Worship Symposium 2017 Reflections (Joshua)

The past weekend I attended a worship symposium organized by the Methodist School of Music, titled “Life As Worship”. Below are some brief thoughts about what I learnt.

1)    Worship as our offering to God demands sacrifice

Bishop Chong Chin Chung preached during the first opening service. This was one thought that struck me. In Romans 12:1, we are called to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is our spiritual worship. The idea of sacrifice implies cost, and as it is a “living” sacrifice, we are called to present our life and being before the Lord. My own takeaway as I reflected on my own journey in service to the Lord in the past half year is that the things that I ‘sacrifice’ in my service to the Lord e.g. my time, my sleep, my energies, my leisure constitute the cost to me, which I offer to the Lord as my worship. In recognizing that what I give is as worship to the Lord, I am able to better not feel resentful, especially during the moments of difficulty.

2)    The voice is the chief and basic medium through which we express our worship to God

In Rev Raymond Fong’s session on Music and Theology, this left an impression on me because I never really thought much about it. Everyone was designed to speak and by extension, sing. Exhortations to worship, especially in the Psalms often and commonly include calls to praise God with singing and with shouting. Since everyone has a voice, all can sing (although the quality of the singing may be another matter), and the picture in Revelation where all creatures sing to the Lamb upon the throne is a picture of worship. The practical application to this point is that when worship services are designed, the congregational song is central. This means that participation needs to be privileged and prioritized over performance. In other words, the congregation should be singing more, and singing over and above the “performance” of the worship team/band. Musicians and the choir should play a servant role to the congregational song.

3)    Worship through music and song are for a. mutual edification and exhortation; and b. establishes identity and community.

In Ephesians 5:18-19; Colossians 3:16, Paul exhorts the church to “address each other”, and “teach and admonish one another” in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. The music of the church also has these functions – to exhort and encourage the body of Christ and to build up the Church. What we sing also shapes our identity e.g. churches who sing hymns are often classified as belonging to the more conservative brands of Christianity, and churches who sing only the most modern and happening songs typify the caricature of more charismatic, independent churches with perhaps liberal minded theological sensitivities. Therefore the question for us to think about is – what is our identity in Christ? What should we be singing in our services?

Singing also establishes community. Think about singing in worship alone during devotional times, as compared to singing in worship corporately. There is a sense of belonging to the church and as the community of Christ when we intentionally gather to sing together in worship. This is important because salvation does not stop at individual conversion, but God has called us, His church, to be a covenant community.

4)    Singing is a means of faith formation; it is incorrect to think about teaching theological truth as the job of the preacher alone

Singing inspires, sustains and strengthens faith. When we sing of the faith of our spiritual fathers, when we sing of God’s promises, when we sing of God’s faithfulness – these things form and shape our faith even as we verbalise these ideas. This is reinforced by the singing of Scriptural truth, and when we sing we remember better than what we merely hear e.g. people sing songs repeatedly, but do not listen repeatedly to the same sermons. This is a powerful point, especially for songwriters and worship leaders. We are not just leaders but also teachers of the Word. What are we teaching the body of Christ through each worship setlist? What do we want to remind the church about? By singing the Word of God we help the congregation to remember and internalize His Word. A good song is remembered and sung repeatedly, and it will shape what we believe.

“Music should be a medium used to teach key theological truths and should be theologically acute itself. Separating music and theology leads to the view that music is only something done before getting to the real part of the worship – the preaching of the Word.”

-       Greg Peters

5)    Music does not lead us into the presence of God – only Jesus does

Many contemporary worship leaders in churches may have this misguided notion, possibly (mis)informed by a lack of theological understanding and an overemphasis on emotional experience during worship. Music is powerful in its own ways, and like any other thing, can be corrupted by our human nature. Music moves people in many ways, and so may be misunderstood to be essential to a spiritual encounter with God (neither does the worship leader have the power to bring people into the presence of God – a well loved catch phrase used by many worship leaders). I know this and have taught this to the youth worship leaders as well, but this was a good reminder for me to continue to teach succeeding generations of worship leaders this. Music works to facilitate this encounter, but we must always remember that it is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, the blood of the Lamb that ushers us into the presence of God. What this essential theological point means is that we can encounter God even without music, something we need to keep in mind in our music saturated contemporary worship culture.

In conclusion to this part, I would like to leave a thought – that as musicians serving the Lord in the context of church we need to be theologically minded and to think and reflect on our practices and how we are serving. This is supremely important because our theology must always anchor and shape our praxis (practice). In other words, what we do/sing/practice reveals our theology, and if our theology is misinformed or unreflective, or both, we are not being responsible stewards of the gift of music that God has entrusted to us by what we do with it.

Song writing

1)    We need to strive for clarity in expression and coherence in economy

This emerged when we began to critique each other’s work, and also came out from the facilitators. Our lyrics need to be clear – the congregation needs to understand simply, at first singing, what we mean to convey. If we need to explain the lyric then it is problematic.

Another issue that kept popping up is the need for structure and a link/flow between ideas within a song. This means that within the economical limits in the space of a song to say something, whatever we say needs to make sense within its parts e.g. verse 1 links to verse 2, and bridge makes sense following what has been sung in the preceding verses and refrain/choruses etc). Perhaps the song needs to have an overarching idea or relevant sub themes, in order to establish coherence. If our ideas are incoherent and we are merely dumping Christian-y sounding phrases together, we are doing the congregation a disservice and are being irresponsible stewards when they walk away not knowing what is being taught or conveyed in the song.

2)    Focus on depth rather than breadth of coverage

This is an extension of the first learning point. There is value in expanding the congregation’s understanding of certain images or metaphors that may be taken from the Bible, and instead of inundating them with too many in one song (may be confusing) it might be useful to help them gain depth in their understanding of how that image or metaphor expands our understanding of God etc.

3)    Build music vocabulary so that writing can be inspired by a wider source of influence

This is important because songwriters tend to be stuck in a musical rut e.g. always write in the same style or form. The diversity of the human experience should also have a diversity of expression. Certain ideas or experiences may concomitantly be best expressed musically in a particular way, and so there is value in expanding our musical vocabulary.

4)    There is a prophetic dimension in congregational singing

When we sing lyrics that talk about prophecy or hope, we challenge the congregation to think about its fulfillment and how they might be God’s conduits or agents for change. An example of this may be the song “God Of This City” by Chris Tomlin, where the lyric conveys an expectancy of what God will do (perhaps through His people) because of who He is. This challenges the congregation to think how they may be part of this plan.

You're the God of this city
You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation
You are

You're the Light in this darkness
You're the Hope to the hopeless
You're the Peace to the restless
You are

There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this city
Greater thing have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this city