Series on Worship, pt. 6

6 The body of Christ in worship is more than an assembly of individual worshipers—we need more "we" songs.

Not long ago, the practice in churches I attended was to project songs onto a screen with overhead transparencies. These were stored in some sort of file-folder system in alphabetical order, based on the first line of the song. But we had one problem: We continually needed to add more folders to accommodate songs that began with the letter ‘I.’

When I attend services that feature "contemporary" worship today, it seems that 80 percent to 90 percent of all the songs sung by the congregation prominently feature that familiar trinity of I, Me, My. Rarely do we sing songs that remind us of our identity as the body of Christ, the people of God. There are simply too few ‘we’ songs in our congregational gatherings. It seems that many songwriters have taken songs directly from their personal devotional life into the assembly, without considering the possibility of adapting the songs for congregational use. In cultures that are already dominated by narcissism, this is unwise and dangerous.

From Jesus' teaching about praying to our Father in secret, to Paul's admonition that tongues without interpretation should be kept to oneself, we are reminded that a distinction should be drawn between personal worship of God and worshiping him in the assembly of the faithful. It is not that I songs are unhelpful or unnecessary, it is simply that we are badly out of balance here, and we need a corrective. Our hymnody must play a part in this. In many cases, a song can be easily adapted for such purposes by changing a few pronouns. Better by far, however, is composing songs with a true vision of the church and rediscovering those great songs that already feature such a vision.

-- from Gary A. Parrett, assistant professor of Christian education at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today.