WORSHIP MUSIC REFLECTIONS

Faith Today asked three Canadian worship leaders and musicians to interact with the worship music research and share their reflections.

Melissa Davis

“You don’t know this one?!” my friend asked. Apparently, I was unfamiliar with one of the most popular worship songs of the day and that was unimaginable. Music has always reflected our culture and our shifting

attitudes about life, so naturally we want our worship music to do the same. Our fast-paced world tells us that staying on the cutting edge is what makes life exciting, but is excitement the goal of our gathering? We need to remember worship is not what we make it. Our primary pursuit in serving our congregation should be to select songs that are used to authentically speak to and hear from God, regardless of when the songs were written. As a worship leader and artist, I love discovering new songs, but my pursuit of revelancy

becomes irrelevant when it reflects the culture around me more than the Christ within me (as A. W. Tozer suggests in A Disruptive Faith: Expect God to Interrupt Your Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2011). This fear and pressure to be relevant among worship leaders today can be dispelled if we return to our Source. When God chooses our song list, it will be timeless – more relevant than anything we create, since God knows the heart of each person He created and can speak to those hearts through the songs He inspires. So, before we search for what’s new in worship, we first need to consult the One our worship is for.

Melissa Davis is director of the music and worship arts department at Tyndale University in Toronto.

Brian Doerksen

I’ve lived through every part of these curves, I even experienced a CCLI #1, and its inevitable fall off the charts. Part of that is just the way things are – even songs follow the pattern of seasons

like the rest of life. However, the acceleration of these curves and the media culture we live in do give me pause. Instead of a healthy pace of change, our disposable song culture is in danger of becoming deformative. We need to choose our songs with thoughtfulness and care, because the songs we sing repeatedly will either form us or deform us. When the songs tell the story of love, service and wonder, they form us into good and beautiful humans who care for the earth, love God, neighbour and self. If our song selection censors out honesty and the sound of lament and only declares the story of power, strength and greatness (even the greatness of God!), these songs become unbalanced

and deformative, priming us for a characterless Christianity. Pace of change and content matter because both are formative.

Brian Doerksen is a Canadian songwriter, recording artist, speaker and songwriting instructor. His latest release is Hymns for Life.

Anneli Loepp Thiessen

This fascinating and important study highlights the influence of one of the most important developments in the history of contemporary worship music – the rise of a contemporary worship music industry. Over the past 30 years we have seen a significant shift in how songs were written and distributed. Before the 1990s it was common for songwriters to write songs during their devotionals,

share the songs with their churches, and then witness the slow spread of a song. Today, however, it is most common for songs to be written by collaborations of leading songwriters at a publisher, quickly recorded through a record label, and then promoted to congregations through worship concerts, album releases and social media.

The industry thrives when new songs emerge and are adopted at a fast pace. There are benefits to this model, such as the possibility of learning songs that were written to speak to a specific time and place, and listeners that remain engaged because of consistent new releases. There are also drawbacks, with some congregants unable to keep up with a steady stream of new music, and worship leaders needing to constantly vet new material. It will be interesting to see how song timelines continue to change to reflect a rapidly growing contemporary worship music industry.

Anneli Loepp Thiessen is an interdisciplinary musicologist and a PhD candidate in interdisciplinary music research at the University of Ottawa.