Worshiping in the Holy Spirit is crucial to understanding God's love for us more deeply. When we worship through song we try to help people see, hear and experience God through their language and culture. The music we choose can make or break that spiritual aspect of church. I remember well going to church and reading from hymnals 4 part harmonies and hearing well written counterpoint from the congregation as everyone intently focused on their music making sure to sing the notes and words properly. As beautiful as that may have been, the question for me was "was that truly worship?". Some would say it was a higher form of worship because the music was well written and orderly and controlled. I'm not so sure God would agree....
We've seen it time and again in a movie or read it in a book. The young man has written a beautiful poem or letter and now stands before his intended and begins reading the letter to her hoping to win her heart. Halfway through his awkward and focused reading he looks up to see her distant eyes and he stops. "Look. I can't continue this. What I really want to say is that I really like you and would love it if we could maybe have coffee sometime?" Finally she hears his words that were spoken from the heart and not simply read off of a page with perfect diction. Smiling, she agrees on a time and a place for coffee.
When I think of music we sing at church, I realize that what we sing is far less important than the way we approach it. It's one thing to program music because it sounds good and WE like it. It's another thing to program music because it helps our congregation truly worship God in their way. As music ministers, we are not here for ourselves. Nor are we here to "save music" in the church. We are here for one thing only, to help people come closer to communion to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Focusing on the music actually pulls us away from Christ and so praise and worship music is by design, simple. Many of our christian composers are far better musicians than their music would allude to, but they realize that praise music needs to be simple if it is going to free us to listen to and experience the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 104 Lord Send Out Your Spirit and Renew the Face of the Earth
Psalm 104 Lord Send Out Your Spirit (for vigil mass)