The Music Exchange

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel’ (Galatians 1.6, ESV).

If you are involved in youth work at the moment, or getting ready for holiday clubs or summer camps, please, please, please don’t listen to the lies that are around at the moment. These lies teach that the Word of God is not enough to get young people to engage with God. They say that we must work out where young people are at ‘in worship’ before they can know God. They say that kids of today are so worldly wise that we must help them make sense of their world before they can make sense of God.

Why am I writing about this in a music column? I’m writing because so much of this is described as ‘worship’. Now, as worship mostly means music in today’s language, then these ‘worship’ ideas are dreamt up mostly by musicians who believe that what they can produce visibly, audibly or tangibly gives a more faithful representation of God than Jesus’s words.

The teaching uses ‘spiritual’ language, but with a small ‘s’, reducing the life-giving person of the Holy Spirit to an ‘it’ — an experience, an emotion or a sound. Instead of Jesus’s words being spirit and life, young people are being encouraged to look inside themselves in order to get to know their Creator. This often involves interaction with surroundings, feelings, nature, silence or each other. The teaching invites us to discover ‘God in us’ through music, painting, dancing and writing.

Here’s an example of a ‘worship’ activity for young people: Draw an outline of a person on the floor. Then place fingerprints or sign your name in the area of the body that you feel you most connect with.

Another one, this time from Youthwork Magazine’s ‘ready-to-use worship’ section, October 2002. ‘Sit under a tree and make yourself comfortable. Breathe deeply, in and out… Sit and grow used to the silence around you, and ask God to meet you in it.’ There is no indication that having a Bible there might help you listen to what God might have to say, or what God might be saying to you if a passing cow inadvertently chewed your duffle coat.

I remember speaking to a man involved with youth work who was alarmed (his word) that I was trying to write songs that were faithful to Scripture. He said that he’d stopped teaching the Bible in his youth group because it was boring, and instead was encouraging them to find the beauty of God inside themselves. What’s worse, is that he said this to me in front of non-believers.

Enough waggling on the tee. This is absolutely terrible isn’t it?

Pure idolatry

Worship and engagement with God has become man-centred and works-based rather than Christ-centred and faith-based. In essence, we are beginning to see a youth work that is New Age. It looks (and feels) so attractive but ultimately it’s nothing short of idolatry — each person creates God in their own image, and each person defines the Holy Spirit by what their own inward spirit tells them.

I’m deeply concerned about the young lives that are being led astray by this teaching. And I’m passionate about it too, because I’m convinced that only as young people hear his Word and believe him who sent Jesus do they pass from death to life (John 5.24). As the Word is heard, so God engages with us through his life-giving Spirit. This is true, spiritual, corporate worship. It sounds so unimpressive, so feeble, so not fun, so ‘unspiritual’. Yet how much more dynamic can you get? This is how God opens eyes and changes lives! Why ‘listen to God in the silence’ when he’s spoken so clearly and graciously through Jesus Christ?

Young cannon-fodder

Yes, work hard in using illustrations, music and drama to help people understand the Word, but never let them replace that Word as God’s revelation of himself to his people. If our young people don’t learn this basic lesson early on, then where will their faith be when their tastes in music change, when the fun dries up, or when they begin to experience the heartache of persecution? They are cannon-fodder for wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Let’s keep our confidence in the Word of God to engage young minds with Christ this summer — by teaching the Word, singing the Word and reading the Word ourselves. The kids may believe it’s boring that way, but they’ll only believe it’s boring if we believe it’s boring.

It’s not boring — it’s God calling us in the grace of Christ.

Richard Simpkin

© Evangelicals Now - July 2005
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