FFM 2007 - Worship Tangent

When I woke up this morning, made some coffee in our little stove-top coffee maker thingy. Somehow the coffee is that much richer (and stronger!) than making it in the sleek gadgety type coffee maker. Why is that? Whatever the case, the coffee and some time meditating in front of the glow of my ibook brought me back to some thoughts from yesterday: Perhaps the answer becomes this: each congregation, each grouping of Christians needs to find authentic, honest ways in which to express worship - whether in song, in painting, sculpture, drama, and most especially in the realities of everyday life. Not that we can advocate, wholesale, the writing of local worship songs, but I wonder if this isn't a good idea? I wonder how the congregation's ownership and recognition of itself in the songs that have been written affect the ways in which worship is channeled, expressed, etc. With the rise of the Christian recording industry, the professionalization and outsourcing of worship has gone to a whole new level. We now rely on Hillsongs, Delirious, Downhere, or Jeremy Camp, amongst others, to lead us into worship. But how true are these songs to our own witness and experience of God? Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. I suppose it's always a little hit-or-miss. That being said, if I hear or am forced to play "The Happy Song" one more time, I might scream. My hope and my desire - not only for the band of which I'm a part, but also for other worship bands, leaders, etc. out there - is that we can start to listen to the voices in our congregations. I think that this has a lot to do with our call as worship leaders - we need to be people in tune with the lives of this within the congregation, with the struggles, hardships, joys and ecstasies that we all face, and be able to help one another take those things to God in our expression of worship. Somedays, and in some parts of the service, that may look more like lament than joyful exhuberance, but then, that would be a little more honest to our own situations. If such things were expressed in our own words, out of our own context. Well, that would be music to my ears.