Few subjects are quite as touchy as music in the church. For example, someone recently made this statement online, “Today’s modern church has replaced the choir with a praise band, and worship has been replaced with a show. Instead of singing hymns, people now just sit and watch a performance. No longer do we focus on God, but on pleasing men with a stage and concert.”
Perhaps we should stop for a moment and look at worship from a different perspective. When I was a kid, my father hated my music. When he was a kid, they had real music. Now it was a bunch of noise that didn’t make sense to him. Ironically, his father said the same things about his music. I look at secular music and am tempted to say, “That’s not music. When I was a teen, we had real bands with real talent.” And that is just looking at the secular music. Once you add the emotional attachment of religious upbringing to the situation, things really get complicated.
As a pastor, I faced this issue often. One older gentleman was upset because a younger man played his guitar and sang a modern song that meant a lot to him. But it did not strike a chord in the older man’s heart. He thought we should stay with the Broadman Hymnal. “Now that,” he said as he held up the hymn book, “that is godly music. These are the songs that honor God.”
I thumbed through the book for a moment and said, “Let me ask you a question.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Based on the dates I see at a quick glance, it looks like these hymns were written between the late 1700s and the newest looks to be in the early 1900s. The oldest song I see has a date of 1796. What did people sing to God prior to the 1790s?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, how did people sing praises to God before 1796 if God only approves of the songs in this book? Before 1790, what did people sing?”
And this points out the problem with the music controversy. A few years ago, someone surveyed music preferences. This was a secular study and not a Christian study. However, it does shed light onto the controversy in the church. The survey found that most people only like music that was popular in the era when they were teens are early adults. People who grew up in the 50s, only listened to 50s music. The same was true for people in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. They all thought that music outside of their preferred genre were outdated for the earlier music, and lacked creativity for the newer music. Good and bad music was judged against their preferred genre.
Once you add religious preference in the mix, this problem is amplified. Not only is church music judged against the era in which we were raised (or first experienced faith), but it is also considered morally bad if it doesn’t fall within our preferred genre. We mistakenly judge the spiritual quality of music against our experience of discovering worship. Now anything outside of our experience is considered non-spiritual.
Our feelings and preference is not a valid measurement of whether worship is good or bad.
Having said that, we should also address another common objection to modern Christian music – some have unbiblical messages. Sometimes that indeed is true. But some of the old hymns often have lyrics that don’t line up with scripture as well. Also keep in mind that only a fraction of old hymns are enshrined in printed hymn books. How many thousands of hymns were written during that two-hundred year span that didn’t line up with scripture? They were sung by some, but didn’t survive history. Even among those that did survive, some don’t belong in worship. Patriotic songs make it seem as though God favors our nation over other nations. Some hymns slightly miss the mark, and some make false statements. For example, Away in a Manger claims that the baby Jesus never cried, yet the Bible says that Jesus felt everything we felt. When the baby felt the pangs of hunger, or awoke out of sleep, or was startled, He would have cried like any other infant.
Is that a big deal? It’s not something to lose sleep over, but it does paint an unrealistic picture of the world God entered into, and the fact that He had to endure the same flesh we were born into. Look at Romans 8:3-4
3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
He was born into sinful flesh, but because His nature was not born out of the sin of Adam, Jesus had the power to live contrary to the flesh. When He hungered, He ate. Jesus felt pain, frustration, anger, and the same feelings that arise in us, but He faced them without sinning. Because He had the same temptations as we do, He was able to condemn the flesh on the cross. Crying as a baby is not sin, so there is no reason to create an infant that has no negative feelings or struggles.
If you comb through a hymn book, you would find lines that we would not agree with. In fact, if you put many denominations on the task, you could probably create quite an argument of what each denomination deemed biblical and what was not.
Just as thousands of hymns were not canonized in our hymn books, there are many modern songs that also fail to line up with scripture, or are overly slanted to the writer’s belief system. I personally find a lot of songs worshipful and biblical, and a lot that are not. Sometimes I like the song, but one word or phrase seems to miss the mark. Do we reject a song or artist because they made a mistake, or have a flaw in their theology? If so, to be consistent, we would probably have to reject every preacher and teacher that has ever lived. We all have assumptions that may miss the mark of perfection.
As I grow in my faith and knowledge of the Bible, many times I have had to go back and correct an assumption that I once believed to be true, but a deeper understanding has corrected that belief. In fact, if you never see a flaw in what you believe, you are not growing. Our understanding is not infallible. If we think it is, pride has blinded our eyes.
When we understand this, we should also give grace to Christian artists and song writers as they also grow. Even a slight flaw in a lyric does not mean the person is not worthy to praise God with their music.
Finally, let’s answer the last objection raised in the criticism against modern music I quoted at the beginning of this. Namely that modern churches replace choirs with a praise team and turn worship into a show where we just watch their performance.
Having grown up in a traditional Baptist church, I find this criticism ironic. When choirs sing, the congregation sits and listens to them performing the hymn. We never sang with the choir. The congregation sang a few hymns when the music minister led, and then we sat and watched the choir perform. Is that not watching the show? Just because it’s an older song doesn’t mean it’s not a concert, albeit a short one. And there were many times a guest quartet would visit the church and perform ‘acceptable’ music while the congregation sat and listened.
On the other hand, when I am in a church that has a praise band, instead of one minister of music, there are four or five of them. The congregation doesn’t sit and watch the show. The congregation becomes the choir. I look around and see hundreds of people with their hands up, singing out loud, worshiping God as a body of believers. That is not a passive group of concert watchers. The congregation becomes part of the praise team. What right do I have to say to a congregation, “You are not worshiping God properly?”
It is selfish for me to say, if it’s not my style of music, I am going to condemn and refuse to accept your worship.
This is a music preference issue, not an essential Christian doctrine to fight over. There is nothing wrong with a church singing hymns only. If that is my preference, then I should find a church with the worship style that speaks to me. If I don’t find meaning in the old style of music, then I should find a church that has a worship style that moves me. In truth, I can find meaning in both hymns and praise music. While I may prefer one style or the other, I am not bound by the music. I can still express my heart to the Lord in whatever church I find myself in.
I don’t have a right to condemn your worship preference, and you don’t have the right to condemn mine. That is a meaningless division, and at the heart, condemning others when their preference is different than mine is selfishness.
The issue is not what style of music is playing. The issue is, Am I here to worship, or customize things to my wants? Am I focusing on expressing my worship to God, or focusing on my likes and dislikes? A generation from now, the youthful music we condemn will be what this generation points to when they say, “That was worship music. This new stuff isn’t real worship.” God doesn’t prefer a specific genre of music. God calls us to worship in Spirit and Truth. This is not dependent on any style of worship.
Eddie Snipes
July 2024