Sunday noitcelfeR

 It's been a very real joy to have found a new church and church family. Jack is playing bass in the praise band for the contemporary service, and I am working on healing the body and getting back into a place where I can contribute.

One of the things I notice, attending the contemporary service, is that every modern (within the last ten years) praise song has the same format, and I'm beginning to find it annoying.

I say this still bearing scars from the Battle for Guitars in the Sanctuary back in the late '70s, when innocuous folks like Keith Green and Amy Grant were banned from most "Family" radio stations for their heretical devil music. Jack and I brought Petra, Stryper, Mylon Lefevre, and other radical Christian rock into our sanctuary with a teen choir that truly brought the Holy Spirit in with them wherever we went.

Yes, I'm almost 70, so this probably sounds like a "these kids today" rant, but it's not. It's the fact that I don't think church should be a place where anything is routine. Yet, every praise song seems to be constructed as ~

verse * chorus * verse * chorus twice! * a mantra repeated many times * finishing chorus!

If you're a church-goer, do you ever tire of this? I'm restless when we recite the Lord's Prayer, since it absolutely isn't the prayer Jesus taught, it's the prayer translated into King James English. Nobody Thy's and Thou's or Art's these days, and if you read the most up-to-date translation of the Bible, it's a lot easier to understand what Jesus said. It certainly makes it more accessible. Ironically, the phrases within the Lord's Prayer were already phrases used in the temple. The key, Jesus said, was not to recite them mindlessly, but to pray them.

I pray my praise songs, so I like them to be (a) praise to God for being God (b) scriptural and (c) edifying. When I compose my praise songs, I don't stop to ask myself, "What's a good mantra I can throw in here? Did I remember to repeat the chorus the second time?"

I never want my relationship with God through music to be routine.

Thoughts?