Beyond Words

“If you want to know God, get to know Jesus.”

This was the message spoken at the youth rally I attended last night. It was the semi-annual county-wide gathering of evangelical youth, held in the Ames High Auditorium.

The young man who gave the message spoke from Mark 4, (Jesus calming the storm), and Colossians 1:15, (Jesus as the very image of God).

I was encouraged because he started with a text and a cross-reference and stayed there, drawing his points from that depth and richness.

He challenged the youth to quiet their lives so they can listen to what God– in Jesus through the Spirit –is telling them. “Unplug from cell phone text messaging, Facebook and MySpace,” he said. He even offered a “minute” of absolute silence (it was only about 30 seconds, but still significant, I think) followed by a brief invocational prayer.

This is ironic because the event began with “worship” led by a painfully loud, poorly mixed band. The problem probably started with the acoustic drum set behind plexiglass–(live drums are notoriously hard to mix, my sound guru husband says). The instruments were shreddingly loud, the bass was grossly distorted, and the drums were more of an assault than a sound. And the vocals? Buried. There was lots of enthusiastic, rock style movement on stage, but the lyrics and melodies were lost. The house lights were doused, making the band the only thing visible, and the youth were invited to come down front and “stand (no moshing allowed).”

I know I’m old, and that probably has something to do with my reaction to this “worship.” But I wonder how our young people are ever really going to know Jesus if we keep pimping him out and amping him up to make him attractive. We’re teaching them that worship has to look like one small slice of mediocre pop culture in order to be relevant.

I wonder if we would unplug Jesus in our youth groups and Sunday morning worship for awhile, people would have a chance to get to know him on his own Spirit’s terms. Maybe we could worship him by reading his words out loud for 15 minutes instead of spending that much time in a mindless wall of sound.

It wouldn’t be cool. But it would be real. And if we spend time listening to him without the deafening clamor for relevance, maybe we can discern what is and what is not worship. This is not to say we aren’t worshiping with our loud bands–but how can we know if that’s all we offer in worship? If we unplug for awhile, we might find other expressions for worship and invite people with other gifts to share them–with art and drama and even classical music.

There are plenty of high school kids who willingly subject themselves to choral and ensemble music written in Latin and French and German, and spend hours practicing without any pressure from their parents! There are high school kids who write dramas and compose folk music, who dance and paint and write poetry. But we somehow think our corporate worship can only be loud, pop/rock music or people will leave the church and the youth group in droves. So our kids must rely on the bad, bad, secular public school system to give them the art and beauty their souls long for. This grieves me deeply.

My own daughter told me the other day how much she loves classical music. She said one day last week a young man took out his cello and started playing some Bach and Vivaldi in study hall at the high school, and no one made him put his instrument away. It was beautiful and soothing.

I wish we would unplug Jesus for awhile. Then, if we decide want to make a loud and joyful noise with pop/rock music, with our electronic instruments, it will be in response to what the Spirit is doing, and not because we can’t imagine worshipping in any other way.

Posted on September 27th, 2007 by Kathy
Filed under: Spiritual Disciplines, Music, I am a Geek, Living with the Muse