Timeless Worship

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart. Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.” (Psalms 32.11-33.3)

“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4.18)

Having served for 37 years as a Southern Baptist pastor, I am well-versed in the contemporary-traditional worship debate. During my years of service, my churches have included small, rural congregations, urban churches, new church starts and a county-seat First Baptist church. When my time of service began, worship was, for the most part, traditional. Of course, your church setting determined what was “traditional.” In 1980, I went to a new church (as their second pastor), and found a worship style I thought was more Pentecostal than Baptist. We were contemporary and didn’t know it. The war had not yet begun.

The First Baptist church I served was deeply traditional when I became their pastor. We had a pipe organ, violinist and piano. The music tended to be high church, with few if any gospel songs or choruses sung. That situation changed. A new music minister arrived shortly after I became pastor; he had fresh ideas and lots of creative energy. In hardly any time at all, we were singing scripture songs and praise choruses. Our worship was “blended,” even though the term was not yet being used widely to describe a worship style.

As the years passed, with each church served, worship issues continued to be a top priority. Some congregations were open to a wider variety of music styles, while others dug in their heels and resisted change. As the controversy over music continued to swirl both in my own ministry and our denomination, I was forced to look more deliberately at the biblical definition and models for worship. Some of what was discovered was shocking.

What I found was our perspective on worship was misplaced. In designing worship events, one of the obvious and overriding issues was the question of what kind of music the congregation would “like.” We have all struggled at that point. Yet, in Scripture, the perspective on worship was from another angle altogether. In the Bible, the big question is what does God expect from us in our worship, not what do we like.

Now, I don’t want to sound self-righteous as some in Corinth were: a kind of “you all might be of Peter or Paul or Apollos, but I am of Christ.” My approach is more about my own journey of discovery and has little or nothing to do with who is right or wrong. For the most part, we all have been diligent in our responsibility as worship leaders. Yet, for me at least, for a long time, I really failed to understand what worship is all about.

Psalm 32.11 twice makes an interesting declaration, “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, . . . Sing for joy in the Lord” What is so thought-provoking is the “in the Lord” part of these verses. We think first of singing to the Lord; David said “be glad . . . sing for joy in the Lord.” God is to be not only the object of our worship, but the context as well. He, not us, is the focus of our worship. Further, his character should determine the nature of our worship. Who he is should be the sole determining factor in the design and conduct of our praise.

Our use of the terms traditional and contemporary gives proof of our dilemma: we praise an eternal God in temporal terms. What a paradox. Yet, Scripture does give us direction for our worship. Paul’s declaration of what our focus is to be should be a basic guide for our worship. We are not limited, and should not be, by time-bound music styles. Instead, we should be driven by content.

What do our songs say about God? Are we addressing the Lord or one another when we sing? Testimony songs are wonderful things. I remember sitting as a young boy on the piano bench with my Dad. He played out of Stamps-Baxter hymnals; that was the only music style he knew or appreciated. We both would sing to the top of our voices. Mostly we sang about heaven and its wonder and the sometimes dreariness of our earthly walk. I loved singing with my Dad. But, as I look back, I have to ask where God was in all our singing. We sang about him and what he had done, but seldom sang directly to him.

If we sing to the Lord and in him, we will be moved out of time into eternity. We will have, for the most part, the Lord as the subject of our singing: “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power.” Worship is God’s party and we have been invited to attend. We should find more joy in celebrating him than singing the songs we like.

Our task as worship leaders is to lead our congregations before the Throne of God. We are to show the followers of Jesus how to be set free in our worship from the constraints and limitations of time. If all we do is give them the music they enjoy, we have failed in our task.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart. Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.”