Over the last 10-15 years there has been a beautiful resurgence of worship songs about pain and suffering.

Songs like You Never Let Go, Whom Shall I Fear, and The Desert Song have provided weary saints with declarations of faith in the midst of their pain. This is wonderful. Our worship expression needs to touch on all the areas of human experience – joy, celebration, lament, suffering, confusion, hope, and loss.

Worship isn’t a place to forget your circumstances. It’s a place to bring them. It’s a place where they find their God-ordained context.

But until your life has been touched by fire, you don’t know what it’s like to actually worship in the midst of it.

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Modern church goers have always used the phrase “contemporary worship” as a way to appeal to a new generation.

It has always been a value.

But I’m wondering if it has lost its meaning and is costing us what true, Biblical, corporate worship should be.

Since my days of being a young child, I’ve been raised in “contemporary” worship.

New songs, upbeat music, and exuberant participation from the congregation in the forms of singing, hand-raising, dancing, and shouting is all I’ve known.

Matter of fact, bringing your tambourines, flags, and banners to church was a weekly occurrence for some (not me, of course).

It’s what we’ve prided ourselves on. It’s what I lead every week. We have contemporary worship. It’s not dead religion or ritual.

But is our contemporary worship becoming a dead ritual?

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I love music. Without a doubt, the combination of lyric and melody is one of my favorite art forms in all the world.

But I’ve had a lingering question that has been in my mind as it relates to corporate worship.

Are we singing too many songs? And does the singing of songs eventually have an adverse effect on our hearts? [Read more…]