In Worship, Discipleship, & Fellowship
10/4/06 updated 10/7/06
How much does the New Testament say about music? Not much, and yet look how obsessed we Evangelicals have become with music in our understanding and practice of worship, being disciples, and assembling ourselves together.
Our assembly meetings have been turned into “church service” productions that are dominated by musical performances. This deceives professing Christians into searching for a church where they “feel” like they have been a part of “worship” which requires them to be surrounded by an adequate number of emotional people with their eyes closed and raising their hands, and getting “into” the music.
Well meaning brothers who are musicians have been misled to confuse devotion to their music with serious discipleship.
Young leaders have been conditioned to think that a really right-on church or home fellowship is one with really talented musicians.
The Christian Music industry is a parachurch subculture. It is auxiliary to the Church. It is outside the church and has a life of its own. It is a pied-piper system that usurps the role of the assembly and becomes the bulk of a young person’s Christian life.
From that first summer I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, my favorite thing is to sing songs to the Lord with other believers. I have always greatly appreciated friends who play the guitar or the piano or the congas who have a heart to serve and minister and participate. As a new believer, moving from place to place because of the Navy, there were times I didn’t know people yet, and there were record albums from the Christian Bookstore that I played in my apartment and I sang to the Lord and I was ministered encouragement and hope and trust.
Looking back, I would have benefited more from learning earlier than I did what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and an Acts 17:11 Berean. The Evangelical subculture I was in placed too much emphasis on music as if it were at the center of being a Christian and being the Church.
When we sing songs to the Lord together, sometimes I close my eyes; sometimes I raise my hands; I most definitely get emotional from time to time. While these things are part of worship or the effect of worship, they are by no means central to worship. Neither are they central to being a serious disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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