IS THIS THE END OF THE WORSHIP FAD?

Please bear with me here. The first half of what I have to say is going to be extremely uncomfortable, perhaps discouraging, and no doubt controversial. Those of us who are musicians have a very personal, and might I add, just as importantly, professional stake in the current heyday of music-as-worship. But I promise that if you stay with me, I have some words of encouragement on the other side.

For the past decade or more, “worship,” defined as the congregational music time, has enjoyed a heyday, but I sense that the popularity of worship, as we know it, is crashing to a halt. The evidence is all around that tells me The Sunday Morning Show is going the same way as the hula-hoop, the wethead, the dry look, pet rocks, and moon shoes. Bear with me, and I will tell you some of that evidence.

How We Got Here
A bit of history first. Peaking in the 1970s, evangelicals seemed to be incapable of anything that did not primarily emphasize evangelism, including worship. Songs that otherwise focused on the attributes and actions of God had to be turned in the direction of the lost: “Oh, friend, do you know Him?” was the final stanza of seemingly every chorus written in the early 1970s. (see my thesis) Youth ministers were the second staff hired, and church growth movement provided the buzzwords for believers.

Then came the worship fad. Evangelicals discovered the concept of singing of the attributes and actions of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, without having to tack a guilt-inducing invitation on the end, and the worship craze was underway. This trend coincided with the Boomer generation coming of age and setting a new direction for the church. The second member of a church planting team was most often a worship leader, and the number of full-time worship ministries has multiplied in the last two decades.

There are signs that it is over, and that perhaps quickly we will see it come to the ground. The next generation will not be as interested in either evangelism (as we have known it) or worship (as we now know it). A new generation will soon be seeking a new agenda. I’m not saying that worship songs will become as rare as a secondary dominant chord in a Top-100 Worship Songs collection, but I am predicting worship ministry’s loss of favored status.

Ironically, this trend is happening just as many of our churches are awakening to musical worship. My apologies to those churches who are in such a state, but please bear with me, and you may be warned of what may lie ahead.

What’s Wrong with “Worship?”
Here is the fatal flaw of the current “fad” of musical worship: Experiential-based faith, shored up by experiential-based worship, is destined to fall. I mean, how many times can you sing to an Invisible Being the words, “I want to see you, touch you, feel you near to me,” and not have it start to sound hollow after a while? The songs used to make (or help) us feel close to God. Music was the sacrament of this generation, in that music was what ushered in the mysterious presence of God. But a indisputable supernatural encounter never actually happened, physically. So it has begun to dawn on many that continuing to sing such songs is becoming shallow, almost mocking the very words that were being sung. In our top-down Sunday morning show, God has twelve minutes to show up, and then we move on, ready or not.

The ironies of The Worship Fad are all around us.

Perhaps the herald of the beginning of the end of the worship fad is the irony of the use of the song, “The Heart of Worship.” Of all things, we sing it, and have multiple well-rehearsed instrumentalists and scripted singers and pre-set slides projected on the wall, all to say that worship is more than music.

Or, maybe even more telling, is the fact that tomorrow morning I am leading a so-called worship set in which a group of musicians will join me in leading us all in some songs about grace.

And what’s with “worship concerts?” We have “worship musicians” selling pricey tickets for people to come and “worship,” meaning listen and perhaps participate along with the music. The musicians are celebrities, and they sell tee-shirts and they personally autograph CDs (just like the apostle Paul did) and coffee mugs with their names and pictures on them. Sooner or later, this commercialization of a very narrow definition of worship is bound to come crashing down.

You say, “Oh, yes, we have discovered that there’s more to worship than music. At my church, we have a liturgical dance team and a drama ministry, we often show video clips, and once we even had a painter create a work during the sermon.”

Can you see that such expansion of our very narrow definition of worship is still rooted in the performing arts? You may have put off the inexorable boredom or disillusionment by perhaps five years, but I expect that all worship that is solely dependent on the performing arts is also destined eventually to come crashing down in the near future.

What we sometimes have called worship renewal is really a rebirth of the arts. It is still driven by performance-based programs. So, of course, I am not heralding the end of worship per se, but the end of the Sunday Morning Show.

Witnesses of the End of an Era?
Is the paid ministry the main culprit? What does a minister do? Shepherd, or administer? Every airline in America has struggled financially, especially since the crisis in late 2001. But they were going bankrupt before airline use dropped dramatically, largely because they had become top-heavy structures that were too expensive to maintain. For every pilot in the air, there were two in retirement, still receiving benefits from the company. For every person at the counter working with travelers, there were two in upper management, generating paperwork and layers of red tape. Only the new, lean startup airlines with low overhead have avoided bankruptcy. In the same way, churches have become top-heavy machines, whose purpose seems to be to perpetuate their own programs. House churches and other emergent churches seem much more efficient and somehow more authentic. I mean, when the man who tells you that the Bible says you should tithe to the local church is receiving his salary from that church, it smacks a bit of self-serving conflict of interests.

I have a friend in his 40s who is the worship leader of a large church out west who wonders if he can continue with the kind of pressure that he lives under every week until retirement age. He is seriously considering finding a small church and preaching for a little group of people, where he administers less and ministers more.

I have another friend in his 30s who was a successful worship leaders of one of the largest churches in the brotherhood. It is a seeker-driven church, and the pressure on him was to watch Saturday Night Live every Saturday night of his life, and to listen to top-40 radio in order to keep his finger on the pulse of secular culture. When his children came along, somehow it seemed wrong to explain how daddy had to watch R-rated movies to do the work of Jesus. He has left the paid ministry and is living a peaceful life in a small town now.

Another friend in his 20s has been leading worship at a high-impact church plant. He has been designated as an up-and-coming church planter himself. But somehow doing the high-risk, high-impact church with a Sunday Morning Show has disillusioned him. He has concluded that he would rather open a coffee shop and start a small group in his home.

Another friend recently graduated, and could be hired by any number of churches as a worship leader. But his heart is in being part of an emergent church in an urban area. He suspects that he might never receive a salary from a church, or for that matter, ever make much money doing something else for a living, but he will be able to live with his conscience.

All of these conversations with friends have happened in the last few months. They leave me wondering if we are beginning to experience a disenchantment of music-driven worship ministry.

My friend and colleague, Gary Gregory, teaches a course in the Theology of Worship at CCU. The other day, because we were talking about these matters, he asked his class to brainstorm a list of their worship values. They then compared it to Robert Webber’s list in The Younger Evangelicals (p.189) and they mentioned most everything on the list. Only one person said anything about music. And this was a class full of musicians. Interesting. Here is Webber’s list:
a genuine encounter with God
a genuine community
depth and substance
more frequent and meaningful experience of Communion
challenging sermons and more use of Scripture in worship
participation
creative use of the senses; visual (our students did not mention this)
quiet, characterized by the inclusion of contemplative music and times for quiet personal reflection and intimate relationship with God
a focus on the transcendence and otherness of God

Obligation does not work as a motivator anymore. A generation ago, good Christians went to church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, to Bible study or prayer meeting on Wednesday night, and the really dedicated ones came to Tuesday calling night. That doesn’t count softball team and youth group and Bible Bowl. The programs kept everyone busy, and gave the impression that they were growing spiritually. Many of the younger generation are not interested in that kind of “bubble” living, dedicating oneself to the organized programs of a church. So it’s not just “worship” that is taking it on the chin, but really all of the programs of the traditional church.

So, What’s Next?
Death of one fad means birth of another. What’s next?
Community. Acts 2:42-47. Relationships don’t need worship (public performance)
Love. Family reunion doesn’t require quality program.
Prayer. Stop singing about talking to God, and start just talking to Him. The Sunday Morning Show eschews silence.
Alt.worship. More than music.
Creativity
Liturgy. Depth.

I’m not talking about creating another program, or another way of approaching The Sunday Morning Show. Rather, this is an entirely different ministry philosophy, an ancient/future approach to life in Jesus. We know we are beginning to arrive when people stop arguing about the style of music that is played, fussing about who is leading or how long it goes, when we stop looking to paid professionals to take us into the Presence.