[ graham kendrick ]

Traditional, alternative, pop-rock, Celtic, dance, rave, chant, multi-media, classical.. ....... it’s all happening somewhere in the UK! There may never have been so much variety, and so much room to experiment within church worship culture as there is today. We would be blind however if we missed an obvious contributing factor, that much of this is possible only because the wider society is in flux, constantly experimenting, synthesising and syncretising elements of culture, music and ideas. We live in a climate of change. However one of these changes is that the medium has overwhelmed the message, and the message has become manifold - dozens of them mixed up together, complete with in-built contradictions that few seem either to notice or care about.

When the medium, ie what carries the message, becomes dominant there is always a danger that style is put above content and subjective experience above truth. Too much of that and after a while nothing seems real or true and life becomes a series of experiences without meaning. As spin-doctor politics have exemplified, presentation can be valued above reality.

True Christian worship towers above all this by virtue of one thing, its’ object, its’ centre, its’ obsession; the person of Jesus Christ and the ‘salvation story’ of his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and coming reign.Yet this should not be thought of as merely a matter of information, because in the act of true worship, as that true story is celebrated, he makes himself known through the Holy Spirit. We are invited to experience his presence.

Much of today’s variety of worship expression began because thirty or so years ago hungry people mourned over God’s apparent absence in church, and longed for his presence. Let us never lose that presence or exclude others from it in an over- preoccupation with the musical and cultural medium we seek to use and develop.

A professor of church music recently made the startling comment that music is becoming the new sectarianism. What a tragedy if genuine pioneering in relevant worship degenerates into a ‘cooler than thou’ versus ‘more historically authentic than thou’ exclusivism. For true Christian worship to take place, the medium must not replace the message, the message must always be the Person, and most of all that Person must always be present. If this is our passion, he will be found, known and proclaimed in and through a multiplicity of musical and cultural expressions.

The aim and ethos of WWW comes out of a recognition of this need and is motivated by a desire to encourage true worship across a broad span of churchmanship and culture. I believe it also has terrific potential to promote a cross-pollination between the different streams. The line from Matt Redman’s song sums up so well the yearning in so many of our hearts as we search for suitable worship songs week by week: “It’s all about you Jesus”.