How We Worship

If I was an average Joe layperson looking for a church home, I think that one of my first questions about a prospective church's pastor would be about worship. What a pastor believes about worship will tell us much about their theology, philosophy and vision for their church.

There is a pastor in Pennsylvania whom I enjoy reading (in spite of the fact that I constantly disagree with him). This pastor's church recently opened worship by singing Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" (Click title to read lyrics.) The pastor proudly posted an email he received from someone in that service as well as his response.

Here's the email...

This past weekend, I could not believe my ears. When worship opened up, I heard the opening chords for Jet’s- "Are you going to be my girl?" I was expecting the Apologetix parody version, “Are you gonna be Ike's girl?”

But in listening to the lyrics it sounded like they were covering the actual Jet Song – a song about figuring out how to get a one night stand, for a girl who came to some club or party with another guy.

I am hoping that I was mistaken and they were playing the Christian Parody version because I am having a real issue with wrapping my head around why it would be remotely ‘OK’ to play this content in a worship service.

There is a line between having a light fun service to reach the new/non-believer and cheapening the value and truth that the gospel can stand alone to reach out to someone. This may have crossed it.

Frustrated…

Name Withheld

Here's the pastor's reply...

Frustrated,

I got your email and appreciate you taking the time to shoot me your thoughts.

I must say that while I appreciate your concern, this is certainly not the first nor will it be the last time we sing non-Christian music in our worship services.

We do this because we are trying to reach both non-Christians as well as Christians in the same service, and playing a non-Christian song up front in the service, we have learned, puts people far from God at ease.

Our philosophy has always been that Christians should be the ones that should be made the most uncomfortable in church, not the non-Christians. The way I put it is this -- we will always choose to offend the Christians before the non-Christians.

Seeing that you are frustrated, and given the fact that I talked with a bunch of people far from God on Sunday who loved the energy of the song and felt connected to the service because of it, it appears that we have achieved our goal.

My suggestion is this -- weigh carefully whether or not you want to be a part of a church that sings music like this, and plays difficult to watch video clips, and a host of other things to reach people far from God. If not, then now would be the time to look for another church before you put down roots too deep.

If on the other hand this is the kind of church you want to be a part of, I would welcome you to join in with everything you have and start reaching out to people far from God.

I hope this helps.

Thanks!

Brian

Please notice a few things about this pastor's philosophy of worship. Playing a song that is not Christian at best and perhaps has unchristian innuendo at worst is permissible in order to put "people far from God at ease." The goal of worship, thus, is to make sinners feel comfortable. Furthermore, this statement reflects his belief that being "at ease" is the norm when lost people become convicted of their lostness. Was Isaiah "at ease" when he experienced a glimpse of God's glory high and lifted up? Was John "at ease" when he experienced a glimpse of Jesus' beauty? Far from it! "Ease" is not the normal response when sinful man encounters a holy God! (Disclaimer: We are not to make people feel UNeasy by being unfriendly! We're talking about the content of our message here.) When the goal of worship is to make man comfortable, it ceases to be glorifying God.

This pastor makes a second interesting statement in the next paragraph. He says that "we will always choose to offend the Christians before the non-Christians." Now let me be the first to say that I'm all for offending Christians. Most of us, myself included, could use some good offending. The part of this quote that concerns me is "before the non-Christians." Paul made it pretty clear (1 Corinthians 1) that our message would be offensive to this world. (Disclaimer: We are not to add to that offensiveness by being offensive in our own right. Let the gospel provide the offense without you being offensive.) We need to be very careful about trying too hard to remove the offensiveness from the message. If you wanna know the truth, Jesus was quite offensive.

Finally, this pastor mentions that the lost people present "loved the energy" of the non-christian song and "felt connected" to the service. This, of course, is also the typical reaction after an evening at the local bar, but I wouldn't call that "worship." I've got something much better than that. Jesus said, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32) "Lifted up", of course, referred to crucifixion, but it also carried the idea of exaltation. Our goal is to magnify the name of Jesus and as we do so, we can trust that Jesus will draw people to himself.

Whether the style of worship is traditional, contemporary, southern gospel, praise and worship, or downright classical, we must always begin with the words we sing and ask the question, "Are we rightly describing God's attributes, character and Word?" If the answer is no, there's no need to use it in "worship."