Pop Worship

Why is it that minister's have today given up their God-given responsibility for determining and leading the service of worship?  Why have ministers, even in evangelical churches, handed over responsibility for the content of the 'songs' that are used in services?  Why is it that musically talented church members have now been given the role of starting the service (no call to worship, mind you) and of ordering it?  Why have ministers transferred leadership of the service to untrained performers?

No one can provide me with a biblical answer to these questions.  The argument runs, of course, that we have to try to keep the young people within the churches, so we give them a place in running the service.  Further, in order to remove the allegation that the modern church is outdated, the church has resorted to the whole scale introduction of unadulterated worldliness as a means of helping the 'pop generation' to worship God.  Times change, they tell us.  We are now in the modern times.  What was useful in the last generation is no longer useful today.  We must change because times have changed and men have changed and knowledge has marched on.

So God's ancient way of salvation revealed in the Scriptures and through the death and passion of Christ, is irrelevant.  A new way is needed, and the contemporary church is working hard to discover or invent a new way of salvation.  They tell us that man has changed, that he is educated, sophisticated, advanced, has walked on the moon, has split the atom, has discovered DNA and so on.  He is scientific man, knowledgeable man, clever man.  We cannot offer to such a man the same old way of worshipping God that our fathers used.  He is used to short blasts of information, 'sound bites,' so sermons have to be cut and shortened.  If modern people cannot concentrate for more than 12 minutes, keep your sermons to no more than 12 minutes.  If he prefers pop music, rock music, soul music, with endless repetition of choruses, then give him those.  If he prefers music that is similar to that of modern culture - unsingable - then music used in Christian worship must have the same characteristics.

What lies behind this practice is that man has changed therefore how he approaches God must be changed accordingly.  What utter nonsense.  Man is still the same fallen creature he ever was since Gen.3.  He has not changed morally, except that he has plunged to a greater depth of immorality.

Then, the Scriptures have changed.  The number of new modern translations demonstrates that the Bible has changed, so how we approach God must change as well. 

Then, and most seriously, God and His Son Jesus Christ have changed.  Yes, the Bible says that God is the eternal God and Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, today, and forever."  But no matter; we think He has changed so He must be worshipped in a new way, and what better to use than the music that modern worshippers are familiar with. 

Surely this is a confession by the evangelical church that Scripture is inadequate and its way of salvation is no longer appropriate to twenty century man.

Today, it is man's preferences that determine what worship is, not God's Word.  The Word is out of date.  It is no longer the main thing in church life today.  We need to 'soup it up.'  Whatever gets that result is what is right and to be used.

This is the situation today in many evangelical churches, churches that once stood for the Gospel pure and simple.  They have lost the plot entirely; and then they wonder why church attendance is falling.  They need to take a good long look in the mirror when shaving each morning to see where the true problem lies.