A Thought About Contemporary Worship

I think one of a number of goals of church worship-leaders ought to be:

To equip new Christians with songs they can find themselves singing spontaneously all the way through impromptu, remembering the melody-line and all the words even when they're away from the band and big screen, and without a digital media player.

Certainly there's also a place for more complex song-structures; and for show-casing the full-range of a songwriter's capability - like 'contemporary worship' songs perhaps, with their three-verses-plus-chorus-plus-bridge type structures. But because that's 'all' some churches are performing nowadays, their congregations don't have the ability to sing very well outside of church.

We used to be able to do that! During Charismatic Renewal days we could sing impromptu together in the car, on the beach, on the mountaintop, or in one another's homes - song after song, for hours sometimes, without ever needing to look at the words - and it still sounded catchy and complete without the band, even without any musical backing at all sometimes - because the song-structures were such that they didn't need instrumental fills.

When I get together with old friends from that era, we can still recall songs we haven't sung for decades. We can literally stay up all night singing song after song together and still not exhaust our repertoire. But it's hard for informal small groups nowadays to sing spontaneously together like that, or when they're by themselves - and I think they're missing-out on something that truly was edifying.

So I reckon it could be beneficial for contemporary churches to once again start including some simple, single-stanza, catchy, melodic, bouncy, rhythmic, toe-tapping joyful, nostalgically beautiful, worshipful, moving, familiar and rememberable songs that go straight to heart and remain there not only until the next morning but for years to come. If we're singing some songs like that during church, people will also find themselves singing them when they're by themselves or in small groups during the week. That wouldn't be a bad thing would it!

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord" (Colossians 3:16).