Confession of a Washed up Music Snob part I

By Matt Johnson

Over the course of the next month or so we’ll be running a series called “Confessions”. Let’s face it, we’re all learning as we go as we figure out this worship department thing. Some of us were raised up in tiny Fundamentalist Pentecostal churches, some of us are burned out youth-group kids and maybe some of us didn’t come to Christ until later in life. Whatever the scenario we’ve all got learning (and unlearning) to do and we’ve all got enculturation baggage. Through this series our hope is that something here will resonate with your own stories as we grapple with the ideas of what it means to be an authentic worshipper in a particular place and in a particular time.

I.) Things Would Be So Much Easier If Ned Flanders Was Leading Worship (or Why I’m Lazy About Contextualization Even Though I Like The Idea of Contextualization

Sometimes I envy churches that can get by with 90s era pastel colored decorations and a worship pastor that plays all the Maranatha greats on acoustic guitar wearing khaki Dockers and a baby blue polo. But I attend Mars Hill church in Seattle where everyone’s a snob for aesthetics and prefer loud electric guitars. Effectively communicating the gospel with pink wallpaper as a backdrop to Ned Flanders wearing sensible business casual attire leading worship simply would not work at Mars Hill. Not to say that approach doesn’t connect with folks elsewhere, it just wouldn’t fly here.

There are a couple reasons why I wish our services were simpler. For one, I’ve played in a worship band with the same folks for almost a decade and Sunday service is a pretty big event that requires being on call all day long. Don’t get me wrong, I love serving in the church in the capacity that I do but the details that go into all of the technology to pull off a service without a hitch can get pretty complicated. Secondly, I’ve always struggled with the idea of serving in a public way that involves rocking out. But I’ll get to that later.

I’ve realized my hang up is really pretty simple. Most of the time I’m lazy and I just want to stay at home on Sunday. Of course that’s just the surface level to a larger problem. What I’m really fighting is a sense of false piety brought on by being visible in my service. That and I don’t want to do the hard intellectual work of thinking about contextualization. I think enough about abstract concepts enough on my own time and I’d rather just be served rather than be a servant when I attend church. Plus, isn’t it kind of pretentious to over think this stuff? It’s just the gospel right?

So before I get way ahead of myself, what’s the point of this essay in the first place? Ultimately my hope is to help clear away some clutter on how we think through these issues in our churches and to encourage the young, disgruntled worship pastors to follow their creative inclinations.

To give some background, I’ve been doing music now for over two thirds of my life, I’ve been a Christian for half my life and have given the issue of my faith and how my talent as a musician works together a whole lot of thought. I’ve been through stages that have schizophrenically run the gamut of believing that “non-Christian” music was of the devil to being a jaded music snob to deeply disliked Christian music to being a recording artist on a nominally “Christian” label to refusing any association with that scene at all. I’ve done extensive touring in various bands and I’ve done a fair amount of freelance music criticism. On top of that, I’m obsessed with piecing together the puzzle where music, culture and faith intersect and can geek out on totally useless trivia for hours. Consequently I’ve been through the extremes of arguing for Christians-in-the-arts awareness ala Francis Schaeffer to getting burned out on the issue and not caring at all and back again.

Well, I’m still in process. And when I enter the doors of the church sanctuary, my inclination is to leave my critical thinking apparatus’ in the parking lot. I don’t want my faith to get complicated with peripheral hack-job intellectual clutter. But if everyone else serving in the church felt the same way, we’d end up with Ned leading worship in his sensible business casual attire by default because Ned has a good heart and wants to serve. Well, God bless Ned but as noted above, that just won’t do.

The issue then in our church is to be thoughtful about our context in Seattle and how we can use cultural points of reference to connect with people coming through the door. Conversely-for those looking for successful models of outreach in their communities-the issue is NOT just about an across the board change in programming. Because what works in a Seattle church can’t be packaged and applied to a church in say, Dubuque Iowa and vise-versa. This is why I believe there’s a problem with how worship music and general media is promoted in the “Christian stuff” marketplace. This “stuff factory”-in my opinion-is basically churning out second rate, middle of the road homogenized experiences and packaging them for a large audience.

It may seem like I’m setting up a straw-man argument but I am aware that there are plenty of other worship acts that are aiming at excellence and are making interesting music. But the point is I strongly believe that doing the hard work or really engaging your local culture will yield a lot more fruit than just buying into a prepackaged bible-bookstore experience. So with all of this in mind here are some things to think about:

• Take a shot at writing your own music for your local congregation
• Ask yourself what is the best way to lead your congregation in an appropriate response to God’s initiation
• What is the congregation learning?
• What needs to be repented of in the congregation?
• How should God be appropriately praised in light of the above mentioned?