Alexander Green

Is Our Modern Worship an Idolatry of Experience?

We all need signs. Where am I? I love the arrows on maps that tell me exactly where I am and the context. Real life scares us because rarely are signs this clear. When it comes to faith, signs were sought by many of our Bible heroes. Whether I am praying and leaving out the fleece at night or putting my fingers into the holes in the hands of Christ, it is all the same. I need to see. Those that truly saw God like Isaiah wreathed in the fetal position. Honestly, I may ask for a sign, but may not want the real deal. If God truly shows up, it seems I might have to change as anyone is “undone” in his presence. This is the reason why Christ came as a baby. God knows we just can’t handle it.

In the Evangelical church, marketing and branding have been paramount since the posters of Billy Graham in the 1950s, Jesus People of the 1970s, church growth movement of the 1980s to the “seeker” movement and Vineyard music of the 1990s. Then we have a youth-infused “modern worship” take hold in the new millennia. Passion college events in the USA and stadiums filled in the UK gave voice to something new. The charismatic movement was now mainstream and rock-driven. Today, that same stadium-rock experience is in houses of worship. It is fun—for most of us!

Our pragmatism has led us to build an attractive experience to share the gospel. With this idea, a star athlete or celebrity artist will share the stage to sell our message. We are cool. We are relevant. Far be it for us to be irrelevant and out of style, eh? Theology is not entirely questioned in our methods to attract. We simply learn how to say that we have freedom to worship and express our worship in a culturally relevant way. Yet, today’s average house of worship is just as racially exclusive as it was in the 1950s. And, we actually like it that way. Is this a felt need worth reaching?

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Why Every Musician Needs To Think Like A Producer

Ever get frustrated by another musician you work with? If you haven’t, you’re lying.

Think about it: musicians of different generations, unique styles, different preferences, varying degrees of skill, different goals – all placed on the same stage. There’s nothing like a worship team!

This weekend I was having a conversation with one of the drummers on my team, a great friend. He’s a good drummer – passionate, great feel, good sense of time, loves Jesus, and has the kind of attitude any worship leader would envy.

But even with all these positives in place, something was amiss. Something sounded off.

So began a great conversation that changed everything.

Bottom line – this guy wasn’t thinking of the band. He was mindful of himself. He wasn’t thinking like a producer.

And that’s what this whole post is about – why you and all your team members can benefit from thinking like a producer, a music director, the one responsible for the overall sound.

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Why You Need to Sing Loudly in Church

Keith Getty lists five of the many reasons we should all sing passionately in church this Sunday:

Each week, upwards of 100 million people in America attend church, listen responsively to the sermons, and pray sincerely. But when it comes time to sing the hymns, the level of engagement drops dramatically.

There are many proposed reasons for this fall off, all of which hold validity. It could be the wider culture’s waning interest in community singing, the diminishing levels of music education in the West, the role of choirs in schools, the unstable and increasingly narcissistic elements in church music, or even the spiritual state of our nation as a whole.

For millennia, music has been an integral part of corporate worship. The first hymns are as old as the early books of the Bible. The disciples and early church leaders sang those songs and added some of their own.

Notable thinkers throughout history (and into the current era) — everyone from Luther to Bach to John Newton — have so believed in the importance of corporate worship that they, too, contributed to the grand canon of hymns we know today.

As a contemporary hymn writer who travels to cities worldwide, I love to meet pastors and worship leaders and encourage them to lead their congregations in deeper, more passionate singing. Here are just five of the many reasons we should all sing passionately in church this Sunday:

1. We are commanded to sing.

We are called to sing — indeed, the Scriptures command us more than 250 times to sing. It’s hardly one of those “controversial” issues that is hard to ascertain precisely what scripture is saying. It’s not a choice. It’s not dependent on “feeling like it.” It’s not our prerogative.

Throughout biblical history, in every place and circumstance — in victory and defeat, in celebrations and festivals, in death and mourning — singing was second nature for people of faith. Indeed, the largest book of the Bible — Psalms — is itself a songbook that explores the range of human experience and interaction with God through singing.

In the New Testament, Paul tells the early churches to get together and sing. In Ephesians 5, he reiterates the call of old to engage with each other in the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making music from the heart.

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Top 10 CCLI for week ending 4/11/15

1 Hosanna (Praise Is Rising)
Brenton Brown, Paul Baloche

2 Hosanna
Brooke Ligertwood

4 This Is Amazing Grace
Jeremy Riddle, Josh Farro, Phil Wickham

6 10000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
Jonas Myrin, Matt Redman

7 In Christ Alone
Keith Getty, Stuart Townend

8 The Wonderful Cross
Chris Tomlin, Isaac Watts, JD Wals, Jesse Reevesm Lowell Mason

9 Hosanna
Carl Tuttle

10 Jesus Paid It All
Alex Nifong, Elvina M. Hall, John Thomas Grape

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Responding to the Increasingly Short Shelf-Life of Worship Songs

Jamie Brown says things are not as simple for worship leaders/church music directors as they used to be.

There are now more songs to choose from than ever, at an increasingly rapid speed, coming from big publishers, independent artists, local churches, Christian radio, social media feeds, conferences, carrier pigeons, and their distant relatives, hipsters. Just when we’ve gotten a handle on introducing a new song to our congregation that was written in 2012, a newer new song comes along that’s even newer, making the new song we thought was new feel pretty old. Confused? You should be.

Studio albums. Live albums. EPs. Singles. Free downloads. Deluxe versions. Acoustic versions. Recorded on a beach versions. Recorded on top of a mountain versions. A lot of it is really good stuff! A lot of it is not-so-good stuff… And when you add it all together, it’s just a lot of new stuff to sort through, even if you had nothing else to do all week long than listen to all the new stuff. And even then you’d be out-of-touch if you took a few weeks off.

In the ancient past, known as the “1990s”, when a “new” song really caught on, like “Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord” or “Shout to the Lord”, that new song (for better or worse…) stuck around in a church’s repertoire for a substantial period of time, even until present-day. Nowadays, in the era of worship song abundance (again, not a bad thing, just a more complicated thing), when a new song catches on, it might disappear several months later when new crop of new songs come on the scene.

What’s the result? Two things are happening: First, worship leaders are overwhelmed and inundated, possibly discouraged that they can’t keep up, and either resisting or succumbing to the pressure and marketing that screams at them to stay relevant. Second, congregations are being asked to learn more new songs than they can handle, aren’t given the opportunity to sing these new songs for years and years, are being fed songs that might not be particularly nourishing.

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3 Things Pastors Can Learn from Robert Schuller

Schuller, founder and pastor of the Crystal Cathedral and one of America’s first televangelists, died April 2nd at age 88 after a battle with esophageal cancer.

One of America’s largest and best-known churches, Saddleback Church, celebrates its 35th anniversary this week. As we contemplate the legacy of Saddleback founder Rick Warren, many people don’t realize that it was another pastor from Southern California who schooled Warren in key lessons.

Warren has told me about this man he learned from, and others — including Willow Creek Community Church founder Bill Hybels — have said the same. The man they learned from? Robert Schuller.

While some may only remember Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral for its infamous bankruptcy and failed succession, that’s not the lesson I believe we should take from his legacy.

Schuller was the forerunner of the church growth movement of the 1980s and ’90s. He had a profound influence on today’s megachurch pastors such as Warren and Hybels and many others who studied his church-growth strategies. Schuller’s spiritual sons and daughters have planted churches that have redefined the landscape of evangelical Christianity in the United States and have impacted the world forever.

As America continues to see a rise of those who claim “none” as their spiritual affiliation, church leaders — and leaders everywhere — would do well to contemplate Schuller’s legacy and the three lessons we can learn from it.

1. Create a nonthreatening space where people feel comfortable.

From a small farm in Iowa, Schuller started his church literally by knocking on doors. He later opened a church in a drive-in movie theater so that people could come to church without being noticed and literally drive away if they felt uncomfortable. This was the dawn of creating church environments that are welcoming to those who do not normally go to church.

Leaders who create a safe space where people who might otherwise feel threatened can feel comfortable are leaders who build trust, create lasting relationships, and make an enduring impact.

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