I have written
about Christian worship from time to time on my blog. One example is this piece
from several years ago titled, Modern
Worship is Mostly Boring. In this piece I wrote about how limited the
range of topics are in modern worship. We often sing about the same small range
of topics. These topics are good, necessary and should be part of our worship.
But I have long felt that something was missing.
It was not
until last year that I put into words what I think is the far bigger problem
with worship, and that is that it is inadvertently misleading people. I wrote a
piece called, Is
Modern Worship Helping Deceive People? In this piece I expanded on my
earlier piece, but dove more specifically into the problem with modern worship,
we are accidentally catechising people into a shallow, or narrow understanding
of the Bible, because of our selective range of worship topics. I even gave an
example of how this causes issues,
“One
thing that became clear during the covid years is that most Christians had not
taken to heart what the Bible says about the corruption of political leaders in
this world. This is an incredibly important theme in the Bible. In fact it is
one of the dominant themes of books from Judges, through to 1 and 2 Kings, 1
and 2 Chronicles, all the way through to making up much of the teaching of the
minor and major prophets. Yet many Christians thought there was really only one
basic passage about government in the Bible, Romans 13, and that we should just
inherently trust the powerful. You could not get any further away from the
message of the Bible than that. The Bible’s reflections on power and the
powerful in this world are far more detailed and intelligent than that,
encouraging deep scepticism of the powerful and shrewd dealings with the
leaders of this world. But many Christians are unaware of this.
I
would argue this is the case, at least in part, because we don’t sing songs
with themes like Psalm 2. When was the last time you sang a Christian song
about how this world is ruled by rebellious, conspiratorial leaders, who rage
against the true king? Never? Rarely? Probably never in Church. But the ancient
Israelites sung about themes like this quite a bit in their worship. Just read
through the Psalms and you will see many topics which you would never hear in
the average church worship set…
…Christians
are incredibly deficient in understanding evil. They understand the gospel,
they understand the grace of God, the mercy of God, the father's heart, and
many things along these lines, because we sing about them a lot. And WE SHOULD
sing about them a lot. But they don’t understand many other things the Bible
talks about, because they don’t sing about it a lot. I guarantee for more
Christians their worship songs give them their theology more than their
pastor's sermons.”[1]
Because we
sing about a very small selection of themes from the Bible, we are teaching
people to have a very unbalanced view of God and the Bible. This is a serious
problem. Most pastors who speak out against modern worship like to speak
against this church, or that church over here or over there, because they are
from different theological schools. And while I am not completely in disagreement
with this, I think these people often miss the much larger issue, our songs
should reflect not just core solid theology, but also the breadth of theology in
scripture. As do the Psalms. This is just as important but often overlooked. Sometimes the songs written by churches that some conservatives don’t like are not
bad songs, they can be exceptional songs. But they are focused on a very narrow
band of topics. This needs to be fixed. We can fix it in part by singing older hymns,
some of which are timeless. But there are other ways to solve this issue.
I am not a
musician. I have attempted to play guitar and can play some songs adequately, and
some others poorly. But I love music. I often have classical music playing
while I am working. Sometimes it is Gustav Holst’s The Planets sometimes
it is a mix of my favourite movie themes. I often have music on in the car.
Sometimes worship, sometimes secular music I like. You do not need to be a
musician to have a deep love for music, as we all know. And for many years it
has frustrated me how skewed modern worship is, and how deaf many Christians
are to the need to broaden their repertoire of worship topics.
But now we
can do something about this issue with technology. This is why I have been
putting the Psalms to music with AI, using various different styles of music.
This is one online album or playlist that I have already created: Rock the Psalms, volume one.
This is a playlist of worship songs based entirely off the Psalms. The advantage of creating a playlist like this is that you can put this on in the car and not have to select another video until all the songs have been played, or do the same while working out. Feel free to download this and make use of it as an mp3 on your phone as well. The idea here is to encourage people to listen to the Psalms more and more. Already I find myself memorizing scripture again, with this simple method of singing the Psalms as songs.
And what is
best about this is that my kids especially love the Psalms that I have are made
into rock songs, and they are learning to memorize scripture while they are
singing. This is every Christian parent’s dream, isn’t it? To have your kids
asking you to play the Bible to them. This is a gift, make use of it. I
encourage you to try your hand at making your own songs as well.
You can
create these songs using any style of music you prefer. This song here based on Psalm 3, I have made into
a blues style rock song. Psalm 3 is about how David is facing many opponents and troubles. The
lyrics work perfectly for blues rock. And Suno (the program I use) does an amazing
job of creating songs you can sing along with and just listen to.
You can
also go so far as to write your own worship songs and then put them to music
using AI as well. Here is a song I
wrote many years ago as a poem. Yes, I used to write poetry. These lyrics are
completely mine, I did not use AI to write them or modify them. Here they are
below,
“O Lord you
have disciplined my soul
My heart
rose up in my chest
My pride
grew to a dangerous amount
On my walk with you Lord took its toll
Your firm
hand is ever there
You guide
us when we stray
You watch
over our every step
Oh Lord my
heart could not bare
If it found that you were not there
Lord my God
I am not a perfect man
But I
desire to live forever for you
But often
my heart is deceitful Lord
And clouds my actions what can I do?
I can turn
to you O God
For you
have given me your name
You have
made me yours forever my King
Therefore I will repent when you I profane
I need not
fear my enemies Lord
Because I
know that you shelter me from them
You are my
stronghold, my deliverer, my shield
I know I can trust you so to you I yield
At times O
Lord I would seek to be great
And would
forget before you my place
That it is
by faith that I should live this life
It is by faith that I should run this race
For you
know all there is
You know
what is in my heart and in my mind
Yet you
love me anyway
As you have always loved our kind
Though we
are fallen
We can lean
on you
You are my
crutch
And without you I am doomed
Your firm
hand Lord is ever before me
And I know
that when I fall
You will
protect me
From my
enemies, myself and all.
The point of this post is to show that we can now do something about modern worship ourselves. There are many wonderful songs, and some amazing Christian musicians. The church is blessed. I love the worship at my own church, because each musician brings a different flavour to the worship set and they all work hard to broaden the themes that we sing in church. We are blessed at ourvchurch. I know many churches also do a great job of worship. But many have a very narrow focus in their worship.
Now, we can
go even further, we can write lyrics ourselves and turn them into songs and
sing them at home. And even better, we can use the very words of scripture to
make incredible music. If you have issues with modern worship you can now do something to help fix it.
This is one
of my favourite songs so far Why Do The Nations Rage.
You will notice if you read my article on worship from last year, the one quoted above, that this is the
Psalm I referred to as one that is so different to the songs we often sing. But
now I can sing this song whenever I want, and at the same time memorize the
message of this incredible Messianic song. I encourage you to put your own hand
to making music yourself with AI. This is an incredible gift, and I am sure
more skilled hands will make even better use of this technology.
Here is my second album/playlist. I
hope you are blessed by it:
List of
References
[1] https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2024/04/is-modern-worship-helping-deceive-people.html
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