Thursday 6 June 2013

From a post on a worship forum.

Someone had started a thread with the following:

I recently overheard a conversation between two elderly ladies: "..all that twanging on the guitar, it's more about musical prowess than about worship"!

This was followed by questions about how we were seen, false judgements and what the place of musical prowess was.

I recently read Martin Smith's biography. Essentially Deliriou5? started off as a worship band that made an increasing number of 'artistic choices' because of what they were doing. They remained at heart a worship band, but also pushed the prowess and showmanship envelopes as hard as they possibly could. I don't think Martin has any trouble with his conscience about it, and many many people loved what they did, yet depending on the heart of the observer they could have been either incredibly gifted or blatant showmen.

Purely as an observation, I find that the songs which have endured from that creative stream were those written in the earliest days as Cutting Edge - Lord you have my heart, did you feel the mountains tremble - etc. rather than the later material. Make of that what you will, and others may feel differently

From some of the discussions on that particular forum it could be seen that for some, musical prowess is next to godliness (there had been a suggestion by one person that if you didn't use a click track live then you were dishonouring God with poor precision) while for others it is a small part of what is required. It is important that we are careful about our hearts in this, but also that we have our eyes and ears (and hearts) open to see the effect that what we do is having on people. Worship should go much deeper than whether we filled the hall/sanctuary/auditorium with people that waved their hands in the air and sang in the Spirit. We need to consider whether it spills over into their every day lives and how it enable or prevents them from finding ways of worshiping God personally.

Now I have certain perspectives about this, that simplicity and slight inadequacy among the worship team are much better for corporate worship than burgeoning talent. Is worship about doing what we want, how we want - would you ever say (or think) that a particular time of worship failed to meet your needs? It would be good to consider whether corporate worship is like an evangelistic rally where hundreds of people respond but very few actually go on anywhere afterward, or whether it is the coming together for lives that have focused on God during the rest of the week, and a source of inspiration to press on deeper into Him in the next week.

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