More to choruses

A few days ago I received an email from a young, European woman who had become a part of our church through the Friday night group that ministers to European college students. Prior to coming to Cyprus about six months ago, she had had only minimal contact with the traditional church in her village. But through our Friday night small group and worship on Sunday mornings, she had begun a personal journey of experiencing God in her own life.

After returning to her home country, she started to attend the church in her village. But in her email she said that she really missed the contemporary choruses that we sing in church. She said that it is hard for her to relate to the hymns.

As I thought about this and her involvement in our church, it dawned on me that it wasn’t necessarily the style of music that made a difference to her. While she was in Cyprus, she often commented that the worship at the Nicosia International Church was so ‘powerful.’ As a typical postmodern European, her primary search was not for ‘truth’ in the sense of correct dogma, but rather she was searching for meaningful and functional relationships with God and others.

Contemporary choruses are often criticized as being ‘shallow.’ Sometimes – and I would agree with this – you can’t tell if a person is singing about God or her boyfriend. And yet for people who are coming to believe that life is just a series of betrayals and fragmented relationships, the search for healthy relationships is more important than the search for objective truth. Into this brokenness and relational dysfunctionality, God comes as the perfect Friend, Lover, and Father.

When postmoderns at NIC sing ‘Today … we’re going all the way’ or ‘Let my heart be Your home’ they are not singing trite choruses that simply appeal to pop culture. Instead, they are celebrating that God has brought meaning into their relationships on both the horizontal and vertical levels. For many postmoderns, these worship choruses are deep and meaningful interaction with the God who is transforming their hearts and making meaningful relationships possible. This may be difficult for those who have been trained to think of their faith in terms of propositional truth statements, but for relationally starving postmoderns, these choruses can be just as ‘powerful’ as some of the great hymns.

I realize that there is more to this discussion than what I’m presenting here, but maybe this will encourage us to be more understanding of those who truly worship through contemporary choruses.