Worship Styles

Sorry

In this post, I use a lot of strong language, bold critiques. I want you to know that I love worship music. I have truly met God through so many contemporary Christian songs. I know there are genuine God-fearing individuals who are writing songs to truly bless God and the American church.

My heart is for our American culture of worship (and art) to flourish. I believe that there is more for us that we are missing out on, and I think it's important. I hope you can see my passion and that something may ignite in you as well.

Boxes

In the last few years, I have had several conversations with people about how "you can't play that song on a Sunday" or "that isn't worship music", "I can't worship to that", or other various statements of that sort. These statements grieve my heart. In the American Evangelical church, our praise is limited to a specific type of rhythm, specific type of melody, specific chord progressions. Anything outside of that, and "you can't play that in church". Anything outside of that and it's "more about the music than God". Anything outside of that and "you'll distract the congregation".

My friends, why are we settling for this? Imagine if we could only preach in one style, otherwise it isn't preaching? Imagine we could only pray in one style, or it isn't prayer? Why have we drawn this box around the kind of music we sing to God?

Psalm 150 says, "Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!"

Essentially, "praise him with everything!"

Oh how I wish dancing was a normal part of our worship! How I wish guitar solos and bass lines would stir up praise in our hearts, rather than judgement! How I wish fun songs or moments were not done with a wink, or reserved just for those special kids services. To be honest, our simplification and narrow view of worship feels like a stifling of the heart of God, a quenching of the Spirit. Like we're barred from praising God in new ways. Barred from offering authentic worship, but instead forced to conform. The current culture feels pharisaic. We are adding rules that God never created.

We often poke fun at traditional churches who don't like the introduction of rock instruments in worship, yet we balk at the introduction of worship songs that are of a different genre.

Simplification

I acknowledge I am being hard. Please do not take what I say as an attack on you (if you have said these things or have had these thoughts). I am being hard on our culture. It saddens me that we restrict God's worship. Yes - there are times and places, and we ought to serve the congregation. Something overcomplicated for the sake of being overcomplicated does not help offer praise to God in a congregational setting.

A common sentiment I hear is that we need to simplify so as to make songs easy to follow. It is a wonderful thing that we love our church family and desire to lower the bar for everyone to worship. The problems are when that "lowering of the bar" also lowers our glorification of God. We serve the congregation at the expense of serving the worship, at the expense of serving/praising God. There should be balance - we should give everything we've got to praise God, while also making our art accessible for the lay person to participate in it.

Our current "standard" is so constricted. We dumb down songs as much as possible so that people can sing them, but we know full well almost every person can sing whatever pop song is on the radio just fine. These songs often have complex melodies and rhythms, yet people know them and sing them out!

What also bothers me is the commercialization/formulaic nature of contemporary worship music. Each song has the same flow - start low, build it up at the second verse, really amp it up in the second chorus, bring it down, sing the bridge and build it, go to the chorus, go back into a big bridge, again and again and again. Why is there a formula to a "worship song"? Why is it that they are so carefully crafted to elicit a specific vibe, and only that vibe? It's almost emotional manipulation. Why are songs written to hit #1 on the CCLI charts? Or to be perfect on Christian radio?

Yet another problem - if someone doesn't like this one formula, this one specific genre, "sorry bro, no worship for you". We actually alienate more people than we know by forcing them to only worship to one style.

Excellence

Why does a song being good make it more about the song than worshipping God?

Let's think this all the way through. When Solomon built the temple, was it not extravagant? Was it not overlayed with gold, beautiful beyond measure? What was the point of the sculpted cherubim? What was the point of the engraved palm trees and flowers? "Uh Solomon, you're making it more about the temple than about God" - someone in 2026.

What a horrible mindset! What a scheme of the enemy! Beautiful, excellent, God-glorifying art is scriptural! Bezalel was filled with the Holy Spirit as he created the Ark of the Covenant. "Play skillfully" says Psalm 33. If God was concerned with beauty being a distraction, why did he have the tabernacle and the temple made so beautifully? Why did he make the Earth so incredible? In the same way the mountains and the oceans glorify God, can we not offer something of even more beauty to God in our art?

So many people say "I wish Christian art was more mainstream, let's shape our culture!" yet when Christians make art, the same people make fun of it, say "that's bad" / "that's not worship" / "that's {insert whatever negative comment}". Can we be people of encouragement? Can we encourage one another to sing new songs to God? To paint beautiful paintings unto the Lord? To write profound movies that cut to the heart of the viewer? To write complex stories better than the sin gratifying slop that sits on the shelves at Target? Where are the Tolkiens of today? The Bachs? The Michaelangelos? Our current Evangelical Christian culture dampens those people. Let's spur them on!

So what?

Jesus outlines two criteria for worship - "in spirit and in truth". Let us be people that worship simply in spirit and truth. Let us offer authentic worship, giving all that we have to God. I believe we can offer better glory to God than the mountains. I won't let the rocks cry out.

"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" - Revelation 7:9a