My Breakup with Hype-y Worship Music

I’ve been a joyful singer of worship music since I met Jesus a million years ago. One of my spiritual pathways is musical worship, and for many years I have loved connecting with God through song. When we were church planters in France, I was the worship leader, which was its own stressor since I could barely play the guitar, and I had to lead in English and French. It was difficult during those worship sessions to concentrate on the Lord because I worried about my fingering and my pronunciation.

Still, worship music has been a consistent mainstay in my life. Often when I speak, I’ll end with a song that we sing together as a way to bring home the message and allow for a response. Hear me when I say, I love sacred music, and I have experienced much healing through it.

But there came a time in my last church that I could barely stand being in a worship service. I love loud music. I love new songs. I love throwing my arms heavenward and abandoning myself in musical worship, so this surprised me.

Perhaps it was my own cynicism. After all, I existed firmly in a parallel industry to the Christian music empire. Christian publishing has its stars, its celebrities, its penchant for money over substance. When I spoke with friends in the worship industry, we would nod our heads and commiserate. What started as a genuine way to get excellent content (music, books) into the hands of believers became a full fledged industry with bottom lines dictating what products would even be brought to market.

I learned that it’s not always the talented that get platformed—it’s the connected. It’s not always the spiritually attuned whose words we read and sing, it’s the already famous. Not only that, but there tends to be a homogeny of product, reticent to highlight different voices. (I do see this as changing, thankfully, both in music and in publishing).

And the hype. Oh the hype. We tend to run to gurus to dole out our spiritual content. And we fawn over worship leaders and bands and ministries, seldom asking questions of the spiritual content they deliver. We have ceased to be Bereans.

And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. Acts 17:11

So in my former church, while the worship continued, I found myself less enamored with the musical portion of the service (while I was also becoming alarmed at the plagiarized messages). All of it together felt so staged, so performative. And each Sunday it seemed like the goal was to deliver an ever increasing spiritual cocaine hit, each service “higher” than the prior one. It felt like we were competing with ourselves to whip people into a louder frenzy.

I couldn’t hear the voice of God in the continually-augmented cacophony. I struggled to pray. And when I listened to the lyrics, I questioned their validity because so many were about how cool we were but not about the majesty of God. (This wasn’t always the case of course, but enough slipped through to alarm me).

And then we moved churches, and the worship calmed me in a new place. Thankfully the worship leader carefully curated the songs we would sing, and I began to notice I no longer tried to add the most current worship offerings to my playlists. Instead of chasing the popular, I just stopped.

And that’s where I am today.

And when I’ve gone to events or retreats where the latest worship music is being performed, I feel detached, no longer invigorated by the hype of it all. It feels like another world, another time, another me.

In some ways it feels like I’ve been in a cult of sorts with its own soundtrack and ways and means, and now that I’m out of that environment, the distance affords me a little more thoughtfulness about the content I consume.

I know the worship industry is a machine. I know it often revolves around celebrity people or ministries, just as I know Christian publishing is the same. But that doesn’t mean I have to immerse myself in it anymore. I don’t have to soak my soul in its environment. I can be discerning.

I still love musical worship. But I’m no longer wooed by hypier and hypier songs designed to pull my emotions but emaciate my heart.