Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

Shallow praise choruses getting you down?

Do shallow praise choruses bug you? Hate their mindless repetition of phrases? Do you doubt these songs lead us into the presence of God more than the solid songs of your past? Perhaps you're part of the growing crowd of folk simply fed up with their shallowness. One fellow recently complained, "At best these choruses are frivolous and mindless; but at worst they breed heresy and border on sacrilege." Do you agree with him? If so, you're probably one of those folk who get frustrated every time you attend church. You see the lack of theological content or the missing Christ-centeredness of so many current choruses. And you grumble at the mantra-like repetition. In fact, I bet you even mutter things to yourself while the rest of the congregation is standing, singing, and clapping.

If you are frustrated with the shallow praise choruses you'll want to join my new organization. I'm organizing a movement to get back to the solid songs of the 1950's. We are planning to campaign for a return to solid theological songs we used to have. Want to join?

For instance we'll band together to persuade today's music directors to reintroduce those deeper songs we used to sing. They could start with "Give me oil in my lamp; keep me burning, burning, burning." Now there's a real worship song. If we could just get back to songs like that we'd be much better off, don't you think? Our praise bands are always talking about being "ushered into the presence of the Lord." They could speed up the ushering if they'd use 50's songs like, "Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelujah; Praise Ye the Lord." They could even divide up the audience. Half of us could sing the "Hallelu" part and the other half respond with an antiphonal "Praise Ye the Lord." That'd be such better worship.

And our organization could make and sell overheads transparencies and fancy slides too. We'd sure want to make a slide of such classic worship songs as "Climb, Climb up Sunshine Mountain; faces all aglow." That would really improve our worship, don't you think? Our music directors are always telling is "God inhabits the praises of His people." I bet if we get back to singing climb-climb up Sunshine Mountain God would do more inhabiting. We'll lead a massive revolution in worship! Just think how much more worshipful our services would be.

And as we gain ground we might even be able to reintroduce some of our personal favorites like, "Oh Stop and let me tell you." We could even teach our leaders how to get us to actually stop singing after the "stop," then we'd all watch him or her in suspense until they dramatically signaled us to continue. That'd help our worship don't you think?

Then once we reintroduced all our choruses we could move on to those wonderfully deep 1950's gospel songs too. You know songs like "Joy Unspeakable" or "I've got a mansion, just over the hilltop." I'm excited about this new movement to recover the reverent worship and awe of the 1950's. Won't you join me?

If we were successful we'd have far deeper worship using 1950's songs wouldn't we? Or would we?


So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu

By Keith Drury, February 2000. You are free to transmit, duplicate or distribute this article for non-profit use without permission.