I would abolish forever the notion of a 'worship leader'. If you want to have a 'song leader' who leads part of the worship, just as the preacher leads part of the worship, that's fine. But to call the person a 'worship leader' takes away the idea that by preaching, teaching, listening to and devouring the word of God, and applying it to our lives, we are somehow not worshipping God.
And because it is not only adoration of God and confession and so on, but indoctrination-that is, teaching one another-it needs to be biblically true. A great number of contemporary choruses are impressionistic rather than contentful. You don't come away having learnt a great deal. There are some exceptions, but on the whole that is true and we just have to work harder at this.
My mother died of Alzheimer's disease, over nine years. Nine or ten months before she died, you'd get a small flicker from the eyes or squeeze of the hand if you held up pictures of her grandchildren. Six months before she died, if you sang an old hymn like 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', you'd get a squeeze. Or a quote from the King James Version that she'd been brought up on. That was about the last thing that produced any response in her. The most deeply embedded memories in that decaying brain were those old hymns and memorised Scripture. There is something worrying to me about a generation that sings choruses that won't last more than five years. There's not much memorization of Scripture, and there's not much memorization of doctrinally profound hymns. I want to see that reborn. Nobody's going to die remembering 'He's a great big wonderful God'.
HT: Jason Taylor's Between Two Worlds
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