Worship Is Not Music

Worship leader, Paul Baloche recently said ‘Worship is not music, but music can be worship’ (In his article ‘Seeds of Songs’, Worship Leader Magazine. Vol:23, No:1 www.worshipleader.com).

In a way, it is unfortunate that the word ‘worship’ has been used for different things within the church that quite often can lead to misunderstandings.

For me, part of the problem stems from the genre of music labelled as ‘worship music’ as opposed to ‘Christian contemporary music (CCM)’ or ‘gospel’ for example. The music industry needed to call this genre of music something and labelled it ‘worship music’. Fair enough. We can now associate a particular style and sound of music to the ‘worship music’ genre and can even search for it on our favourite digital music distribution provider. However, this is where the confusion begins.

Scripture gives many examples where music and song are used, and indeed when God encourages us to use them as a part of our worship to Him: ‘Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-20).

It provides an amazing avenue where our spirit and creativity can intermingle and give expression to our deepest heartfelt prayers, thankfulness, desires, longings and sorrows. Music is a universal language, understood by all of humanity. Its beauty can by-pass intellect and connect spirit to Spirit, as deep cries out to deep. But, worship is not music! Certainly, music can be used to give expression to our worship. Music can be one of the many ways in which we can give love and adoration to God the Father. But it is one of many ways. We neglect other forms or ways of expressing our worship at our peril.

This is why I try to distinguish music and song as being only part of our time of worship when we gather as a church congregation. As worship leader, I not only lead music and singing, but other elements of worship too. Indeed other people from our congregation are invited to lead other elements of our worship on a Sunday – it’s not all about me! I am very careful not to say: ‘Let’s stand and worship together’ before we start singing. Rather I say ‘Let’s stand and sing together’. This small distinction can help to avoid massive misunderstandings. Be careful with the language you use to talk about singing and music in church. Do you refer to your group of musicians as ‘the worship band/team?’ – why not simply ‘the band’ or ‘the music team’?

It may be quite radical to suggest that in order to help combat this common misconception of what worship is, is to intentionally say something in a service such as ‘Let’s worship God together now’ and do something other than sing! Perhaps open a time of prayer, or have communion together, or share testimonies?

So thanks, Paul for the reminder. Worship is so much more than a genre of music and worship can be expressed in many different ways outside of musical accompaniment. Worship is not music, but music can be worship.

(Check out Paul Baloche’s website www.leadworship.com)