Dear worship group,
I greatly appreciate your will and your desire to offer your gifts to God in worship. Do I appreciate your dedication and celebrate your loyalty? Hang out in church early, Sunday after Sunday, take time to rehearse during the week, learn and write new songs, and more. Like those artists and craftsmen God used to create the tabernacle (Exodus 36), you are ready to put your artistic gifts at the service of the Trinitarian God.
- Therefore.
- Receive this small letter in the spirit it carries: as an encouragement to reflect on the practice of “main worship”.
- It seems to me that he has often simply chosen a practice without being encouraged to reflect on his logic.
- His “Reason to Be”.
- In other words.
- It seems to me that you are often recruited to “lead the cult” without a great opportunity to stop and reflect on the nature of “cult” and what “driving” means.
Specifically, my concern is that we, the Church, have unknowingly encouraged him to simply import musical practices into Christian worship, what, even if they may be appropriate elsewhere, harmful to congregation worship?More categorically, using the language I first used in Desiring the Kingdom1, I am sometimes afraid that we have inadvertently encouraged them to import certain forms of execution that are, in fact, “secular liturgies” and not just neutral “methods”. Without realizing it, dominant interpretive practices teach us to relate to music (and musicians) in a certain way: as something for our pleasure, as entertainment, as an essentially passive experience. Function and purpose of music in these “secular liturgies”?it is very different from the role and purpose of music in Christian worship.
So let me offer you some brief insights in the hope of encouraging further reflection on the practice of “leading the cult”:
1. If we, the congregation, cannot get along, it is not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. At a concert (a particular “form of performance”), one often expects to be overwhelmed by sound, especially in certain styles of music. At a concert, we end up expecting that strange kind of deprivation of the senses that occurs with sensory overload, when the bass hits the chest and the flow of the music over the crowd leaves us dizzy. auditory. And there is nothing wrong with concerts! Only Christian worship is not a concert. Is Christian worship a collective, public and congregational practice? and the combined sound and harmony of a congregation singing in unison are essential to the practice of worship. It is a form of? Perform? the reality that in Christ we are one body. But it requires that we really can listen to each other and hear our brothers and sisters singing alongside us. When the amplified sound of the worship group exceeds the voices of the congregation, can’t we hear each other singing? then we lose that aspect of the fellowship of the congregation and are encouraged to truly become “private worshipers. ” and responsibilities.
2. Si we, the congregation, can’t sing together, it’s not a cult. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and “be creative”, offering new performances and showing their virtuosity with all kinds of trills, pauses and different improvisations in the received melody. Again, this may be a pleasant aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship, it simply means that we, the congregation, cannot sing. His virtuosity thus awakens our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And even if you love her with your creativity, the same creativity turns off the singing of the congregation.
3. If you, the worship group, are the center of attention, it is not worship. I know it’s generally not your fault that we put you in front of the church. And I know you want to shape the cult so that we can imitate it. But because we have encouraged you to essentially import forms of performance from the concert hall to the sanctuary, we may not realize that we are also unintentionally fostering the feeling that you are the center of attention. And when does his performance become a demonstration of his virtuosity? even with the best of intentions? It’s hard to resist the temptation to make the worship group the center of our attention. When the worship group plays long riffs, even though their intention is to “offer them to God”, we in the congregation become completely passive, and as we have become accustomed to relating music to the Grammys and the concert hall, involuntarily we make you the center of attention. I wonder if there is an intentional connection in place (next to? Driving from behind?) And in execution that can help us oppose these habits that we bring with us to worship.
Please look closely at these points and acknowledge what I’m not saying. Isn’t this just a call to traditional worship?and a critique of the “contemporary” cult. Don’t think it’s a defense of tube organs and a critique of guitars and drums (or banjos and mandolins). My concern is not style, but form: what are we trying to do?When we organize a cult?Do we want worship to be a congregational practice of communion that will lead us to a dialogical encounter with the living God?where the cult is not only expressive, but also formative2 so that you can do it with African celloes, guitars, organ flutes or drums.
You could say many, many more. But let me stop here and please receive this letter as the stimulus that has been made to you. I would like to see them continue to offer their artistic gifts to the God of the Trinity who teaches us a new song.
Cordial greetings
Jamie
________________
Do you want the Kingdom? Cult, worldview and cultural formation (cult, worldview and cultural formation) [NT] 2 According to The Colossian Forum, although today worship is only seen as something that goes to God (expression), throughout history it has always been considered the cause of something in us (formation). “Christian worship is also a formative practice precisely because worship is also a ‘descendant’. How is God the lead actor? (Source: http://www. colossianforum. org/ 2011/11/09 / glossary-expression-and-formation-of-worship /). [N. de T. ]
Authorizations: You are authorized and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format, provided that the author, his ministry and translator are no longer no longer modified and not used for commercial purposes.