The Songs are God’s Word Too
This post may get me in trouble with my pastor and a few others, but those who know me well know I tend to have some out of the box, radical ideas occasionally. I began this particular line of thought a few days ago while reading back through some old posts here and here containing quotes from John Piper’s Let the Nations be Glad.
Piper says worship is the ultimate goal of the church. So let’s look at the main time the church is all together – the corporate worship time. How much of that hour plus are we actually worshiping? Is there a time during the worship service when you feel more worshipful?
We all know worship is not just about music and songs, but have we forgotten that scripturally sound songs are just as much God’s word as a sermon? I’ve heard it said many times, and have even said it myself that the musical worship is to prepare us to receive God’s word (the sermon). But isn’t the hearing and exposition of the Word of God supposed to make us better worshipers? If so, then the sermon is actually preparing us for the musical worship. They work circularly not linearly. Each one prepares us for the other.
So my question is, why do we put more emphasis on one than the other? Why do we sing for twenty minutes and listen to preaching/teaching for forty or fifty? The answer may be our music isn’t quality enough to have more or we did good just to learn the four songs we did this week.
Which leads to the second part of the question, why do we put considerably more financial priority in hiring a preacher over a worship leader? Yes, the Senior Pastor is the leader and gets top priority, but it’s easy to put all the responsibility of attendance and a “good Sunday morning” on him.
If worship is the church’s ultimate goal, let’s make sure we do whatever is necessary to facilitate as much worship as possible during that time when we all come together.
from my notebook 
Pingback: What Are We Feeding the Flock? « Irrational Worship