The Praise Worship of God: Is Music Helping or Hindering?

The Praise Worship of God: Is Music Helping or Hindering?        Kelly Durant

Matthew 26:30 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Acts 16:25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

2. One of my sons installs audio visual equipment and internet systems in churches, universities and corporations.  He has gotten to know hundreds of people over the past decade and he has shared with me some of his conversations with interesting people. Today I will share an experience of a person he met who was a semi-famous praise band leader in a mega church. I will not reveal the name of the church or the name of this person but that is not what is important, what is important is the lesson.

This young man had fame, a good salary, and had sold many CDs but he wanted more than just music in his life so he went on a mission to Africa and stayed 6 months serving God. I am sure he was changed after that! Upon his return he discovered he had been replaced by his church so he was forced to move on and start his own worship filled church.

He had saved up quite a bit of money before so he opened up a type of megachurch in another city banking upon the main attraction to be the amazing and modern worship music and praise band he was famous for. He was copying what he had learned from the other mega church. How do you think that worked out? His want-to-be church flopped and he lost all his money and he was left to start all over again.

3. He said he felt like God burst his balloon but he was glad that He did! He said that now he knows God in a way He had never known Him before: He is not just singing about Him but depending and trusting in Him now. He is trusting not on his talent and treasure to bring him his purpose in God now but rather on obedience, service, and his closeness to God for new direction.

What a lesson, right? It reminds us of the verse in Mark 8:36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? It is unusual to think that a young worship leader, who seemed to inspire dozens of thousands to worship God, could have been in real life a shallow person not fully converted.

Thank God he had the experience of serving God in Africa! These types of mission trips can change a person forever to help them wake up to the facts of how contradictory it is to think one is worshipping God if doing it by praise only. While we are entertaining ourselves in the church with all the modern technology, there is a whole world out there with billions of people suffering from a lack of having their basic human needs such as food, water, clothing, shelter and Salvation for their souls through the gospel of Jesus Christ! The modern day church has put too much emphasis on entertainment and techno toys and forgotten about holiness, service, and what God expects from the Christian as defined by Jesus’ words!

4. Who would agree with me that today too many churches put too much emphasis in the worship of God through music and technology? It is true we all do get inspired by a creative song performed in church, or heard on the radio or a CD,  or seen on YouTube but the inspiration is only a small part of living the holy life. It is not all of what God intends for us as worshippers.

As a matter of fact only a few months back a famous person in a famous megachurch praise band let millions of people down by expressing that he was more accepting of the current cultural trends of this world than he was of the Word of God!  What a disgrace! It goes to show we must always remember that we can never place our worship, adoration, and loyalty to people whom we know nothing about! They are just saved sinners like you and me but there is a problem if they are not willing to live free from sin as an example of Jesus transforming love!

Psalm 118:8 It is better to trust in the Lord Than to put confidence in man. There are so many people today that go to churches but they are more devoted to their blind selfish emotions or famous people or how popular the church is rather than to how Biblically obedient they are! And when it is a church without all the ultra-modern trappings of technology modeling the mega TV church, they feel they do not need to commit because the church is not a glorious one but it is just a humble mission and therefore unworthy. Worship is more than a song with smoke and mirrors, and more than a feeling which comes and goes!

I recall one time at the other Corps one person called me up one night with the music blasting on the phone and he said, “Do you hear that? Now that is worship, this is how I worship!” I got the message, what he meant was, I worship the trending music of the rich and famous, and what you offer in your praise band is inferior compared this! (This person had expressed many times before adoration to certain trending preachers and music so this was another attempt to impose his tastes belittling ours). People with such pride and ignorance are stumbling blocks to others who are learning about Jesus, the church, and mission!

5. Don’t misunderstand what I am communicating. I think it is great that there are great praise bands out there, that there are some amazing people who inspire me and others in song. It is encouraging to worship with the extreme varieties out there, but a song in the end is only an emotion enhancer God has designed as a hook to get his people to tune into Him. A hymn is like a warm up for the real work out, the music of God does not replace the study of God for obedience.

In our verses of today we find it only mentioned once that Jesus sang a hymn with his disciples. It does not say that he sang every time before His teaching, so how frequently Jesus and his disciples sang is anyone’s guess. Today we have traditionalized and institutionalized worship into a certain cultural music mold and we must question ourselves, are we being counter-productive with such an emphasis? Also, are we open to how other cultures praise in song? I have seen minorities and majorities be very closed minded on worship styles, sad right?

What we do know is God’s word put into song is powerful! Acts 16:25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Imagine how Paul and Silas despite all the punches, bruises, humiliation, hunger, and other horrible things they felt while inside that jail still praised God in song! I bet they got some converts right there and they were inspired despite the persecution. You can’t pin a good man down!

6. So what can we say about Salvationists and their bands? Big brass bands were the high tech audio visual in the 1800s when they started! There are several quotes by our Founders Booths that express we should be taking advantage of the cultural trends and reapplying them for God’s use and music is a must.

I have mentioned it before, but England then, with all its drunken sailors and serious alcohol problems in the 1800’s had serious social family disintegration problems as everyone would hang out at the local pubs and listen to the then popular band music, and to some degree, this still happens today.

It was clever to create alternative praise brass bands to attract those in the pubs out into the streets to hear a new song and then to get in a sermon as well. Even some of the old Salvation Army hymns are music of old drinking songs but with rewritten Christian words! There were no copy-write laws then and today we know the hymn but we do not have a clue what the original worldly words were! Brass bands still have their respected place in this world and they involve many people at once to praise God in beautiful harmony with a distinct variety of treble and bass harmonies.

7. Here is a problem with music, you can get burnt out on it if it is too repetitive or too frequently sung, or you can feel lost if you cannot join in if it is too new and the words and melody are not familiar. It is hard to have a balance to make everyone happy when it comes to music! But in the end, a praise song, or a hymn is a song for God, so the way I see it is this way, it doesn’t matter if I like the tune or the choice of band instruments playing it, what matters is I must be open to letting it feed my spirit since it is dedicated to God. The old and new are valid!

I am like you, I like certain songs better than others and that is normal as our cultural backgrounds and past experiences influence our tastes. I only have a problem with people who have a problem of being stuck in one style only, being in a rut which is inflexible and selfish pushing for their likes only.

We do not have that problem here in our Corps, but in some churches the fight over styles is tragic! What was intended to unite the body (singing together), has sometimes become the dividing stumbling block because some ultra-young or ultra-old persons do like or want to accept the fact that they should just join in no matter the style and worship in a differently and just be encouraged that God is worshipped and praised.

8. So what are the 2 times we praise God (in song, or in any form of worship)? When we feel like it and when we don’t feel like it! Music for me being an only lonely child growing up was always a good escape and cheap way of entertainment. I use to have the radio on non-stop when the transistor ones came out when I was a kid. I then at age 14 got a reel to reel tape recorded and I recorded off the radio all the hits for several years. I got in my 8 hours of music daily but today music has been replaced by the internet and iphone apps occupying 10 hours of everyone’s time. 

Playing guitar was one of the best pass times ever and I still love it. I got to practice in several bands when young and make new friends that I never would have met otherwise. All my life God has opened many doors through music! I use to play Beatles and gospel songs in all the popular places in Lapaz, Bolivia, and I loved meeting Ambassadors and all kinds of people. When my kids were little, I took them for years to sing with me in rest homes.

But here is something I see as a tragedy, the church should have been able to involve me with Christian music when I was young, but they did not have that offer. The tradition in that church was only to have a pianist and an organ player and no one else could play and only hymns were allowed so this explains why secular music overshadowed praise music for decades! Thank God the Salvation Army offers music attractive to most of the youth and many have escaped the gang life because of being involved in our bands! I’ve heard a few dozen testimonies about this!

Finally in the 1990’s it seems praise music modernized. I thank God that today The Salvation Army offers a variety of praise bands catering to the cultural appetites of the particular audience at hand. I am glad there is an acceptance of other styles and cultures and where else can you see girls in uniforms with tambourines? Sacred dance, spoken word, and all modern styles are accepted if…if they elevate you to worship God! We need to stop the worship of famous Christian performers as they can get corrupted with pride like those of the world do.

9. To conclude, worshipping God is done in many ways but what God expects is for us to not follow a rigid model of music or any system that has been made culturally or traditionally acceptable, but rather do all things so that is generates in us a life of obedience and holiness! And what we do should awaken a love for God and love for our brothers and sisters!

We must seek to love Him and serve Him, this is worship! There is the reality that music is not an instrument that will cause a person to love and obey God more! God feels what we feel and he created us to feel love and waves of euphoria and songs can help but sadly in this fallen world of continual tragic news we can’t always be made happy. And don’t be like someone I knew that after everyone makes great comments about how they felt the Holy Spirit, that the sermon was convicting, that music was uplifting they contrarily comment that everyone and the church is dead because they felt nothing! The obvious is what is dead is their relationship with God!

Songs will usually make us feel good but there are times when not even a song can bring a person consolation, but we keep going anyway and eventually the Holy Spirit takes over if you let Him!  Prayer we might consider to be even more important than praise in song because Jesus taught quite a bit about prayer, but nothing regarding hymns! Jesus gave no instruction on how often or in what style to sing hymns!

10. We conclude that God wants our worship to be sincere and real! He wants our heart, our undivided pure love and holiness to be what motivates. Why sing or do anything if it is fake or heartless or spurns criticism and not doing it in a spirit of truthfulness for the love of God? No one is required to sing, but everyone is required to worship while in the house of God!

John 4: 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God must not be worshipped only in a certain place (or only in certain churches with popular bands) or worshipped in a certain cultural style pre-programed into our limited minds, He must be worshipped with our hearts, minds, and soul! Real worship implies a life of obedience in love! Worship is not just the repeating of a song or the having a good time in a meeting, worship means loving God and His Word to the point his Holy Spirit takes over! You can overcome any limits your personal preferences dictate; it’s not about you, it’s about God, amen?