will be right. What do you think?
