So, today I have a couple of things I want to share from last night. First, something I noticed that I thought was pretty awesome. Secondly, something that hurt me greatly.

We'll start with the posiitive. The university I go to (a private Christian school) is having a missions conference this week. It's been really exciting to hear the different speakers, their stories, and about how tremendous an impact they are having in their fields. It's really been a lot of fun. Tonight, during the worship time, they had a few students come up to sing some of the songs in their own languages. It was really neat in concept, but I was unsure of how it would turn out.

I must say that  I was surprised by how smooth it was. At one point, we had a song being sung simultaneously in English, Spanish, and Korean. And it coalesced magnificently. Nothing sounded out of place or strange. They all fit together and made a beautiful mixture. IT was absolutely splendid to hear such different languages combined together.

But now we get to the second part of my post, which is less positive. I honestly want to understand, so if you have insight to lend, please do so. I do not mean this mean spirited at all, I simply do not understand this. Why, in a 40 minute worship set, do we only use... maybe 500 unique words (not counting other languages)? Why is that?

I really don't understand this at all.Church history has shown an incredibly diverse range of musical forms, but they have all shared one facet: beautiful lyrics that strive to capture a brief snapshot of a vast and immeasurably great God. So where in that does the following fit?

I exalt thee,
I exalt thee,
I exalt thee
O God.

For 3 minutes, I kid you not, we sang only those words (except for one of the worship leaders, who displayed quite excellent vocal talent while the rest of us.... chanted). All of the songs sung tonight were like that. A quatrain repeated 2 or 3 times, followed by a verse, followed by repeating the quatrain a few more times. I understand that "that's the way music today is", or rather, that's what I am told. Honestly, I think P!ink's song "Try" has more lyrical 'meat' to it (love can cause pain, but if you never try to love, you never reap its rewards. Also, simply acting on desire is bound to burn you) than simply repeating "I exalt thee" over and over and over and over and over and ......

And in between two songs, the worship leader gave such a beautiful description of the beauty of heaven, where all people's of the Earth will gather at the feet of the Almighty to sing praise with all their hearts in their own language. It was beautiful, and there are many many songs that could have been sung to lend voice to that. But instead we sing 5 or six songs with repetitive quatrain choruses.

I think why it bothers me so much is this: the English language is pretty stupid sometimes, what with all those rules and exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions, but one thing we knock out of the park is vocabulary. Oxford dictionary's website summarizes that there are at least 250,000 distinct English words, and if you want to count different tenses (like "run"/"ran"/"running" or "dog"/"dogs") that number quickly shoots to over 750,000.

Why, then, must we only use 50 per song to glorify the God who created language?

"Well, the songs are easy to remember" some say. Oh, right, because God forbid we have to think hard about Him when we sing.

"It's the spirit of the times, man. You gotta be popular to reach out." Oh right, because Jesus to be conformed to the world, not transformed. Also, unsaved people don't understand our music. They stand around while we chant some vague snippet of Scripture and wonder what this is all about. We look like a bunch of weirdos. If your argument is for music as an outreach, then you need to have music that explains your faith.

"But it's an emotional connection. The words aren't important, it's all about the feelings." No. Just... no. God has an awful lot to say about being ruled by your emotions, and none of it is good. You MUST have your mind engaged. It is imperative. Paul was greatly encouraged by the Bereans because, rather than sitting and absorbing what he was saying, they challenged him. They looked up the prophecies he claimed were fulfilled.  They fact checked what they were hearing, and it was commended by Luke. Should we not also, then, actively engage our worship in the same way? We are told to "flee youthful passion", not go with the emotional flow.

The bottom line is this: there is a time and place for repetition. It can be used quite powerfully in the middle of a song. The music builds to a climax and you repeat a core essence of your theme for effect. That is powerful and effective. But to just start with repetition and keep repeating and then ending with repetition only succeeds in getting dangerously close to what Christ calls "vain repetitions". As a church, we are suffering from a distinct lack of understanding and depth in the congregation. Our faith is sickly and shallow, based only how we feel. Our music must be contributing to that, to some degree. And if we keep forsaking the deeper things of our faith, our faiths are doomed to get more sickly and more shallow.