Why "Worship" Music Is Mostly Crap IMHO

After years of imagining doing "worship" music I got to do it for four days straight at six different times. I enjoyed it and afterwards I couldn't help but think about why I don't like "regular" worship music, what's wrong with it or, why I think it's mostly crap. My big problem with worship music is not just the sound (as previously blogged) but the lyrical content. I used to think it was because some worship songs where theologically flimsy or that they weren't balanced with songs of lament but, if truth be told the reason I think worship music is mostly crap is because it's just not honest. When I'm singing about how I'll praise God forever or how I'm so always happy now that I've found Jesus it's just dishonest. Maybe occasional, just occasionally I might genuinely feel that, but even when I do I can look across the congregation and spot someone for whom that is simply not true. They stand there just going through the worship motions and I can't sing any more. I can't sing and imply that they should be feeling something else. Maybe this is why Hill Song type songs work so well on CD, in the privacy of your own head, or in the overwhelming noise of a concert performance. In your car you're by yourself in a concert the sound and lights are so overpowering you have no one to distract you, again essentially by yourself. Ultimately the music is projecting how we think we're supposed to feel and not how we actually feel.

For the four days a group of us sang a small handful of songs. "Carry Us Over", a song of desperation, a song where we admit constant failure "we don't know how to be sober", a song where we literally ask God to carry us. "Rise Up" a song in which we plead to God, who appears silent, to act and to "Rise Up and delver us from all who oppress us". Then in the songs "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" and "let the light of lighthouse" we remember great things done in the past (Moses and Jesus) with the reminder that God sides with the poor and oppressed. Finally we sang some ye olde gospel songs "Ain't No Grave", "Some Great Day" and "Down To River to Pray" where we sang about the hope of justice in the future. All this sang with just me on guitar and someone on drums trying to follow as we went (with no rehearsal and the occasional help from my very out of time 4 year old son). It was horribly unpolished. I like to imagine it sounded like someone who'd grabbed hold of the mic and a guitar at a crowded pub and got everyone into a sing along. It's the kind of celebration and hope filled singing that can only be done whilst you are simultaneously drowning your sorrows with a beer or two or three. I have no illusions that all there thought it was wonderful, but it felt like the seed of perhaps how things could be.

For more details on the songs see this post.