Since the scriptures encourage us to worship God with music—the entire book of Psalms being a good example of this—Christians worship God with music. Some of us identify music with worship so much, when they say “worship” (i.e. “the worship this morning was great!”) we mean worship music. Of course we all know that there are more ways to worship God than just with music. Prayer is worship, serving others is worship, reading bible is worship, fixing our theology is worship… pretty much anything we do in order to honor God and get closer to Him is worship. It’s just that music touches the emotions far more than most things. To most of us, we really feel that worship when we’re making music or singing. Thus music gets called “worship.”
Now, everyone is different, so not everyone gets the same emotional response from music that other Christians do. For lots of reasons: Some are hesitant about getting too emotional, either because it embarrasses them, or because they realize that we’re not to trust our emotions, and don’t feel they can make an exception for the unrestrained enjoyment of God. Some of us (like me) are too busy nitpicking the lyrics, trying to make sure that what they say about God is accurate, or has some meat to it rather than just being another Jesus-is-my-boyfriend type of song. Some of us are just plain embarrassed to be overheard singing.
What’s likely most common is that some folks just aren’t into music. Or church music, or that style of church music: They like choruses instead of hymns, or chants instead of Christian pop songs. One church I know of is trying to develop a specific “sound” for their church, and wants to avoid deviating from it because they feel that “sound” helps the people in their church worship more effectively. Maybe it does. I hope so. But some of us don’t believe every worship song should sound like U2 wrote it, and we’re free to go to other churches that believe likewise. In any case, those folks who aren’t into music are usually the ones who argue loudest, “Worship is more than just music,” and rant against using the term “worship” to just mean music. Yes, folks; we know.
We Christians need to first of all admit the point behind worship music. First of all, God loves music. I suspect some of the reason He invented time, and chooses to exist in it, is because you can’t have music without time. (Think about that.) From John’s description of heaven in Revelation, God apparently likes His music loud. (Rv 5.11-13) He may be spirit, and His “ears” may have nothing to do with soundwaves, but He appreciates that we put our creativity toward making music for Him, putting our breath and our strength into worshiping Him aloud, telling Him how awesome we consider Him, and doing so together—as harmoniously as possible.
God also loves it when we love worship music. He is not a sadist. He has no interest in it when we sing to Him out of obligation or duty or dead religion. He looks on music as something we should enjoy together. So if you don’t like your worship music, try different music. If you’re embarrassed because you don’t think you’re any good at singing, go take some lessons and get good (or at least presentably decent) at it. If you have hangups about how music makes you feel, start dealing with those hangups instead of suppressing them and the music that triggers them. One way or another, we need to learn to accommodate music in our religious lives. It’s important to God. It should become important to us.
There are many different styles of music, and many different Christians with many different tastes in music. Some of us have broad tastes; some have narrow. Some of us have broad tastes in Christian music; some have narrow. From time to time, the folks with narrow tastes in Christian music will insist that their style of music is the only style of Christian music. I’ve heard many fools insist that if music contains anything like a rock ’n’ roll backbeat, it’s not Christian, despite there being nothing in the bible explaining how to drum for God, and which rhythms are God-approved or not. I’ve also heard people preach—and totally miss the irony in it—that we shouldn’t insist on one style of music over another simply because we personally prefer that style: We should stick with the same old boring music precisely because it’s old and boring and nobody really cares to sing it, and that’s how our music can be a sacrifice to God, because we gave up fun for Him. And at the same time, we really ought to learn to love that old boring music, ’cause it’s so spiritual and theological.
Which is pretty twisted. Like I said, God is not a sadist. “Come before Him, singing with joy,” is what we find in the worship music of Psalms. (100.2) Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and anything that doesn’t produce the Spirit’s fruit is not worship. Yes, we should be patient with worship styles that aren’t necessarily our thing. Not every song we sing should immediately thump us in the soul. But every song should thump somebody in our church, and not just the worship leaders or the pastors. If the people in the church don’t enjoy the church’s music, get rid of the fruitless music.
Now, as for the content of the music. Lyrics are very important; far more important than most of us realize. A lot of Christians never bother to read their bibles, much less memorize verses, but they can easily remember the lyrics of a worship song, and they’ll actually start to develop theology based on those lyrics: Their beliefs about God will be based on the music they know. That’s why we need to make sure those lyrics are solid theology, consistent with what our church teaches and our bible shows. Many a Christian has fallen back on the hymn “Jesus loves me; this I know, for the bible tells me so,” simply because they never memorized, “All glory to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding His blood for us.” (Ju 5) And it’s fine that they memorized “Jesus Loves Me”; it’s solid theology. But God help them if they memorized “I went to the enemy’s camp and I took back what he stole from me,” (from the catchy song “Enemy’s Camp”) and conclude they’re able to defeat the devil on their own. As I recall, trying to fight a devil, without actually depending on the person of Jesus, hasn’t had the best results. (Ac 19.13-16) Like I said, our worship music should have more than just a catchy tune or clever hook. It should be enjoyable, but it should also be orthodox. It’s okay if it’s not necessarily teaching a deep truth or profound truth, but it should always be truth.
Some churches, just to make really sure all their music is biblical, sing nothing but the words of Psalms. And it’s hard to go wrong singing scripture-based music. Of course, verses can be taken out of context, and some songwriters do so all the time, and honestly don’t know any better. But more than one psalm has the words, “Sing a new song to the LORD!” in it, (Ps 96.1, etc.) and by “new” it doesn’t mean “different”; it means new. God expects us to keep writing Him music. There are never-ending things to say about how awesome God is, and there are infinite ways to say it—and sing it. There’s nothing wrong with singing old favorites, but there’s everything wrong with only singing old favorites. God wants us to grow, and one of the ways is with new songs about His latest deeds.
Because music affects our emotions so much, music can be extremely divisive in our churches. I’ve been in churches where people have left that church to follow a favorite music pastor, or have left that church because the music style changed and they didn’t like it. I used to critique them for doing so. Church is more than music, after all. But like I said, we ought to enjoy the music we use to worship God. The style should not distract us so much that we can’t focus our total attention on Him and our total love towards Him. Of course, there’s a fine line between insisting on our personal preferences over the Holy Spirit’s challenge to grow musically, or grow as a Christian, or whether our focus is really on Him and not just on favorite songs. Each of us needs to figure out whether our insistence on certain music is done out of selfishness or not. Repent when it is; otherwise you’re good. And be gracious to those who do struggle over music styles. Help them where you can, and pray for them when you can’t. But whatever you do, don’t let music get in the way of worshiping with one another—in every way we worship.