Gospel Music 2

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12: 1, 2)

I want to summarize my last message by pointing us to some glaring inconsistences of present day singing erroneously being called worship. And this is because it is worldlier than even the heathens.

In fact some churches are literal discos, if not nightclubs when you look at the lighting and sound systems. You will look at a concert and it is all mist and smoke and darkness. And the sound is such that you will barely hear anything being sung but the instruments and chanting. Sadly you will be told that it is a gospel concert or worship service.

The ‘worship’ leaders are also not much different from worship leaders of other gods. Their dressing and way of life are also not any different. The only difference is in the lyrics being sung.

You see, when we trashed our history in the name of avoiding motions without meaning, it can be compared to burning the temple and scrolls because the Pharisees and scribes paid lip service to the Torah. Yet Jesus challenged their worship instead of trashing it.

We were therefore left with nothing to guide us. We had nothing to compare what we had with reality. We were literally left in the darkness as there was nothing to guide or even verify our revelation, if it was revelation at all.

But we needed to sing as we knew that singing was scriptural and we couldn’t trash it. Even if we did not know of its spirituality we knew that music is a universal language.

The world’s worship is very developed, in fact extremely so. And sadly that was the only place we had left to look as we had trashed our singing history though we never thought of it that way.

That is where the choir was exchanged with the soloist as there was little need for everybody knowing songs. The choir’s purpose became to back up the star.

There also was no need for church members to know the songs as their only responsibility was chanting the choruses after the soloist and respond in line with his motions.

Yet a look at the past will show us that missionaries would translate the hymns as soon as they encountered a new language group. And I say this from having ministered to a few such without a Bible in their language. It thus meant that the community would have chunks of sound doctrine as soon as they believe as they will be singing it continuously. You will go to anybody who attends church and find that they have the basics of Biblical theology. And it serves very well as literacy would most likely be extended to children.

But choruses offer NOTHING in terms of Biblical theology, just a feel good sensation. It is no wonder that people who have attended church all their lives can treat their pastors as Samaritans treated Simon the sorcerer as the great power of God. Sadly, they know no better as not only do they not read the Bible, they have nil scriptural instruction in song. And the pastors feed from that treatment anyway.

Sadly, and very sadly so, the disease has infected even the churches that remained after the great fallout. They have started to slowly abandon hymns and embrace spiritual sawdust if I may call it that. And I do so because though one may feel well fed, they have consumed nothing nutritional for their spirits. That is why we have worship leaders (their term, not mine) going through depression, unable to tame their passions, getting into homosexuality, serial divorcees and a host of other unpleasant and shameful habits yet they continue leading people in worship and creating uplifting songs. That explains worshippers requiring deliverance (whatever that is).

A lot of modern worship is other worship, a creation of the flesh for the flesh. Sometimes it is of the evil one but I do not want the ignoramus throwing those weak pebbles at me without reading further.

You see, worship is encountering God. I want you to tell me who encountered God and remained the same. And the first thing they noticed was their sinful nature. Meaning that continuing in the presence required more than repentance. Yet you have no shame celebrating a worship leader sleeping around among other blatant sins.

But what do you expect when you look to the world to develop your singing? Yet many churches used secular musicians to develop their choirs and especially teach their instrumentalists. What spirit do you expect from that? Is God that desperate to look to the devil to train His ministers?

Those who know me know that I strongly believe that any person serving or working in church should be called, even the gateman and cleaner. I recently stopped an instrumentalist from playing in church because of his inconsistency (the star syndrome). And we continue without the instrument because it does God no service if the vessel has issues. Yet we have churches employ instrumentalists who also play in clubs.

You know that a teacher passes more than knowledge. A teacher passes the spirit he operates by. In the digital age it can be called his operating system.

The church thus, after looking to learn music from the secular success stories, picked their OS and therefore started behaving like them.

Or don’t you, like me wonder where a pastor gets his fashion sense to dress like a butterfly. Yet a preacher should direct all attention to Christ. Yet you have a preacher who by dressing draws all attention to himself. And the ‘worship leaders’ are even more so. Their songs dictate the dress code to draw attention to the singer and not Christ.

You can only understand when you remember where they got their operating system from.

That is when ministry started being a performance, and singing more so.

And did you ever ask where dance started becoming essential to worship?

We can only understand those by simply looking at the secular entertainer.

That is where we started treating numbers as success, increase in money as blessing..

That is why there is no rebuke for a successful pastor or singer whatever they may do. In fact the only sin is rocking the structure by questioning or drawing attention to those sins. We of course know that band leaders are never questioned. If you are dissatisfied with their leadership you have only one option, leave. And that is what most churches will tell you.

That is why a worldly success story is accepted in church without requiring any purging of past evils. A person who was singing vile lyrics sees the light (probably of his dwindling career) and is immediately made a worship leader. No one cares to know the kind of light he saw. A robber sees the light (probably all the police guns on him with nowhere else to run) and is accepted and given an opportunity to lead a ministry in church.

There is simply no transition process from the world to church; simply because we are operating from the same operating system (you can call it script). It actually means that the only difference between singing for the devil and singing for Christ is the lyrics. The only difference between serving in church and working in a corporation is the employer’s name.

And having worked in a corporation and served in a church I can say that. In fact you might find more ‘righteousness’ out there than you will find in church. That is the sad reality.

But it stops being surprising when you realize they are using the same operating system. And it is because they got rid of their former one by formatting (trashing their history).

This, I feel, is the reason Gospel music is so muddled.

And the solution will be painful, rebooting with our original operating system. We must by choice get rid of all this entertainment and go back to wholesome singing, however boring we may think it is. And this because however appetizing and filling sawdust might feel to our mouth and stomach, it is totally useless to our bodies. And it is the same with most of these songs we are listening to. Some are blasphemous, others encourage greed and rebellion and most, if not all, are devoid of spiritual fare.

You see, the world sings for different reasons than the church. The world sings to entertain. The church sings for God’s purposes, to teach God’s ways and remind God’s people about God’s dealings. Gospel singing should never be about entertainment. That is why it is really bad when dancing becomes an essential part of worship that a music video puts more money and effort on the dancing than anything else. And what happened to choir uniform that in those music videos we must have sexy outfits leaving nothing to imagination?

And have you like me wonder why God gave us the written word instead of a video? Or are you foolish enough to think He couldn’t have created it as the God who knows the end from the beginning?