This little piece on Christianity Today strikes a chord (sorry) with me.
A few years ago, I attended a weeknight worship service here in the Oklahoma City area at the invitation of some of the students at the college where I used to work. It was definitely high-energy and the message wasn't bad. It wasn't exceptionally deep, but it wasn't bumper-sticker shallow, either.
Overall, though, it wasn't a good experience because the music was so loud. I literally could not hear my own voice. Now, I've listened to plenty of loud music in my day -- when it's real quiet I swear I can still hear the echo of a Ramones show I saw in 1982. And I know I sound like a fuddy who doesn't like music really loud anymore. But there's a difference between a concert and a worship service, just like the author's article suggests.
At a worship service, the point of leading the congregation in singing is to join them together in raising their voices as an offering to God. Maybe in praise, maybe in reflection, maybe simply to try to create a beautiful sonic sacrifice to lay at the altar. But when the leaders turn the knobs up to 11 and past, so loud that the people even on the very farthest of back rows can hear neither the people around them nor their very own voices, then they send a message, like it or not. Those individual voices are as unimportant to the offering being made as they are to the sound that's being put out by the worship band.
Overpowering noise from the front of the room says, "We're making this offering of praise in song, and your voice really doesn't have much to add to it. We'd sound like this whether you were here or not."
Sometimes worship is sedate, quiet, contemplative and dignified. Sometimes it's a loud, raucous party that sprawls across the sanctuary and revels in its multi-sensory weirdness. Either way, I want to be a part of it, not an accessory to a show being put on up front.
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