[This post is part of a series on Leading Your Team & Congregation Through Worship Tensions. Check out the rest here.]
I’ve been to many churches throughout the years and have seen both sides of this.
At one church you have robust, theological songs and hymns, sung by people who look like they’re being tortured.
In other churches you have intimate love songs sung by people who are falling all over the place.
Though I kid, ever so slightly, it’s true. Churches seem to favor one or the other. Some say the mind is key – singing truth about God is the most important. Others focus more on passion and say it’s our response to God that matters most. Whether or not we have deep theological content in our songs isn’t what matters.
Which is better? Proper theology or personal response? Is it possible to have both?
Allow me to present characteristics for both.
Proper Theology (the mind)
- encourages singing right things about God
- songs centered on objective truth rather than subjective feelings
- encourages knowledge of Christ
- focuses on the mind
- educational
Personal Response (the will)
- encourages engagement & an act of the will
- songs centered on our response in worship
- encourages intimacy with Christ
- focuses on physical actions
- experiential
Rather than disclose an easy answer here, let’s discuss. Our answer may surface in the comments.
So what do you say? Does your worship focus more on the mind or the will? Which should we emphasize more? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
I think that worship involves both, let me explain. Worship I believe starts off in the mind it is a conscious effort… We have to first make a decision to sing. Once we have made the decision to sing ( assuming that we said yes) I then make another choice to move my singing from my head to my heart and soul and at that point is where I think the transition is made from singing to worship.
I like your description, Noah. Good stuff. Do you think you focus more on the mind or the will when you worship?
Yes, you can have both for sure! I know I write some songs that start the verses with proper theology…and at the chorus or bridge we give our response either in an act or just simply giving God glory and worthiness of it all!
You can also, sing one song through on theology and the next song give a personal response…
You have to have both!…in my opinion…Theology should always come first! To me it makes it easier for the audience to respond to a God you just talked about doing the impossible and how there is no one like him…make sense?…
Yea, good stuff. Which would you say you emphasize more in your worship leading?
lol. the theology…
It drives us to respond…
when you sing about an awesome, amazing God with power to do the impossible and how great He is, you just can’t help but worship…you know? The responding…because natural….it flows…
Well, the correct answer would be balance… If we sing songs that are not doctrinally sound, that is wrong… it all has to have balance.
Also, when writing songs or even singing them- you can’t write based on assumptions people have told you. You have to open the Bible yourself and let God speak to you.
I wrote a post about this a few days ago…http://bigb94.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/did-jesus-sweat-drops-of-blood/
Nice post, Brandon!
If I had to say that I focus on one or the other I would almost always lean towards the will. Yeah I would say the will.
Both. I find it nearly impossible to sing a theological TRUTH without that invoking an EMOTIONAL and often PHYSICAL response.
Some people I’ve talked to get turned off by worship songs or hymns that are too theological. They don’t have the big melody and lyrical simplicity. I agree with you, when I hear theological truth it makes me want to worship. What would you say to the person who struggles with it?
I can understand folk that have that response, however I don’t think that theological songs must always be so complex. I have also heard many experiential type songs that seem to have a load of complicated lyrics that take folk so long to get used to, often resorting to just absently listening instead of participating. My hope as a leader would be that folk would be able to engage in worship, in spirit and in truth. I look for songs that are grounded in theological truths but are still simple enough lyrically (maybe even with a big melody) so folk can catch on quickly. And I agree with Fred in saying that I find singing theological truth invokes that personal response.
Great point. Love it. What are some of your favorite songs that reflect this?
Jesus is the Word. If you can’t find a way to connect to the heavier theological songs, you have to fall in love with the Word. When you are at that point, the songs don’t even matter. The Word is what begins to resonate with the music and your heart. You also begin to see more lines of songs directly transcribed from scripture. It is beautiful.
Well…
…what about you use the music for experiential response and a decent, thought-through liturgy for the proper theology?
(This does require that the music group leader and the pastor have a working relationship, but it can be done)
Good point, James. I like your idea.
The two can’t be mutually exclusive. It’s not about balance, it’s about having both. Right words with no heart isn’t worship. And great heart with nice sounding but wrong lyrics are dangerous – it may be worship, but they may describe God in completely wrong ways – so they aren’t worship God, they are worshipping a made-up idealized deity that only exists in their head.
My heart breaks when I hear lies in worship songs because a song writer didn’t take them time to study the Scriptures he/she is singing about. Worship songs need to be true and need to encourage personal response.
Side note: It doesn’t have to sound like a hymn or the Kings James Version of the bible to be theologically sound.
Good stuff, Dave. As a songwriter, it’s really easy to settle upon a singable lyric that may not be biblically sound. It’s usually what comes out first. I find I need to work on my lyrics to push them to the next level theologically. Know what I mean?
If I’m honest I think I would say that I probably lean more towards the “heart” than the “theology” in songs (of course, I think I have balance, but for the sake of discussion…).
In my mind, one of the greatest challenges facing us as leaders who want to help the people in our churches become more faithful and holistic disciples of Jesus is the very universal human trait that I will call, “we do what we want” (clever, eh?). Or to paraphrase Thomas Cranmer, what our hearts desire, our wills choose and our minds justify. The challenge of the worship leader week after week is to soften the hearts of the people and to do our part (in unity with the Spirit) to lead people to desire God; to love him more than our sin/selfishness.
That’s not to say that theology/doctrine in song isn’t important, after all a soft heart for a false God is not God-honoring worship, but I think in a lot of ways it’s kind of a non-issue because I can’t say that I’ve ever come across a mainstream worship song that I could honestly say has “bad theology”. With the majority of churches I know (my own included) adhering, more or less, to what is found on CCLI’s top 100, there just isn’t a lot of bad theology making its way through the ranks. Sure there is theology that I may not want to “agree” with, or theology that fails to express the whole picture of truth, but what song/theology really can sum up all that God is, with all of the tensions and paradoxes kept in check.
If I may be as bold as to say that a lot of times, what we label as “bad theology” is really just a preference? I remember one time sitting on a panel at a bible college with a bunch of other worship pastors/worship leaders and someone asked the question about how important theology in songs is to us. This lead to all the usual suspects being brought to task (the main one being “Draw Me Close”). And all of the usual comments were being made about how “the song doesn’t once mention God… It could be about anyone” etc. That’s not a theological issue, that is a songwriting preference. Afterwards I was talking with one of my worship leader friends about it and I asked him if he could name a song with bad theology. Off the top of his head he said “Undignified”. I said “what’s bad about the theology in that one, the idea is based on (I assume) David dancing for joy before the Lord after the ark was returned. After pushing him mo on it, he concluded that he just didn’t like the song. That is very different than it having bad theology. In the end, he couldn’t think of one either.
I think, for whatever reason, that we feel like it’s not enough to say “I don’t really like this song, therefore I won’t teach it to my congregation”, and so we come up with the “bad theology” argument to give credence to our preference. Again, I’m not saying that theology isn’t important, I guess what I’m saying is that perhaps we talk about it more than it’s worth because it isn’t as prevenlent an issue as we might want to think (in the realm of mainstream worship… I can’t vouch for the theology in the song written by your second cousin, Ben who lives in middle-of-nowhere Saskatchewan (no hate meant towards Saskatchewan)). Instead let’s talk about why we like/don’t like songs or what makes a song work/not work without distracting ourselves with the red herring of “bad theology”.
Anyways, that’s why I tend to focus more on the heart of worship (it also helps that I have a good working relationship with my Pastor, like James said, to help ensure weekly balance between heart and mind).
All that being said, I am probably wrong, but have any of you come across songs that you would actually say as having “wrong theology”, and if so, what were they?
Sorry for being so long-winded 🙂
Hey Shawn, that’s really thoughtful comment. IMO some songs have a weaker emphasis on theological truths about God and a heavier emphasis on what the singer is experiencing. One of those songs in a set might be awesome, but a whole set of them leads to weak spiritual formation, IMO.
Hey Rob, I agree. There is a place for both. All about us and our response (especially without anything painting the picture of what/who we are responding to) leads to the kind of selfishness that leads to worship wars (no snark intended). I think Fred (previous commenter) offers some good balance in his comment that truths about God can lead to emotional response. At the end of the day, though, even in the affirmation of deeper theological truths I am hoping to affect the heart so as to inspire the kind of desire for God that leads to faithfulness and obedience. But, you’re right, to just sing about what we’re experiencing is fairly short-sighted when it comes to spiritual formation (plus it’s boring…).
I guess if there is one thing I would want to bring to this conversation (not that this is my conversation to hijack) is to move us past the self-congradulatory back-patting (not from any of you, let’s just be clear…) into a more in depth conversation about the issue. Again, I don’t think we need to worry about heresy or bad theology in our songs (as I said before), but maybe how high and wide are we going with all of the theological truths that we could be singing about, because he diversity of what we should be singing about is so vast (God’s love, God’s justice, God’s grace, being the church and caring for the world, the cross, confession of sin/need, etc…). Perhaps singing songs that approach one facet of God’s truth (no matter how deep) is just as short-sighted as singing songs all about our experience.
Gah! Another long one. And thanks for the Fantastic Four reference!
Good stuff Shawn. Love your approach “I am hoping to affect the heart so as to inspire the kind of desire for God that leads to faithfulness and obedience.”
Yea, I think a worthy goal is to inspire a God-ward life response. That takes head and heart. Write on dude.
Interesting perspective, Shawn. That is quite the comment 🙂 I think the larger issue may be the “man centeredness” of our songs. We sing more about our own worship and passion than we do about the Savior. Worship becomes more about our response than about magnifying Jesus. Anybody else wanna chime in?
That is truth. Songs that have too many, “I, me, my, or we” is a good indicator that some balanced theology is missing. It may be evidence that we are making God in our image. Then, we aren’t really worshipping God, we are worshipping an idol or ourselves. This is too common in American Christianity. This is a call to writing from the Word or through inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The remedy is to get our eyes off ourselves when we are writing and gaze on the throne.
Ah worship wars, my favorite subject … the way you present the “sides” is excellent. I would agree with the other commenters that it is “both/and” regarding theology (mind) and response (will). Tensions come from the degree of emphasis placed on either end of the spectrum. A little grace can go a long way, but people know what they like and don’t like, and the “worship” either connects with them or it doesn’t.
Worship tensions are pretty complex animals. Maybe a helpful principle is to strive for faithfulness to the objectives of scripture rather than “balance”. Tensions arise over decisions made regarding content, style and structure using mostly subjective perceptions.
I prefer to be “flame on” for the word and “flame on” for the spirit. (Go Fantastic Four!)
Wise as always, my friend. So do you place more emphasis on theology?
Maybe, but I don’t frame worship planning/leading this way.
My deal is to encourage wholehearted worship. And it must be oriented in proper theology, which is all about truth. So – some songs do not make the cut if I’m picking them cause they’re too much about “my experience of worship”.
However, some other songs don’t make the cut that are excellent theologically, but they hurt my head – way too many words. One theological treatise per set is plenty for me.
This answer should make both sides unhappy. 🙁
For what it’s worth, that actually makes me pretty happy 🙂
Can you give any examples for both of those cases, Rob?
I agree, Rob. I try and utilize one theologically rich song per set, whether a hymn or a “modern” hymn. Thanks for the discussion guys. Deep stuff 🙂
Not to be harsh, though I’m not apologizing, but if we aren’t singing theologically accurate songs, no matter how passionate we are, we are singing lies about Jesus. Theology isn’t about academia, it is about the revelation of Jesus. We cannot separate the two. As I have told many, just because you are passionate it doesn’t make you right.
Well put.
I hear what you are saying about the I, Me , We songs-however I will point out that Many hymns that you would probably categorize as “good theology” also use these words somewhat liberally: I assume “amazing grace” is an aduaquate song for people like yourself. Some lyrics to consider from the hymn: “I” once was lost-but know “Im” found was blind but now…(wait for it) I——– see. These songs and other classics are guilty as charged. Theology is important but maybe we should spend less time critiquing the songs and more time investigating where are hearts are when we should be entering into worship. I’ve been a worship leader for 20 years and this discussion is usually propagated by the most legalistic and cynical people in our churches. Give it a rest people!! We’re is the love? The grace towards these songwriters. Who ever made up the mandate that a song has to be heavily theological in the first place?? Lighten up people please! Let the theologians write their books and allow the artist to create. Nobody who is in Christ would intentionally write a song with “bad theology” I’ve heard this argument for years-it’s always from people who prefer traditional or the newer describer”classic” worship. This argument is getting old, and do
Is your pipe organ!!
Hey Brian, appreciate your passion. Sounds like you’ve encountered some difficult people! I can understand your frustration, but all the same, I still feel it’s important to challenge worship songwriters to know their theology. Sure, there’s a place for artists to create from their heart -absolutely! But if you are writing songs for corporate worship, you need a wise, pastoral, theological filter on what you’re writing for people to sing. Thanks for your insight!
I totally hear what you’re saying. But the way we are wired, music takes hold in our heart easier than Scripture. I’m not saying we have to be perfect with this, but we can’t be anything less than diligent.
Being diligent sounds like a license to
Be hyper critical to me:) I don’t buy it! I have a degree in theology. Theology is important for sure but too many people use theology as a weapon used to critique music In worship. Usually this is just a weak front hiding the fact that the person who is holding the argument has issues with intimacy with God and usually struggles with negativity in general
I’m going to have to agree with you on the first part. As far as being diligent, I meant that for ourselves, not when we evaluate someone else’s work. I agree, it can lead to a critical spirit which is never ok. I also would add that it is rare to have someone with a degree in divinity and has perfect theology AND be a great songwriter, worship leader and musician. We really can only be great at one thing and excellent with everything else. I don’t know. I feel like I’m rambling. Hope I’m making sense.