Trenton Starnes on emotionalism in worship songs

07.01.2003

——————————————————————————–

The anti-intellectual tendency of the current crop of “praise and worship” music is scaring me. Literally. I know that there will always be people who are able to listen to sermons with an open, but discerning, mind. What scares me is that a lot of the same people who are capable of cognitive activity when being taught demonstrate little of it during the worship service. It’s as if the teaching software is saved for later while the worship software is downloaded and installed for use while singing. And while openness and discernment are there when we listen to sermons, for some reason we sing praise and worship songs with the openness but lack the other important feature – discernment. What has it been replaced with? The all-American emotionalist mentality. If it feels right, sing it.

One of my favorite praise and worship songs for the past year is called “You Are Worthy of My Praise.” For some reason, I felt particularly worshipful when I sang it. I really enjoyed it. But the last time I sang it, I started to actually think about the lyrics (heaven forbid!). I shouldn’t have. In good evangelical tradition, I should have been content to feel worshipful and let those feelings convince my pragmatic soul that I was indeed praising God appropriately. But it started to sink in. I wasn’t praising God. I was just telling Him that I was praising Him. For example:

I will give you all my worship I will give you all my praise You alone I long to worship You alone are worthy of my praise

Now that we know what we are doing (worshipping), are we going to tell the object of our worship why we worship? Nope. Look over a couple of choruses next time – ask yourself if you are actually worshiping the Living God and reflecting on His attributes. I think you’ll find that, as in our example above, often we are, in essence, praising praise and worshipping worship.

Am I against all praise and worship music? An emphatic no. Praise and worship music is bringing the church into the 21st century, and shouldn’t be dismissed a priori simply because it is new. The mere fact that we don’t dress like people in the 19th century should tell us that we don’t have to sing like them either. My point is to get people to think about what they are singing. In the mad rush to replace hymns with praise choruses, we have forgotten to think about the object of our worship – namely God.

Emotionalism for emotionalism’s sake has replaced good theology in many – though not all – praise songs. Let’s remember to make our worship God-centered, not me-centered. And we won’t know unless we engage our minds in worship. Unless we love God with our minds as well as our hearts, we are failing in our effort to worship Him. Just think about what you sing during the next church or chapel service.