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Jan 28
James MacDonald is a pastor I’ve grown to really appreciate over the last couple years. He was at our church for our 10th Anniversary and has a thriving ministry in Chicago at Harvest Bible Chapel. Check out what he says about songs they don’t sing at their church. I think it is helpful. We need to think this way when we choose songs and plan our services.
Jan 28, 2009 @ 10:49:05
He makes a very good point about songs we do. I know I struggled with doing songs like that before, like “All I have within me I give you praise, all that I adore is in you” and “Lord, I give you my heart, I give you my soul, I live for you alone”. I would always think that though I can’t truthfully sing that every time, I can make it a desire or goal for me to think that way and ask God to help with that. However, I believe James does an amazing job with teaching worship, that they will sing songs that are who they are and not make their songs ‘religious’ Christianity, all about the motions, expectations, and how you “should feel” instead of being real.
Jan 28, 2009 @ 14:43:56
When did having churches of hundreds and even thousands of people become a good thing?
I’ve been having some trouble reconciling this in several areas of “American Christianity,” but some of the points that James Mac brought out in this video reminded me that corporate worship isn’t necessarily challenged so much by the content of a song, but rather the CONTEXT of that song. It makes sense that an individual’s offering of praise written in solitude and often inspired by very specific events, won’t always prove appropriate in a corporate context.
I have little doubt that, reflecting on his recent conversion, 16-yr old William Featherston PLEASED GOD with his words of praise as he wrote the hymn “My Jesus I Love Thee” in 1862. But I can see how having a group (of any size, I suppose) sing this song and presuming that just like William, “today is a superlative day in their walk with Christ” could be inappropriate. As an aside – I think that the repetition of “if ever I loved Thee” within this song could be singularly interpreted and doesn’t require the “more and More and MORE” concept Mac describes.
My theory is that we have seen a reaction against the previously “stoic” and “distant” nature of church music (some might used the words “reverent” and “awe-inspiring”). The “popular” worship music of today is more personal and reflective; thereby NOT as universally applied as the “song of old” that simply declared the Truths of Scripture or about God in song.
This wouldn’t be an issue in our churches but for the fact that we have become enormous masses of people meeting in huge buildings where faith is “marketed” rather than implemented in daily life… I think.
In summary – if an industry (CCM) and an institution (the “church”) weren’t so concerned about massing people together to “lead them in worship” rather than developing worshipers outside of our walls we would never need to worry ourselves with applying Scott Underwood’s personal cry for Brokenness to an entire crowd at once.
Jan 29, 2009 @ 07:05:15
I agree with Tim – I like the context comment, but also think that well-written songs will transcend their own context. although songs that try too hard to appeal to everyone everywhere are not all that useful.
I think of our own context too – I am careful with the ‘me’ songs. a quick look at the psalms and I realize they have a well-deserved place in worship, but (in my opinion) only after we lay some kind of corporate view/sense-of-God foundation.
I get where James Mac is trying to go with that, but in the end I have to trust that God will use people who think and create differently than I would. If I stuck that closely to all my ideas and opinions about worship, we’d be dangerously one-dimensional.