What is wrong with contemporary worship music? Or: Why our music must be cruciform.
I recently found myself having to walk out from a worship service at a Baptist Church, as I could not stand the kind of worship music that is becoming the norm among Evangelicals. This happened when the European Baptist Federation celebrated the opening of its annual conference, this year in Lviv, Ukraine. As it was a celebration the volume was extra high, etc., making the music quite intolerable. I would normally argue that as long as we are gathered in the name of Christ, no question of aesthetics can justify leaving church – no matter how bad the music is! While I still think this is true in principle, I felt this time I had to go and breathe some air (and get a beer) in order to reflect upon what it is with contemporary worship music, that I dislike so much. What I found is that it’s not just a matter of taste and style, but a matter of how form relates to content. The misconception that the gospel must in some way be given an arbitrary form that does not follow from its conte