Because of a couple comment on my Facebook link to this post last night, I think I need to be clear that I was doing a couple things with it. First, I was being provocative in order to get folks thinking about worship in new ways. Second, I was overstating my basic position in order to clarify a far more important point, which I wish to spell out here.
As for being provocative, well, I'm not sure it worked. What I saw when I watched the video of Wookiefoot closing down a show was a kind of mass celebratory experience. Musicians and dancers on stage and audience all together dancing and joyfully celebrating . . . just life. The joy of being alive. Even the guidance to help clean up the grounds was done in such a celebratory way - "Reach down and pick up some trash," etc. - that it was really quite remarkable.
Christian worship, whether Protestant of Catholic, Orthodox or Pentecostal, is far too rigid. There is an implicit assumption, I think, that "reverence" excludes any spontaneous expression of joy. I include Pentecostal worship in this because, for all its noise and shared sense of the celebration, it is routinized and controlled, rather than open.
There is nothing wrong with traditional worship forms and styles. I once attended a Greek Orthodox High Mass, and the service was originally written by one of the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century. Now that's old time religion. Given the limited choices currently on order, I will take traditional hymnody over praise music. Moments of silence are as important as moments of rapturous noise.
Yet, there needs to be more space for more opportunities. If the Psalms are clear about anything, we need to "sing a new song". We are not enjoined to "sing the same old song over and over and over and over again." Along with singing something new - because our God is the God, first and foremost, of new things - we are to honor our God with joy. For some reason, particularly in American Protestantism (although generally, I think), joy is equated with a lack of reverence. Considering conservative attitudes in various Protestant denominations toward dancing, the theater, alcohol, even musical instruments (they are a relatively recent addition to worship in Methodist circles), is it any wonder there is such a disconnect between our sacred worship and our secular celebration?
Furthermore, the commercialization of a kind of "Christian pop" music since the 1970's, which actually hides a pretty creative period of actual hymn-writing, has offered up a huge resource for churches, at a price (of course), as well as created an audience for an alternative to "secular pop" that further separates not only Christian worship, but Christina home life, from its participation in the larger world. This dichotomy is expressed in African-American history by the "Saturday night/Sunday morning" phenomenon. The folks who stomped at the roadhouse all night Saturday went home, refreshed, changed clothes, then spent most of Sunday in church singing a different song, often with the same musicians providing accompaniment. The links, however, between the spirituals and blues, as James Cone has written, are far more intricate not just musically, but culturally as well. Even so, when Gospel artists (and Gospel music was and still is a huge market) cross over to pop - from Sam Cooke to Amy Grant - there is a certain sense of betrayal, of the performer selling his or her soul for filthy lucre.
To overcome this, I think the easiest thing in the world would be to open our worship to everything. There is no reason in the world, other than calcified tradition, for an arbitrary secular/sacred divide. Especially in the Wesleyan tradition, we need to recognize that so many of Charles Wesley's hymns were written to be sung to popular tunes. In John Wesley's instructions for singing which open the United Methodist Hymnal, we read that if we know a certain set of words to a tune, we are to forget them and learn the new ones as quickly as possible. What would it be like if the Church were to open itself not just to Sandi Patti and Toby Mac, but to Jay-Z, Kings of Leon, and George Strait? There are also a slew of "secular" songs that, if one listens closely enough, have a message the Church could embrace easily. Songs by the Irish bands U2 and the Alarm, the American band The Call, Marvin Gaye and the Neville Brothers all offer themselves to us as a source of inspiration.
There is no reason, other than a certain cultural preference for reticence in certain public settings, that our reverence for God limits us in our expression of joy at the great gift of salvation and new life in God. This also does not mean that silence is also precluded. On the contrary, some noise mixed with silence can be even more effective. We need to be creative in our approach to all sorts of possibilities, particularly if we wish to be a Church that is alive. Wouldn't it be nice, after all, if we could proclaim that when we sing every song, our hearts go loop-de-loop and we can do no wrong?
