“What came first, the music or the misery?” Nick Hornby once asked. “Did i listen to music because i was miserable? Or was i miserable because i listened to music? Do all these records turn you into a melancholy person?”
It’s a good question to ask, that, albeit one without a simple answer. Is our worship an expression of our culture, or does it create that culture itself? And that, in turn, leads to more questions, like what does that culture say about this faith that some of us profess, and like what does Christianity look like and what should Christianity look like and, while we’re at it, where did we get those ideas from in the first place anyway?
Contrary to what its title may suggest, this is not a blog with all those answers. It’s about debate and discussion instead, a starting point from which to re-examine the world at a different angle. Because maybe, just maybe, worship music should sound like this – like continually seeking God first and foremost, and attempting to strip back and redefine how that is done, and doing that in dialogue and, crucially, in community.
It’s about where culture gets it wrong and gets it right, where Christianity gets it wrong and gets it right, and where humanity gets it wrong and gets it right.
It’s about the God who is visible in the everyday, in the miraculous, and even in the silences, and our relation to that God.
In short, it’s about worship.
Whatever that means…
