I remember the worship wars of the late 90s like it was yesterday. Our church started a “contemporary service” in our gymnasium. “Shout To The Lord” was the most popular song. Four guitars, six praise singers, a drum set, keyboard, black canvas backdrop and two ficus trees were what was on stage. And when our contemporary service began to have higher attendance than both morning traditional services, all hell broke loose.
To make a long story short, our contemporary service was “transplanted”. We were too prideful to call it a church split. Our church felt like Ground Zero of the 1990s worship wars.
A new worship war may soon be coming. It may take a decade to arrive but do not be fooled, it is coming.
Rich Birch writes the incredible blog Unseminary.com. Recently, he suggested the timing may be right for a new worship war. He states, “The electric guitar is dead // Seriously … listen to music that people actually stream or buy and you’ll find that the electric guitar isn’t featured in any significant way.” He goes on, “It (today’s worship music) doesn’t sound contemporary // Listen to the top 10 songs that are played in churches today … and then listen to the top 10 songs on the Billboard chart.”
Finally, Rich concludes, “DJ-led worship // DJs have the same ‘audience leadership’ appeal that the lead guitar player once had. When are we going to see worship led entirely by a DJ?…Beatbox is a mainstream vocal accompanist form. Even at my kids’ school I see them teaching it in the choral groups. Why isn’t it happening in our churches?” For a sample DJ-led worship watch the video above.
Rich’s point is the time has come to begin embracing the music of the next generation. I wanted to test Rich’s theory with a number of Christian leaders over the age of 40 from theologically sound but relevant ministries. The following are their diverse thoughts on having DJs lead worship in their services. Notice the variety of responses:
- “This is not my style of worship at all. For me this music and style doesn’t bring me into worship of our Lord. It’s entertainment and a distraction. Maybe I am just old fashioned…”
- “The day of the DJ is here to stay in the secular market with the hottest thing going right now in Mark Ronson, The number one song on the Billboard charts has been a song called “Uptown Funk.” The amazing thing is that Bruno Mars is the lead singer on this song, but it is not from his CD. Instead, it is from Mark’s first collaboration CD…I don’t know if we will see a complete takeover by DJ’s in the worship realm, but it is definitely something that is a current reality and needs to be embraced. It gives us the opportunity to give variety in our worship experience as we strive to be hospitable to our entire audience on a weekend. In fact, my daughter has led worship at ur church with a DJ on multiple occasions. We don’t want a steady diet of this style, but it is rather refreshing when it happens.”
- “One thing that I have learned in ministry is to never say never! I remember the days in student ministry where we used ‘tracks’ lead worship for students. Now most student ministries have a full band and do worship at an unbelievable level. Do I see a DJ being something that most churches will go to, I do not but…..that does not mean it will not happen. The place of someone who leads a group to me is huge….thought it may take different forms as time changes – to me it is vital in creating a culture of worship. Will there be some that adopt and use a DJ – I am sure they will but I do not think it will be most.”
- “DJ / EDM has been around for a long time as a genre. Not surprised it is being used in some churches. The goal of any worship leader is to help connect the congregation’s hearts with God. If a DJ can do this effectively, I have no problem with it. I don’t think however that this will be widespread – more of a niche.”
- “Wow Brian, I had no idea that this was being done. Sad to see. My initial thoughts are the some churches are great at being sure that leading worship is seen and treated as spiritual leadership and not performance. Churches that allow people to “lead worship” based on the ability to perform are susceptible to this kind of thing. This is just the next iteration of performance…Their (worship leaders) job is to create an atmosphere that makes it easier for the rest of us to worship our Heavenly Father. Anyone with a focus on performance can negatively impact our ability to worship. That would certainly include a DJ!”
- “As long as the secular music industry is still providing live concerts to its fans, the church will find the need to provide nothing short of the same measure of excellence. Like it or not if we’re going to attract people from the world to the church we must compete with secular entertainment. Not all churches though have the budget to market the gospel message in this manner, but for those that can, it doesn’t appear they’re going to reverse directions anytime soon…I’ve had the opportunity to visit some of these smaller churches (who do not have the budgets for high quality musicians) and have found they’ve already begun embracing the way of tracks rather than live bands. It’s as easy as pointing and clicking on a computer and like magic, every note of every song is played by the best talent in the industry. Many churches have become accustomed to this and worship services are developing a new face in America…To sum this up in secular terms, a moderately budgeted church may not be able to compete with a live concert venue, but they can certainly put on a production that will make the local clubs look like old news.”
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