So today I’m going to continue those thoughts but hopefully in a way that ponders how we can actually use contemporary music in worship.

Firstly I think we need to remember that worship isn’t always singing and so I see no reason why contemporary songs couldn’t be used as reflections (even screamy reflections…although we may need to display lyrics in such cases).

Secondly I don’t think worship music needs to be written by a Christian! – Surely it’s the lyrics and the place our heart is in as we express, pray, sing or ponder those lyrics to God. Our worship shouldn’t be about the song writer but about the sentiment we’re trying to express to God in doing so.

Thirdly I believe contemporary music may see church growth - Let’s face it, anyone coming into a church for the first time may find church a strange place and more to the point the singing of a lambs blood probably doesn’t help matters. So how would their experience differ if they came in and found songs they knew being used in a different way? Would they feel more at home hearing something familiar?

Finally I think contemporary music could be icing on the emerging church cake! It’s great doing Cafe church, pub church or whatever form of church a place is trying out but if music is going to be used then contemporary music would be more appropriate and fitting. I remember a youth worker telling me he did a series of acoustic songs in a youth cafe all of which were contemporary songs but used in a Christian setting…I even heard one of my lecturers at uni talk about using Last Resort by Papa Roach as a song in church!

I whole-heartily believe there is a place for contemporary music in church and I think if we use it well it could deeply enrich our worship…yes it may isolate different generations…for example a Green Day song may not be as helpful in worship to some as a Beatles song but surely this is no different to our organ/worship band or Redman/Townsend divides we already have?

More and more often I’m finding that the Matt Redman that crops up on my iTunes or iPod when shuffling is quickly moved on before the first cliche lyric is sung…now don’t get me wrong Matt Redman (Tim Hughes and other Redman clones) are fantastic for drawing people into worship, their lyrics do help people (and on occasions myself) connect with God however on more and more occasions I’m finding myself drawn close to God by bands who either aren’t Christian or those who aren’t Christian bands but bands of Christians.

You’ll remember my post from a few months back where I referenced Paramore‘s ‘We Are Broken’ as a fantastic worship song…what better lyrics to sing to God than ‘We are broken, what must we do to restore our innocence and the promise we adored? Give us life again, we just wanna be whole‘…just before lent I looked at the concept of screaming in worship with the words of Family Force 5 who cry out ‘Desperation, needing you, every last breath I scream for you…shatter me into a million pieces make me new‘.

There is such raw, powerful, deep emotion in both the above mentioned songs…to continue this into my listening habits of the last few days Five Iron Frenzy (Every new day) write ‘dear Father, I need you, your strength my heart to mend‘, Brave Saint Saturn (Estrella) write ‘The angels wings will cover you tonight, hallelujah, press your head against the breast of Christ‘ and finally John Mark McMillan (How He loves) ‘He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His grace and mercy‘.

Contrast those lyrics with the weak ‘I am a friend of God woah’ and there’s a massive difference.

Often our church worship songs lack passion…often our congregations and churches lack passion and that is what’s missing!

The reason those lyrics I’ve quoted above connect me with God is because they’re raw and passionate…God doesn’t want us to be fluffy and apathetic in communicating to Him God wants passion…He wants people to be singing their hearts out. Perhaps the problem is that passion is personal but a crowd can unite in apathy? The things that we mean, the things that make our hearts beat are often personal things…is that why our worship music lacks passion?

I don’t have the answer but I do think there’s a place for contemporary music in worship…to be continued tomorrow!

Dave has insisted for years that any screamy music is wrong and shouldn’t even be considered music yet as the numerous genre’s available to us prove there are many ways that people express themselves musically.

I remember reading in Philip Yancey’s book ‘Prayer’ about a man who goes to a house and the door is opened by a lady and inside this house the man can hear terrible screaming and crying out from upstairs, asking if everything is ok the lady replies ‘it’s fine, that’s my son…he’s praying’

How do we pray? Do we say things quietly to God or do we ever scream at Him? (If you don’t scream in frustration why not?).

If worship is about the way in which we connect with our creator then expressing angst, pain, suffering, feelings of abandonment and expressions of desperation must be part of that worship.

So, in drawing together Dave’s comments on screamy music, some thoughts on how we lament to God (2/3 Psalms are lament!) and adding into the mix my challenge of the way in which we worship I want to present you with a song called ‘Replace Me’ by Family Force Five. The chorus is simply amazing with the lyrics ‘desperation, needing you, every last breath I scream for you, shatter me into a million pieces, make me knew. Crush me, tear me, break me, mould me, make me what you want me to be, I am yours for you to use, oh take and replace me with you’ (There could never be the same amount of emotion in this song without it being screamed!). Enjoy and don’t forget to comment with your thoughts.

Alongside this I’ve been pondering the topic of worship…I love music but more and more I find myself feeling unsatisfied by ‘worship songs’ that the likes of Tim Hughes, Matt Redman and Stuart Townsend have to offer. In the case of Tim and Matt there’s some nice upbeat stuff but nothing ground breaking when it comes to lyrics and where Townsend makes up for this with lyrics they tend to be pretty traditional and jargon sounding and the tunes sound exactly the same as pretty much every hymn ever written.

The church has adopted a fairly standard pop-rock sound about it’s worship and I’m sure we’re missing something!

Someone said at a day I was on a while ago that ‘when you turn your mind back to God it’s an act of worship‘ yet the church is trapped in this attitude of worship meaning ‘to sing a few jargon filled pop-rock songs’.

Why is it that God has made us all very different yet we all have to fit the same worship mould? When was the last time you were in a church service with ‘different’ sounding sung worship or perhaps even a service with no songs at all?

In my thoughts on worship I’ve been thinking about songs which I find really help me connect with God so I thought I’d post a couple of youtube videos of them for your viewing pleasure.

In the meantime comment this post with your experience of church worship and ways which you connect with God and I shall continue these thoughts soon!

Five Iron Frenzy – Suckerpunch – Lyrics

Paramore – We Are Broken - lyrics

I was invited a while ago to lead the June all age as it would be my last all age…the same day the young people of one of our groups said they’d like to lead a service and so the power was handed over.

A few weeks ago we sat down at a youth group and asked the question ‘what do you think church is?’ and of course the standard answers were there but more so the idea of community emerged, it seems that for the young people at Park Road Baptist Church community is a key thing about church and so with the aim of people experiencing community and breaking down the age barriers the young people planned a community themed Cafe style service based on ideas from the early church in Acts….one young person even remarked ‘we’re not trying to change things, we’re just trying to get things back to how they used to be’.

So I spent yesterday re-arranging the church to a more cafe-style look and one young person took the sermon on board and others took other aspects of leading, we asked Graham and Carolyn to lead some laid back acoustic worship and with the help of so many people at Park Road the young people pulled off an amazing service.

Challenges

Of course the biggest challenge in all of this as a youth worker is letting go of the power and empowering the young people to lead and it has been scary but encouraging…all my worries were washed away by a fantastic sermon and a confidentially led service.

The second challenge for me came during the table discussions, one man in our group recently lost his wife and shared how in the two months she was ill every lunchtime his neighbours provided him with a meal (they are Christians) and just hearing about his story and the difference the simple act of a meal has made to him was amazing. As Christians we need to work on community if church is just about a sunday morning service then Christianity is a waste of space and worthless but if Christianity is as Christ described it when he talked about us feeding the hungry and clothing the naked then it’s the most important thing anyone could ever become part of…we just need to accept the challenge of investing in community and showing Christ’s love.

Anyway here’s a photo of the re-arranged Park Road!

I’ve been thinking for months how disconnected young people end up from communion within the baptist church because of the style in which it is done – see my blog from a couple of months back. Today we had an all-age service with Communion with nowhere near as much opposition as I expected.

Right from the start of the idea we (myself & the minister) were trust by the Deacons to do it in a sensitive way and in the end we went for inviting everyone forwards to the front for bread and then taking the wine to them…with a catch! Those that came forward (and we invited all) could receive a blessing if they didn’t want communion (plus a grape for the children).

It was a great moment because everyone seemed to engage with it (young and old) and I even heard this afternoon that some of our regular moaners actually liked the service (these are people who I don’t think I’ve ever heard a good word about a service said from their lips!).

So perhaps we’re at the start of a journey into including everyone in communion…the start…

Secondly this evening myself and Graham (brilliant acoustic guitarist at church) led an unplugged style set of worship. We did this once before and it worked well so thought it was time to go again and it worked really well, it’s great sometimes to strip the music back and give people a chance to focus on God. We even introduced the Phatfish song ‘There is a day’ which went down really well too.

All in all a good Sunday, God was moving and including!!!

For those that don’t know Letton Hall is a Christian Conferance centre just outside of Dereham, previously it was a stately home and it can be rented by all sorts of groups…The CROPS Trust from Peterborough is just one of them and every February and October half term CROPS take a group of young people from churches all over Peterborough to Letton.

This half term CROPS also hired dophin court at Letton Hall so we took around 12 leaders (of which I was one) and 80ish young people aged between 11 and 18.

Our guest speaker for the week was none other than director of Norwich Youth For Christ Mark Tuma who will always be remembered by myself for playing ‘Rage Against the Machine’ at a Fridays event a few years back!

During the theme ‘Heroes’ Mark explored the characters of Gideon, Rahab, Hannah and John the Baptist in 4 brilliant talks which were insightful, interesting, funny (in places) and challenging.

I was also privilaged to lead worship on the first night with some very talented musicians and 80 young people with hearts ready to worship God which was amazing, I only wish people in churches would have the passion for worship that young people have…in fact I wish they had the passion for Jesus young people have!

On the second night around 10 (possibly more) made committments to Christ for the first time which was so exciting to just be there and witness the joy in the room as those young people made their way to the front to a cheer of celebration from everyone in that room.

So that’s my Letton post, I have returned from Letton feeling physically drained but spiritually refreshed, I feel challenged by Mark’s talks and feel like I’ve returned having really met with God! I feel lucky to have been part of the event hanging around with a great bunch of young people and leaders who are completely committed to young people.

Once again I seem to have done my usual lack of blogging followed by a major blog-binge however I wanted to post on this!

In June I leave Peterborough and that is very likely to mean that this week’s Letton Hall residential will be the last for a while and for me it’s the end of an era.

I must have been 12/13 when I first went to Letton with St Andrew’s Church, I did some of my first Youth Work at Letton and it’s a place full of memories and indeed a place where a lot of my faith was formed & chewed over.

To look back from a 13 year old me attending a Letton weekend to a 22 year old me leading worship and seminars at a Letton almost 10 years on is quite strange.

Anyway that’s all I have to say…I shall be back blogging at the weekend!

For Jesus, God we praise you, died to save our souls
Stepped out into darkness, as it was foretold
Suffered death, was crucified, Jesus took my shame
For Jesus, God we praise you, death He overcame

Our God, heaven can’t hold You, nor the earth sustain
heaven and earth shall flee away, when You come to reign
in the bleak-midwinter, a stable-place sufficed
the lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ

Oh, what can I give Him, woeful as I am
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
If I were a wiseman, I would do my part
Yet, what can I give You; I will give my heart

I’ve been continuing to think about worship leading recently, it’s interesting to see differences between worship bands at events like ‘The Point’ (where I’m leading in December), housegroup and various churches…and there seem to be two common features….

1 – Often Youth Worship bands are made up of musicians who are good but are still gaining confidence and so often the band will sound a little bit more ‘raw’ than others…although this rawness is often quite unnoticeable.

2 – Youth Worship Bands…or rather those in them tend to smile more and look like they’re enjoying themselves.

From these thoughts I’ve been wondering if there’s a trend…it’s easy for a worship band to become hooked up in their skills, concentrating hard on making sure every note played or sung is pitch perfect and there is nothing wrong with wanting things to be perfect…well in theory there isn’t.

The fact is although we want things to be perfect much like we strive for perfect relationships with God and to be people living perfect Christian lifestyles we more often than not fail to obtain that perfection.

I don’t mean that negatively but realistically

The purpose of being in a worship band (or leading worship) is not to play everything perfectly otherwise we’d title it a ‘perfection band’, the purpose is infact to lead people in worship (often sung worship).

We should be musicians not aiming at perfection but musicians aiming to give our all to God, I blogged a year ago on making sure we remember to worship God and not perform (link) and to take that thought furthur I think we need to remember whether leading the worship band or playing within the band that we are worshipping God.

I learnt to drum in a worship band when I wasn’t that good but I was given the opportunity to develop that gift…the same goes for singing and the same should go for churches today.

The worship band is a great place for people to develop their musical gifts, whatever skill level they may be at and if we aim to be a perfect band then we lose that opportunity to nurture gifts that God is giving to people.

I’m not convinced God cares how good our sung worship sounds but the positions of our hearts during that sung worship and that should be our attitude...if it sounds good bonus but if we’re doing our very best, with hearts focused on God then that is what’s good and pleasing to God…as the story of Cain and Abel reminds us.

Sometimes worship bands can get too caught up in being performers and perfecting everything and forget that they’re worshipping God…and forget how to actually enjoy praising God with the gift he has given them…sometimes it only takes a smiling worship band to encourage the congregation in worship, it doesn’t matter how good or bad a band sounds, if a congregation can see that there is joy in the hearts of those worship leading then I believe it will be contageous!

So the last few days I’ve been a leader on The CROPS Trust’s Letton Hall houseparty with around 70 young people and it’s been a brilliant funny and challenging few days.

I had the opportunity to lead worship on the first night which I really enjoyed, it’s great to lead in different settings and it was nice to have a bit more freedom on songs, styles and repeats!

I was also asked to lead a seminar on ‘How to read, understand and apply the bible’ and in planning that I found myself challenged and hopefully the seminar provided some useful stuff for young people…at some point I shall try and post all my notes online!

One of my favourite bits of Letton was the ‘Half Hour Hold’…a half hour slot each day of silence…It was great having a chance just to listen to nothing, to be able to read the bible a bit more and just ponder various thought…I highly recommend silence!

Anyway usual blogging should resume from now on!

So the usual singers, pianist, drummer (usually me) and bassist were given the night off and with 2 guitars and a bongo we did a more chilled out worship set.

I also introduced the song ‘You never let go’ by Matt Redman which seemed to work well.

If you’re remotely interested here is the ‘set list’ we used for worship unplugged.

How great Thou art, You never let go, Strength will rise, the highest and greatest, You chose the cross & Who is there like you?

If you lead worship in a church give a unplugged evening a go sometime!

Although musically Tim Hughes and Matt Redman’s current albums are brilliant and will set a new goal for quality in Christian worship music the lyrics lack anything new.

This is where Five Iron Frenzy come in….I’ve been listening to a lot of their ‘Electric Boogaloo’ album which I believe is one of their best and the lyrics of the song ‘Far, Far Away’ have really struck me, they’re not overly profound but they seem to take a very different angle than the lyrics our average church songs take…so here they are:

Staring at the shoreline
wishing for some hope
the weight of empty fishing nets
is more than twisted rope
And underneath stern faces
they wait with baited breath
with broken hearts from hoping
while casting out their nets
See the figure on the shore
He speaks His words like plain men sing
His hands they still have holes in them
glory to the King

[Chorus:]
Can you hear the bells are ringing
far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing
far, far, away?
I know that one day soon a song shall rise
you’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes

And Peter was a liar
a traitor just like me
and Judas was a hypocrite
and Paul a Pharisee
When truth can be so distant
and hope evades our reach
Peter swam across the water
and found it on the beach

I hear they’ll hang you upside down
stretched across two boards
for hearing distant voices
and crossing to the Lord

The thing with this song is that theologically it’s brilliant, at the same time I think it puts things in a very different way….I hope you like the lyrics as much as I do.

I wonder if there’s a place for songs like that in church worship?

The first time I played acoustic at church the strap snapped

The second time I played acoustic at church the strap also snapped (another new strap broken!)

The third time, for no reason at all, 25 minutes into the sermon my guitar randomly falls off it’s stand.

Conclusion…divine forces are in action, thus suggesting that the Lord God Almighty actually dislikes my acoustic guitar…I shall therefore only be playing electric in churches from now on.

If anyone has an alternative meaning to my acoustic guitar issue feel free to comment, alternatively I’d be interested to experiment when using a different acoustic guitar so if someone wishes to buy me a Takemine or nice Yamaha electro-acoustic so I can find out feel free too!

Church worship groups can be the most difficult bands to work with, not because everyone thinks things should be done in different ways (although this often is the case) but because often things can be so anal.

In my opinion the role of the worship leader is to lead a congregation in worship to the Holy Trinity, at the same time a worship leader should be worshipping himself and be constantly open to where the spirit wants to lead.

In my opinion churches are too structured, we have the songs planned beforehand (which in itself is fine, God can inspire us before), we can know exactly when chorus’ and bridges appear (once again, God can inspire us before), and we can have an exact order of service (and yes, God can inspire us beforehand). However too often in churches this remains a rigid structure.

Suddenly change a song or an order can make people uneasy, changing the order can panic people. Stopping to put in a time of prayer not scheduled in can cause mayhem because we like our little comfort zones.

God however is a God who by very nature should make us uncomfortable. As Christians we should constantly be made to feel uneasy by God and at the same time secure in the knowledge that he is Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

The fact is we have allowed church to be cosy, we have tried to please everyone, tried to put in something for all. We have tried to make it a place people are comfortable in and by doing that I believe we have put God inside a box.

We have written into our services times when God can move, for example a ‘response time’, but what if God wants a response somewhere else? Do we let him?

It’s easy to try and prepare sermons where we beat around the bush, avoiding the tiniest chance that we might offend someone…not correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m pretty sure I’m not) but Jesus did some serious offending, in fact Jesus offended the people he was meant to be serving so much they had him crucified.

I’m not suggesting a pastor should drive the church to that extreme but I am suggesting that in order to be more like Jesus we need to be more daring, we need to be different, we need to take people out their comfort zone and let God show them the wonder that he is.