Understanding Worship as Spiritual Warfare (3)

My limited knowledge of church history points to the fact that throughout its history, the church has split along lines of doctrine primarily. More recently, the understanding of worship coupled with issues with doctrine and leadership has played a larger role in some church splits.

The argument over which genre of music to use in church – “worship wars” as we have come to call them – has been and continues to be a sticking point in the birth, life and death of many churches. The reason for this is that music through which congregations choose to worship has been reduced to the style that best evokes an emotional response and many of us that engage in this argument fail to see it as a tool for worship.

Technically, technically, any genre of music can be a tool for worship of worth is given to the Lordship of Jesus through the execution of that genre of music. I am pretty sure that in ancient times, the genre of music through which people worshipped God sounded NOTHING like the plethora of genre’s available to us.

What the enemy does, though, is cause us to adopt a myopic view of worship in an attempt to drive a wedge between people that should be in the same fellowship. Remembering that his agenda is to destroy that which God has set up is key to seeing through the fog of arguments over which genre of music is better to employ in our worship services.

(A side note: Because we live in an exceedingly self-centered society, we need to realize that self-centeredness is NOT a fruit of the spirit, but a fruit of the enemy. Why? Because self-centeredness and selfishness breed the cancer that causes ruin in families, societies and fellowships. If through ego and pride your preference becomes elevated to the point that you are intolerant or disdainful of other people’s preferences, you allow yourself to become a tool in the hand of the enemy wreaking havoc as you mock, slash and tear down preferences and opinions that you do not share. REAL tolerance is the tree that grows from the seed of patience and understanding which IS a fruit of the spirit. Intolerance that leads to divisiveness and dissent is the tree that sprouts from the seed of selfishness and narcissism)

The reason I make mention of this is that one day the songs and style that we use right now is going to be obsolete. It is evident in the fact that in the last 20 years, we have seen so much change and movement happen in the genre’s and expression of worship. The notion that the pop-rock-urban sound that we primarily use right now shall be trendy/useful in the next 10 years is laughable.

We must guard against being agents of change in one era and agents of destruction and dissent in another. We must guard against creating a monument of what we have become comfortable with and realize that God is not bound by genre or time.

When I first moved to Canada, I found that I was really unimpressed with the worship that I heard at most multicultural churches. I had come from a church where we took just about every song we heard on CD and “Africanized” it. Our style was very rhythmic and it blended African rhythms with soca, reggae, and a slight spice of urban gospel so you can imagine my shock at sitting through a service that had little-to-nothing in common with my Ugandan church experience except for the words sang. Our style had the strong presence of a beat and drumming – which (here we go!) would explain the increased prominence of drumming at Woodvale… heh! Heh!

Because I can be a vocal and outwardly opinionated person, I made it quite clear that I was unimpressed with the style of worship being used at the church I was attending then. However, the more I spoke, the more God started to reveal to me that I was allowing myself to be an agent of divisiveness and I was allowing the enemy to use my biting criticism to demoralize the worship teams. I also came to realize that I was no different than the people I was quick to criticize who were more comfortable with a genre of music that utilized pipe organs or those that were more at home with a 70-s southern gospel flavor of music. I realized that the hurt feelings and sideways energy that was wasted in trying to work such situations through was exactly what the enemy had planned for the church and he was succeeding in fracturing the fellowship to the point that we could no longer see eye to eye.

The fact of the matter is that God’s church is multicultural and multi-generational and it should make sense that when we are all together we make quite the casserole! The trick of the enemy is to break our unity by making us focus on ourselves and blind to the fact that there are those that we are in fellowship with that might have deferring opinions from ours but are not making the same amount of noise.

Ultimately, because worship is an act of spiritual warfare, it makes sense that the enemy will do everything he can to turn what should be a powerful potent moment of connection with God into a wedge that bitterly divides God’s people. So the church of God has to be alert and on guard even as the times, seasons and genres change.

Even right now, we are in a season of change because your African grown and bred worship pastor is becoming more comfortable with his job. Previously, you had very Canadian worship pastors and leaders. It is not a bad thing and do not misquote me on this one. However, it therefore makes sense that my influences are going to make their way into the song selection and execution and our corporate worship sound is going to go through a metamorphosis. My temperament and aggressiveness (or lack thereof) is obviously different from what we have had in the past and as I become more comfortable as your leader, it makes sense that this will make it’s way into the flavor of what we do.

My love for Indian music has been quietly growing and for the past several years I have been on a salsa and samba trip…

What then?

Shall we embrace it or fight it?

Shall we pull out our hammers and wedges to drive things apart or pour on the lubricant of patience and mutual understanding in order that we may fit together and continue to move forward without grating on each other?

When we recognize the work of the enemy in driving us apart, we are able to better understand that tearing each other up is “wrestling against flesh and blood”. Anybody’s struggle with the change in genre has nothing to do with God’s move among his people and what better way for the enemy to sneak in through the back door than through my discomfort with the way things are changing. Recognizing this disarms the enemy’s disguise and helps us to realize that our war is not against each other (even though we sometimes make it that), but against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6: 12

AMEN!