Manly Worship or Not?

I watched this video from an interview with Matt Redman. If you’ve spent any time speaking with me or Pastor Sean about worship music, you’ll know that we both hold a particular dislike for what we call “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs. What we mean by that is there are worship songs out there that people have written that are so vague and covered in metaphor that you could play it on a secular radio station and people would call it a love song. So the only thing that makes it a love song to Jesus is the intent of the heart in the person singing it. Otherwise it is unidentifiable as a worship song particularly.

Here’s a portion of an interview with Matt Redman. In case you don’t know him, he has written many of the songs we sing in our church – Blessed Be Your Name, Better is One Day, You Never Let Go, Facedown, Let My Words Be Few, etc. He brings up a point that I found interesting about worship music that is even overtly for worship. My question to you is do you agree with his statements?

Retreat Weekend

I want to thank those of you who prayed for us as we went on our Worship Team Retreat this weekend. The retreat was a big success. We joined together with other worship teams and leaders from around Colorado at Agape Outpost in Breckenridge for a time of refreshing with the Lord. Every now and then it is nice to be the ones sitting in the crowd worshiping with no other responsibilities except exalting Him. And we did. I cannot speak for every member of the praise team, but for me it was a special time with the Lord during those corporate worship times where at moments my heart wanted to explode out of my chest in praise. Thank you so much for allowing us to have this time of refreshing with the Lord

Obviously there are things we learned, and there were things that were a confirmation for us that we are doing things well. One thing that was reinforced in me this weekend is that, while we might play the instruments and sing into microphones, the entire congregation is the worship team. The song that you bring in your heart every week is what makes Sunday morning worship an experience instead of a service. The band members could sing and play their hearts out, but if everyone else’s hearts aren’t worshiping Jesus, those are the Sundays when you walk away saying things like, “The worship wasn’t that great,” or, “I didn’t get anything out of it,” or, “The sermon really didn’t speak to me.” It goes without saying that if we play and sing the music poorly, yes, the worship won’t be “that great,” and the blame could be laid squarely at the feet of yours truly for not doing my job. But to get to my point, corporate worship will only be as “good” as the hearts of the people who are in attendance. So with that in mind, remember that each of us contribute to the whole of the worship on Sunday morning. Your private times of worship during the week (private worship deserves its own blog entry) are what makes your corporate worship contribution valuable. Do nothing during the week, you’ll bring nothing to the corporate worship on Sunday.

So let me encourage each of you to bring your sacrifice of praise with you on Sunday mornings. A sacrifice of worship that you have been gathering all week in your personal times with God. What an awesome time of worship we could have together if we all came with an offering in our hearts; an offering that gains its substance from our time spent with God and our loving obedience to Him throughout the week.