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Worship in the Church

Four Symptoms of a Worship War

Four symptoms, if left unchecked by church leadership, can easily spark into a brushfire of worship hostility.

By Tom McDonald

I was surveying pastors about worship in the church. One person I talked to was a young pastor who had been elected to an historic congregation in a large city. He had been youth pastor a decade earlier and had returned to the church as senior pastor. What he inherited was messy.

The former pastor had placated the generations and split the congregation into traditional and contemporary services because of his fatigue due to the congregation’s smoldering intolerance for each other’s musical preferences.

The new, youthful pastor began his tenure at this well-known church by singing hymns at 8 and dancing at 10:45. This dichotomy lasted 18 months. One morning in prayer he felt checked by the Holy Spirit. The pastor immediately gathered the leadership from the early service and said, "I have been stirred by the Holy Spirit and sense we need to blend our congregation back into one integrated body. By worshiping in different styles, we are fostering separate and unequal opportunities for the presence of God to operate among us. Consequently, we are not unified in heart or purpose. What do you think?"

Instantaneously they declared, "Pastor, you’re right. We miss worshiping with our families. We miss their enthusiasm and the privilege to carry their burdens to the Lord. We gladly embrace your vision for a blended service. All we request is an occasional hymn and the option to sit when the worship exceeds our strength to stand."

The pastor, feeling emboldened, gathered the leadership of the contemporary service for a similar vision cast. The result shocked him. After he had carefully described his pastoral concerns, the group retorted, "No way! If you insist we include the older people and sing their songs, we’ll leave."

The pastor dropped his voice and offered this seminal observation: "Tom, I deduced that the youth in my congregation loved the music of their day more than Jesus himself."

That sentence reverberated loudly in my spirit. I hung up the telephone — stunned. How could one demographic in a congregation be so overtly selfish with another?

This conversation made me realize that it is not always the older generation who is inflexible. Arrogance relative to accepting musical diversity is not necessarily age related; it is attitudinal. Four symptoms, if left unchecked by church leadership, can easily spark into a brushfire of worship hostility.

Generational Conflict Over Repertoire

We all have musical likes and dislikes. Music has universal appeal but localized appreciation. M. Wayne Benson, president of Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, explained "Most people like the music that was sung when they were saved." A congregation under 10 years old will probably have congruity in worship music. Most people saved there gladly accept the repertoire of the church.

However, the church that is 20 to 100 years old may have great differences in musical taste. Persons saved around World War II may have a need to memorialize their historic roots in Pentecost. Their children and grandchildren may or may not share that musical need. Persons currently being saved may need to learn to appreciate the hymns of faith. Historic churches have many perspectives about hymn singing.

Learning a hymn’s veracity can be productive. Young believers need to learn that hymns substantiate doctrine and mature congregants need to be reminded of these great truths. This is effective church education in the 21st century.

It is also biblical to entreat mature believers to validate new compositions. The Bible states 273 times, "Let us sing a new song to the Lord." New songs strengthen our praise vocabulary, fortify our faith, and show us another facet of the Lord’s grace that is manifest during storms of life.

This symptom of a worship war can be disarmed. The second symptom emerges from a church musician’s lethargy.

Faulty Delivery Systems

Delivering a contemporary worship chorus in incorrect time may frustrate the youth in your congregation. Similarly, presenting a hymn without the proper instrumental setting or without proper enunciation is equally distressing to older people. Both seasoned worship leaders and neophytes can suffer from the same sword — presenting songs they do not relate to in an adequate manner.

The answer to faulty delivery systems is advance preparation. Study the musical details of each song and listen to the composer’s rendering if possible. Read the story of the hymn’s origin. Use authentic instrumentation. Plan the worship far enough in advance to incorporate the best musicians your church can muster: an organist for the special hymn, or an acoustic guitarist for the latest Matt Redman tune.

Success requires analyzing the use of specific instruments for presentation. If you are going to sing a song, present it right.

Before bringing a medley of worship to the congregation, church musicians need to hear from the Lord privately. One of the most significant skills for a worship leader to master in today’s church environment is the ability to plan the Sunday repertoire like a pastor prepares a sermon. Planning the worship involves hearing from God before doing for God. Planning is a spiritual, not just a musical, exercise.

If the church musician’s plan is balanced spiritually and musically, there will be congruence between congregational appetite and prophetic thrust.

The third symptom affects growing churches in a unique way.

The Worship Team Limitation

Worship teams are helpful in small settings. As a church grows, its leadership must consider the fact 10 percent of any congregation has the gift of music. A church over 300 without a choir leaves musical congregants disenfranchised. Over time worship teams can become elitist.

Beyond leadership responsibility is an evangelism issue for a music ministry. If your church does not have a choir, who will minister the gospel in your community at Christmas or Easter? A choir can function as a worship team, but a worship team cannot function as a choir. A choir has much more versatility and historic identity. People will attend a choral event in a church — especially at holiday seasons. It seems peculiar to drop a choral program in an effort to attract a new constituency while alienating another.

The Pentecostal church needs to lead the way chorally by programming cantatas and musicals. This is not a season to cut corners but to expand our music departments with an intentional choral emphasis. Every city in America needs a Spirit-filled choir. A choir can become a mighty tool of evangelism and countermand the darkness that threatens to steal our children.

Finally, we face a challenge regarding interaction as colleagues.

Pastoral Staff Clashes

If the pastor and worship leader have unforgiveness or have let bitterness spawn in their souls, how can they flow in the Spirit on the church platform? There is no other relationship on the pastoral staff as potentially stormy as the one between the administrative and artistic leaders.

While worship has the capacity to usher us into the presence of the Lord, the adversary knows that if he can keep persons jealous, angry, or irritated with each other, public worship will suffer.

Pastoral staffs must guard against secret sin. It is inappropriate for leadership to harbor anger or gossip. Conflict on the staff must be arbitrated in light of Scripture.

The worship wars in the Pentecostal church are winnable. Generational sensitivity is one way to bridge this conflict. We must understand that wherever there is a worship war there is a lack of love. Leading a congregation without love into spiritual formation — where love is valued and internalized — presupposes teaching and modeling a biblical way of interacting as a local church family. Modeling a spirit of love can start with the worship leader. A worship leader who serves all the musical tastes of a diverse, multigenerational congregation is offering "cold water" in the Lord’s name. Balance is key.

Christian songwriter Paul Baloche said it well, "A steady diet of doctrinal hymns is like too much filet mignon. But living on repetitive four-line choruses is like making a meal of potato chips. Ideal is a mix."

How can it be wrong to bless a young person with a hymn in worship or an older person with something new?

Tom McDonald, Ph.D., is director of the national Music Department for the Assemblies of God, Springfield, Missouri.