Tag Archives: lament

02/6/10

Worship – Screaming

A couple of years ago I post some stuff on the lack of lament in our worship using the picture to the left and once again in recent weeks as I’ve pondered worship and varying the music we use to worship (see this post) I’ve been thinking about the way we express our worship.

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.

05/12/08

Lament, Church and Tonight’s Youth Group

For those that don’t know I run a monday night youth group as part of my job called ‘Doodles’, from January it’s been weekly alternating between social nights and serious/more God-focused nights…and this term we’ve been doing a ‘Coping with…’ series.

Tonight’s ‘Coping with’ was titled ‘Coping with God’ and was all about the parts of God we struggle with, as part of it we had a time of quiet/prayer where we had Tim Hughes’ ‘When Silence Falls’ in the background whilst I invited the young people to write down the things they struggle with (God-wise) on paper as a way of expressing but also a chance to ask God to help with them.

We followed this up by going through them on an anonymous basis and encouraging everyone to have a go at trying to answer the coping issue, it turned into an awesome session where they all came up with some awesome stuff.

Now I appreciate asking young people to think about their struggles and questions is perhaps a little unusual but why? I think we need more opportunities within church and youth groups to question, to wrestle with God, to lament. I’ve recently got a booklet about lamenting in a church of praise and I’m hoping reading it will give me ideas of how to build lament into church more because I think we need to.

Note: If you think the session sounds interesting it will feature on the new version of Stand For Christ which is probably about 2 weeks away from completion!