This is an article on Biblical Worship I wrote that was recently posted in Lucid Magazine. Read more at www.lucidmagazine.com/Biblical-Worship

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Douglas and Marvin awoke today to the frantic shuffling of their mother and aunt dragging their bed across the dirt floor of their 8′X10′ home in the rain forest of El Salvador. As water cascaded across the floor, now mud, they desperately tried to push it out of the house before it washed away the mud walls. This is an every day occurrence for them.

Months ago, their uncle and mother’s boyfriend were building this home on abandoned property so that they could have a place of their own. In the process, the uncle was shot and murdered by members of the MS-13 gang. Soon after the boyfriend split, and Douglas and Marvin were left with an unfinished house and more desperation for someone to come through and fight on their behalf.

I know this because I stood in their home. I watched their mother weep. I watched the family’s reaction to the tragedy that is their reality. And yet, in the midst of all their sorrow and suffering, I watched them smile and laugh and beam with joy because there is a hope for them that they hadn’t known two years ago. The hope of Jesus Christ.

Two years ago, Compassion International adopted this family into a project that God would use to meet their physical, mental, spiritual and emotional needs. We’ve come to their home because we’ve heard that they have no food and we are called to meet the need. We’ve come to be Jesus to them. But I think they were more Jesus to us.

Months ago, I was reading Matthew 25:31-46 and was utterly undone. My entire understanding of the Gospel and Christianity was so backwards. I’m a worship pastor. I travel all over the country to teach people through song and hopefully bring them to a place where they engage in worship with a holy and mighty God who loved them and gave Himself up for them.

But it’s really easy to give your life for a ministry that will give you something in return. To love and teach and serve people who will love you back. To worship through songs. But I’ve come to realize that songs are our smallest expression of worship. What does Jesus say to his people in Amos 5 when they come around singing without having loved justice and mercy and taking care of the helpless people that Jesus loves? “Get away from me with your NOISE! I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT!”

God really started doing something in me about a year and a half ago in showing me that true worship IS a life of justice and mercy. A life spent for the glory of Christ in loving Him. And what is loving Him but obedience? Feeding the hungry and poor. Visiting the prisoner and clothing the naked. What really messed me up is the question, “If this is true worship and I’m a worship leader, what am I even doing here? Is God even pleased with the worship I bring Him?”

I am finding that God is a lot less concerned with our songs and a lot more concerned with our lives; a lot less concerned with what I do on stage and a lot more concerned with what I do off stage. God is concerned with the needs of His broken people across the Earth who He died to purchase. These needs should be met by our hands and our words and our wallets.

I would encourage the church to dig down deep into the dark hidden places of our soul and invite the Lord to shine the spotlight of His holiness on all the places He would do things differently. To really begin to ask Him if He is satisfied with our worship. Are we content to simply sing songs on Sunday when God is saying, “I desire that You would act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Me!”?

How can we as a church begin to really effect change in the millions of lives across this planet who live in utter poverty and hopelessness? How can we tangibly meet the need so that the Gospel is more than words? How can we love Christ in the least of these?

Answer that question, and begin to live that answer and I believe we will recover biblical worship that pleases the heart of God.

I have always had this ideal that, as worship leaders, we ought to be writing our own songs as an expression of our own priesthood for our own context.  Think about it… if our church pastor was always and only preaching other pastor’s sermons, the people of the church would stand up and have something to say about it!   Sure there is room for learning from, drawing from and even citing other people’s ideas.  Even the great hero of the faith, Charles Spurgeon said, “He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves he has no brains of His own.”  We would be a little presumptuous and pompous to say that the only songs that we will use to lead the church in worship are songs that we write.  But I do think there is a balance of original and already written material that we should be working toward as we lead our churches in worship.

As we are writing, I think we can take a really good lesson from the hymns.

Some “creative artist types” bust on hymns because hymns are old or outdated and artists want to create and not take from something that’s already been done. Or they feel hymns are too wordy, or they all sound alike. Whatever the reason is, some people just don’t connect with hymns.

At the same time, “hymn elitist people” bust on modern pop worship music because it’s so generic and everything sounds the same - failing to see that the same generalization could be made about the hymns. Or that often it’s not saying anything but shallow non-doctrine, or it’s too repetitive.  Whatever the reason is, some people just don’t connect with modern worship music.

Both camps totally skew to the direction that fits their personality and preference, which is both incredibly lazy and irresponsible as a worship leader.

Hymns are incredible.  They have been a foundation and heritage of the modern church, and for great reason! They teach thick theology and connect with people at a deep level.  But if you forsake all popular worship music that is connecting with the church all over the world for the sake of hymn-driven ideology, you are depriving your church of some gems.

While it does often seem like there is a drought of theologically and doctrinally deep modern worship, it is there if you look hard.  Whether you like it or not, there are some modern worship songs that are still being written to this day that are quite incredible and thick in theology, and if you default only to the hymns because you don’t want to do the hard work of finding them, your church is missing out.  At the same time, if you disdain the hymns because they’re outdated, you also deprive your church of its heritage, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

But here is an interesting observation I’ve had.  I have found that hymns and good pop music (the musical foundation of a good modern worship song) share very similar attributes (they are a lot less different than you’d think) because hymns were basically the pop songs of their day, and well-written pop hasn’t changed a lot over time.

1.  A well-written hymn is melodically singable and repetitive as well as incredibly memorable and catchy, making its intense lyrical structure seem less burdensome. In the same way, a well-written pop songs is melodically memorable, repetitive and catchy.

2.  A well-written hymn focuses on one subject, is incredibly well thought through lyrically, and has vivid story telling imagery.  One can feel what the writer was feeling when he or she wrote it.  In the same way, a well-written pop song is well thought through and lyrically consistent.  The listener (and in our case singer) will not only internalize information, but also feel what the writer is feeling, often identifying with them.

3.  A well-written hymn focuses in on a very real human condition and its solution, creating a tension, and resolution.  It is not about something people don’t care about.  It is about something that is on people’s minds often… Sin, salvation, loss, hope, and love are common themes.  If you really think about it, a good pop song is very similar, just without the gospel.  So instead of sin being the problem, the problem focuses in on an effect of sin.  Both are very common issues that are on people’s minds and hearts.  Well thought through songs will address issues that people are dealing with, so that they connect in a tangible way.

So as we set out as worship artists to write music for the church, we should think about these things:

• Write with the church in mind.  As you consider melody lines, ask yourself, “Is this melody singable, memorable and catchy?  Will I be essentially re-teaching it to the congregation every time we sing it, or will they automatically recognize it next time?” **A good test for this is if you catch yourself humming it all the time, while doing random tasks.**

• As you consider lyrical content, ask, “Is this lyrically consistent about one topic, or is it jumping around too much from topic to topic?  What life tension is this addressing and how do I present the Gospel as its answer? Is it theologically and doctrinally accurate and weighty, or is it shallow?” **Some accountability in this area is always helpful.**

When you get these elements right, they are translatable across all musical genres.  You can strip a great song down to acoustic, or piano and organ, or full orchestra with choir, or a 4 piece rock band; heck it can be a banjo, sitar and a didgeridoo for all I care (though I wouldn’t recommend it).  The key is molding and shaping the skeletal structure of your modern worship music to be strong and accessible, both melodically and lyrically. The musical and contextual flesh that goes on that structure is up to you.

This is no easy task.  If it were, everyone would be writing #1 hit songs all the time; there would really be no sacrifice involved.  But there is sacrifice involved.  It takes practice and hard work.  No matter how much talent a pitcher is born with, he isn’t going to be the starting pitcher in the World Series without practicing.  Michael Phelps hasn’t won gold medal after gold medal by just pure genetics and raw talent.  It took work and practice.  Song writing is no different, so don’t get discouraged and quit if your first song isn’t incredible…or your three thousandth song isn’t amazing!  I still write a song a day and at least 355 of them in a given year will never be heard by a single person because frankly, they suck.

The key is, no matter how hard of work it is, we must write.  I want to encourage you to get alone with God and let the Creative Genius create something new in you that He wants His bride thinking on, dwelling on, and singing.  One cannot manufacture intimacy with God, and songs that are written apart from that fellowship will reek of selfish kingdom building.  But if we write from the overflow of our intimacy with Him, He will flood forth new songs for our generation and many to come… And friends, I really hope that happens.

There is this term that I use a lot lately to describe my role within the church: worship artist. It can be seen as a bit derogatory to some because it may appear to cheapen the pastoral side of the worship leader’s role. But when we set out to create expressions of worship through song, we are creating art. Art with a purpose. Art that shepherds the intellects and emotions of the people of God into worship. I can think of no cooler honor than to be an artist with this role. But it is not without its tough points.

As a worship artist, I am constantly experiencing this tension between making art and being pastoral with that art. My calling as a worship pastor is partly to be writing music that communicates biblical truth, teaches and expands the church’s view of who God is, and inspires the soul to worship Him rightly. Yet there is still this need to be creative with it and satisfy the need that God has put inside me as an artist. It’s this crazy tension that is sometimes incredibly hard to balance, and I don’t think I’m the only one who experiences this.

I was recently engaged in quite a cool conversation with a sculptor I just met, on the topic of art and the tension between practicality and art for art’s sake. As an artist, this is a pretty tough tension because there is always this desire to create and innovate and be unique, but if you are always creating things that no one can enjoy, is there really a point? Is it selling out to focus your creative attention on meeting the felt needs of the people you are trying to reach? Certainly there are extremes to both…

As I began to look at some of his art, I noticed a couple of pieces of women holding babies and things like that and made a comment, “You must stay busy,” to which he responded, “Why do you say that?” I simply explained that His art is very practical and that there is probably a demand for it, then likened it to pop music that appeals to a large audience. There will always be a demand for practical art, because it meets a felt need of a large demographic. As we were talking, he made quite a shocking statement that has really has caused me to think a lot lately, and evaluate how this should impact my ministry as a worship artist.

He said, “Art for art’s sake is… selfish and serves no purpose.”

I don’t completely agree with the statement, but I think what truth that it does communicate has a lot of implications, because as an artist, I don’t want to just be this guy that sounds like everything else that’s out there. I want to do something different. But where’s the line between innovative and selfish? Between creative and egocentric? The reason this is such an important question to ask is that my primary role as a worship leader is not a creative role, but rather a pastoral one. What is going to meet the people I’m trying to pastor where they are and bring them along? What is going to be most effectively used to teach them the attributes of God and expand their view of Him so that they can worship Him rightly? Is it going to be through cool art? Partially… but so much more. If I, as a worship pastor, have what I perceive to be the coolest songs in the world and yet it serves no purpose but to be cool art because no one else gets it, it’s pointless.

And yet we can take it too far the other direction too, making it completely focused on what would meet people where they are, and never being creative with it. Then you get all these shallow, pointless songs that aren’t really saying anything. I would go so far as to say that this gives Jesus a bad name because it doesn’t show the creative side of God that we were created to display when He made us in His image.

I am praying that God would raise up worship artists in my day. Men and women who write really great, artistically creative worship music that tells the amazing story of Christ’s birth, perfect life, cross and resurrection, and all it’s implications for redemption, hope, glory and eternity. Songs thick with theology and doctrine that connect both intellectually AND emotionally with the church all over the world. Not art for art’s sake. Not just this selfish, incoherent vomiting up of ideas into melody that don’t make sense, but sound cool. But rather, art that has purpose and conviction. Art that serves the church and it’s people. Art that helps accomplish the sanctification of God’s people, bought by His blood. He created us to create and made us a royal priesthood. Our forefathers understood this concept and left us with a foundational legacy for the modern church: hymns. But they have passed on the baton to us, and we can be the hymn writers of our day. Will we rise to the occasion and leave a bright foundational legacy for our children?

I am praying so.