9 Ways the modern-day* church has gone wrong with worship

That is the subject of a recent post at The Biblical Weltanschauung of a Moderate-Conserative Mennonite Christian

Luther and "Bar Music"

Here is a link to a paper by Paul Jones (HT Douglas Bond). He starts it with the statement:

"If I had a dollar for every time I have heard that Martin Luther used tavern music for his hymns and that 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' was a drinking song,I would be a wealthy man. Yet such assertions are simply not true."

Paul Jones Lectures on the Music of the Reformation

Grace PCA in Douglasville, GA recently posted the link to some lectures given by Dr. Paul Jones on the Music of the Reformation. You can listen to them here. HT: N.T. Batzig.

A lot of old hymns are not that great either.

Steve Holmes, a Baptist minister, presently employed to teach theology in St Mary’s College, St Andrews, Scotland, comments on John Stackhouse's post on Tomlin's songs by giving examples of bad hymnody in the past.

Holmes writes:

What of the claim of weak theology? John says ‘We are the most educated Christians in history, and yet our lyrics are considerably stupider than our much less educated Christian forebears…’ Well, for starters I’m not sure about this – once again, one would need to look at what they actually sang, not the classics that have come down to us. Victorian hymnody was full of sentimental claptrap with no discernable doctrinal content at all (check out ‘Blessed Assurance’ for the best of the genre, that has been judged good enough to survive).

Read the rest here. Holmes takes on charismatic worship here.

Old Hymns In New Ways

Justin Taylor points us to:

Page CXVI is a project started with the idea of making hymns accessible and known again.They are some of the richest, most meaningful, and moving pieces of music ever written.

Chris Tomlin’s Worship Songs

Dr. John Stackhouse of Regent College sounds off in his blog posting "Chris Tomlin’s Worship Songs: We Have Got to Do Better":

Why else take Brother Tomlin to task? Because those of us who want to praise God with our minds as well as our hearts, as our Lord taught us to do, cannot just ignore bad lyrics. None of us can just ignore repeated wrong notes sung or played by worship leaders, and these lousy lyrics go “twang” and “clunk.” They distract from the worship they are supposed to foster just as much as a lazy or untalented musician distracts us when his guitar isn’t tuned or he keeps playing the wrong chords on the piano. So don’t come back at me with “Well, just ignore it and praise the Lord anyway and appreciate his heart” and all that. Chris Tomlin is a professional songwriter. He’s not a sweet little kid doing his best in a Sunday School concert.

Let’s be clear, furthermore, that there’s lots of blame to go around here. Brother Tomlin’s music producers are happy to keep churning this stuff out. Worship leaders keep programming it. And we keep singing it without protest.

Well, that's enough. We are the most educated Christians in history, and yet our lyrics are considerably stupider than our much less educated Christian forebears–the people who sang lyrics by Fanny Crosby or Charles Wesley or Isaac Watts.

Read the rest here.

Another Blogger Who Will Probably Do This Better

Rich at Sound Doxology has just come on line, and he has some interests in common with mine. He also appears more qualified than I to speak on many of these issues. Welcome to the BlogOSphere, Rich!