Colson vs. Storms on Worship Songs

Chuck Colson in his article "Soothing Ourselves to Death" has some good things to say about trends in worship in our churches. His opening paragraph says this:

"When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We'd been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called "Draw Me Close to You," which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. "Let's sing that again, shall we?" he asked. "No!" I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed."

One thoughtful critic, Sam Storms, responds with this.

Read both.


My take on the issue would be as follows:

Does it not say in Revelation 4:8 that the seraphim use "endless repetition " in their worship of God? At John Piper’s pastor’s conference a few years back in response to similar criticisms from James Boice he mentioned that he thought there is a value as times in corporate worship of “lingering” over a thought about God. I think he is right. I think the lingering can be abused by many worship pastors who want to feel the rush of being able to manipulate the emotions of their people, but used with careful Holy Spirit discernment it can be very worshipful.

Could it be that some of us men (myself included at times) are so emotionally crippled and cerebral that the thought of singing “Jesus I love you” is hard for us to do? On a similar note, I have also observed this as a gender issue at times. As a former worship pastor I found that sometimes when I looked out upon the congregation when we sang the Matt Redman’s song “Let My Words Be Few” and we got to the line “Jesus, I am so in love with you” the women had an easier time singing it than the men. Not sure what this totally points to, but it may be that as men we have a hard time singing lyrics that are sometimes thought of as romantic in nature to a God we conceive of as primarily masculine.

Also, I think this issue can dance a bit close to legalism if we let it. May we all confess that we have preferences in worship that are extra-biblical and may we surrender those before the cross and pray for our worship leaders and pastors that we could have the right content and emotional response in our worship.