Excellence in musical worship
On page 236 Keller pleads for musical excellence in corporate worship. All of you by now well know that I agree whole-heartedly with him. He gave three reasons for striving for this excellene:
- It will help the worshipper sense the transcendence of God and appreciate His grandeur.
- It will remove any possible hindrance that poor quality might cause.
- Modern society has less toleration of mediocrity due to the availability of excellent music through electronic mediums.
I would like to add two reasons to this list.
- In anything we set our hands to do, including music, we should do it with all our might for our God.
- We were created with the ability to create, and when we create music with excellence, we are experiencing part of what God intended for us to do and be. I believe this is inherently good.
With which of these five reasons do you disagree, and why? If you agree with all of them, please think of another good reason for musical excellence in corporate worship and share that.
what if we can’t think of any reasons for musical excellence in worship?
I don’t know if I disagree, but I don’t think I understand Keller’s
1. It will help the worshipper sense the transcendence of God and appreciate His grandeur.
When I hear music, I generally think about how a composer would have thought through the music before I start thinking about sensing God’s attributes. This may seem a little obtuse, but I think I need some more clarification on this one.
I think your two reasons should be the first two reasons. I am not sure I agere with his third reason, that modern society has less tolerance for mediocrity. I think that in all societies, people have recognized excellence and have tolerated mediocrity. Isn’t part of our discussion about the lack of theological depth in modern praise music being generated for sales and radio play?
Actually, I think society has MORE tolerance for less-than-perfect music than they did before the advent of machine created electronic stuff. Indie music has NEVER been more popular, and live, coffee shop music and support of local artists has never been more vibrant. This greater society phenomenon does not hold true in Christian radio, or radio imitative church music, so folks in that realm don’t really know what’s going on out there.
I’m with Jesse where I don’t understand the first one. I think it depends on what you define excellence music as being. what if your definition of musical excellence isnt’ the same as someone else in the congregation so instead of them sensing the transcedence of God they are distracted and uncomfortable. Couldn’t that be a possiblity?