Teaching in Worship

I'm having a real hard time connecting with the experience of worship at our church. It has puzzled me until today...I think I finally put my finger on it.

I see worship as primarily an act of the heart. Therefore, I tend to connect with worship songs that use "heart language" or songs that reflect our intimacy with God. I have moved away from the traditional hymnody that is presentational or propositional. For me, teaching is teaching and worship is worship...so when a song tries to teach theology, I cannot connect with it.

Here comes the criticism: Teaching is, by its very nature, didactic. That is, it presents a proposition or truth and gives expository evidence to support its position. Teaching is best when its language is precise, its points well ordered and its conclusions strongly supported by Scripture. I love to receive good teaching! Our pastor is a fantastic teacher/expositor. His teaching is some of the best I've received since college. But the language of theology and teaching is precise.

Songs are lousy teachers. They have several weaknesses. The primary downfall of song-as-teacher is its use of language. The language of song is poetry. It is difficult, if not impossible, to express a precise theological proposition poetically. I will acknowledge rare exceptions, but as a rule language is either poetic or precise. Precise language typically loses its lyrical beauty and poetic language generally sacrifices precise expression in favor of meter or rhyme. This is why you will often hear a songwriter, singer or worship leader explaining a phrase or passage or entire song to an audience/congregation. He is in effect saying, "I wrote this poem that doesn't quite express the theological teaching in adequately precise language...here's what it means."

By doing this, the worship leader puts on the mantle of teaching for a moment. This is, in my thinking, superior because it allows the congregation to focus on the importance of the teaching and respond to it.

What I struggled with this morning was a particularly bad song about how we respond to God's invitation by His grace alone...a sound biblical teaching but one that requires some exposition to really build a case in our post-modern era of individualism and self-determination. Of course, the song lacked any exposition and reduced the biblical truth to a very vague (and dubiously poetic) expression of calling it a "gifted response." Lost: precise teaching.

The thing that bothered me most at the time was just how uncharacteristically cold and unmoved the congregation was. Everyone near me stood, silently transfixed on the projected lyrics, like so many deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. No one seemed to get it. Lost: congregational response.

But all of that is academic. The real loss for me was that I was deconstructing the logistics of teaching in worship instead of experiencing worship. My heart was (uncharacteristically) not in it. The teaching-song had triggered something in me that shut down my heart and revved-up my brain. The entire service from that point on was a brain-only experience for me.

I'm a smart guy...but ultimately Christ didn't die to reform my intellect (although that is most certainly an effect of regeneration). He made that sacrifice to set my heart free. It is with our hearts that we truly seek God's presence and it is in our hearts that He makes the first, most visceral changes. It is there that His Spirit dwells and there that we connect with Him intimately. That is worship.

We need corporate worship that draws us to that inner sanctum of the heart where we can experience intimacy with God. If the worship leader is good (I mean really, really good), he may be able to incorporate teaching into the congregational experience but I don't really see the need for all of that spiritual multitasking since the teaching will come in a few minutes anyway.