Pet Peeves in Worship Ministry

1) Lack of God centered worship: I hate singing songs that are ‘me’ focused. I think we spend too much ‘me’ time in church services already. I want songs, prayers, and sermons that are centered first and foremost on God and His Word. I love what Ron Owens says in his book ‘Return to Worship’: "True worship is fundamentally objective, not subjective. The object and audience of our worship is God. It begins with Him, and it must end with Him. And everything in between is of Him and for Him."

2) Repetitive songs drive me crazy: Like this one: 'I will praise You with all of my life, I will praise You with all of my strength… All of my life, all of my strength, all of my hope is in You… My life is in you Lord, My strength is in You Lord, My hope is in you Lord, (and for good measure) it's in You, it's in You, it's in You."

It’s like the song writer forgot that he/she had already written the same thing twice already before he/she wrote the chorus. God is so deep and expansive… surely there isn’t a need to repeat the same words and themes three times in one song, is there? (Especially when we already repeat the chorus two or three times anyway…)

3) I hate being pigeon-holed. I can’t speak for all worship leaders on this one. I can only speak for myself. I really despise the ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ classifications. I understand why they need to be there, I really do… but I hate them none the less. Can I let you in on a little secret? Some of my favorite worship songs are… (keep this quiet, ok?)… hymns! Gasp! ‘My Faith Has Found a Resting Place’ ‘Near the Cross’ ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ These are such articulate anthems of the church!

Why do we have to throw them out because they are old? I love what Passion did a few years ago: They made a whole CD remixing the old hymns with a newer sound. I also hate feeling like I can’t teach new songs in a traditional service. Some of the newer stuff that is out there right now is so good lyrically… and would fit in fine musically.

When we get to heaven, do you think there will be classifications? Traditionalists will be on the right hand side… a quarter of the way back in the throne room… Contemporites can only sing on the left hand side of the throne room… three quarters of the way back, right next to the snake handlers. And if the drums get too loud, God will allow the snakes to get loose on the worship band… The postmoderns will be way in the back, burning their candles and incense… right next to the vents so that they don’t stink up the place…

Yeah, I didn’t think so either. We will all be so overwhelmed with the presence of God that the HOW of worship will be much less important then the WHO and WHY of worship. Plus, it will be hard to make a distinction when your face is flat on the ground in complete surrender to Him. What I don’t get is why we can’t worship the Lord like that in our churches right now?

Please understand that I am not saying that we shouldn’t change our methods in the church. In order to be effective… we must continue to change. I just want to make sure that we aren’t changing just to change: Sometimes we get rid of things that have tremendous value in the church.

I’m sure that there are other things that bother me about worship ministry… but since my humongous Episode 3 review… I’ve decided to keep the length down on my posts. Maybe I’ll do a part 2 later…

Coming up next week: My first San Diego trip report: I’m going to try to write my first one while watching a Pacific ocean sunset! We’ll see how that works out!