“Oh, if we could just go back to the days before we had drums, the church would be pure again.”

“Those old fogies just don’t understand what music moves young people to worship these days.”

It seems like Evangelicalism’s so-called “worship wars” go back just a few generations – but as a matter of fact, the church throughout its history has wrestled with changing music, instrumentation and styles in its public worship services.

We must avoid the two extremes of worship in our churches. One extreme says, we must follow tradition and have nothing new. The second extreme is just as erroneous that says, we must shed all the old and embrace only the new. 

While a degree of caution is certainly warranted, we should not assume anything new is impure and unholy. Likewise, we should not think everything that isn’t played on K-Love is outdated.

Two words that oversimplify our philosophy of worship, but are helpful to the discussion, are Truth and Edification.

Truth: All music sung in the church should be consistent with the Gospel and orthodox Biblical doctrine. In that regard, I will go on the record and maintain that much contemporary music should be viewed with an eye of suspicion and not used for corporate worship.

Massive music conglomerates such as Bethel, Hillsong, and Elevation either produce outright heretical content doctrinally, or are connected with heretical ministries, which means their music should be at least thoroughly vetted before being used. On the other hand, I sympathize with those who totally disavow the use of all of these organizations’ music in public worship because of its unorthodox associations. 

Edification. We must restore the Biblical emphasis of corporate worship on the Lord’s Day, which is not a spectator sport where we sit back and watch a polished performance. Rather worship is a unifying act that the whole church should be engaged in and that should edify the whole body of Christ. Songs should be simple to sing. Music should not be overpowering: frankly, if we need earplugs for our worship services, it is a high, high possibility the people of God are not being edified in corporate worship. 

Much more can be said on this topic, but to reiterate, my plea is twofold:

Let’s not take a novel approach to worship where we feel we have to recreate the wheel every single week. Every old song is not bad. Just the opposite: we incorporate classic hymns because they are proven!

Yet we should not take an approach that is so bound to tradition that nothing new is allowed. Rather, let’s judge music for corporate worship by the standards of truthfulness and its ability to build up and unify the Body of Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria!