The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Worship and Change...

We need to remember that true worship involves more than just words and music. The author of any given title is part and parcel with their work. The more one knows about the author(s) the more about that person’s character (and thus theology) is interjected into personal worship. It is impossible to isolate one from the other. This will either enrich or make worship more difficult, or even corrupt.

While I have not checked into the singer Darlene Zschech, I have the News Boys. Every time I hear them I think of long haired hippy, loud, happy—clappy, dancing twisting obnoxious noise that could hardly inspire me to worship the God of the universe in a reverent manner. Thus, while some of the words of their music may be fine, when translated into life (true theology is that which is lived out) it is corrupt for worship. Listening to them signing while I prepared this post was hardly edifying.

Not only do you have groups like the News Boys above which offer alternative worship styles, but I have experienced two PCA Churches with their idea of “modern worship.” These two cases are extreme, however both are in need of reprimand. One played an edited version of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin' Alive” and the other used an edited version of Pink Floyd’s "Money.” The sermon for the later was concerning tithing. The sermon for the first was dead before it left the pastor’s lips. Both are outside Regulative Worship and are irreverent, unbiblical, and inspired in me anything but worship. I should have sang, “These Boots are Made for Walking” on the way out the door. If Nancy Sinatra had been thinking of the modern trash in worship today when she sang the words below she would have been correct: