My wife likes "Worship Music" and I prefer actual hymns. I want to make my wife, my gift from God, happy but as the spiritual head of the family I feel a need to assert what the Holy Spirit tells me and I take us to the local Congregational Church were Cindy plays the piano on par with Ingrid Fliter and I'm not kidding. (Cindy, if you're reading this, yes that link is a request). Sometimes her son will play his cello in a duet with her and it's wonderful. (Yes, more Chopin and yes, another request).
The thing about classically trained worship musicians is that it's hard to tell when they get it wrong, there's maybe 4 people in our congregation who will notice if Cindy hits a clinker (she looks up at me or "Sir Richard" to see if we noticed). With a "worship band" it's sometimes hard to tell if they get it right. Don't get me wrong, there's some great, God loving, musicians out there trying to move their congregation closer to God, but their choice of music is awful, quite often they are choosing music from the Christian top 40 which sadly features spiritual drivel from a questionable source.
On occasion we will go to a Calvary Chapel church because I fully support this particular Calvary location's message and style of preaching even if their worship band isn't paying attention to their 'audience'. On one occasion the 'number' they played was a typical modern worship song meaning it had a fast tempo, some guitar solos that breakup the singing and transfer the worship of God to the worship of the guitarist, and the words of the song projected on to a screen via an overpriced PowerPoint presentation. No music annotation was provided, like one would find in a hymn book, just the words so someone unfamiliar with the that tune could only mumble along excluded from participating. The whole crowd was mostly mumbling along with the band and swaying to the rhythm. During the song a few choruses of "How Great Thou Art" were included in the piece. Everyone was suddenly included in the worship of our Heavenly Father. Voices rose and filled the huge room, loud enough to drown out the drummer
When Christ shall come with shout of acclamationWe were all there, worshiping our Father and His Son, tears of love for His perfect mercy filled each eye as we sang to his glory, but suddenly the song switched back to the "Jesus Is My Boyfriend" noise and we were excluded from the song once again because it has only been on the Top 40 charts for a few weeks and who actually knew it? Voices fell to a murmur and the once fervent worship of Christ returned to what resembled a zombie dance party again.
And lead me home, what joy shall fill my heart
Then I shall bow with humble adoration
And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art
Why can't these worship bands realize that worship music is a sing-along, save the guitar solos for the offertory. And people need to learn the music, teach them the song and offer musical notation. Pastors and deacons too need to take an actual part in the music selection and Look at the lyrics of the songs with discernment. Like Clint Eastwood did:
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