Wednesday, December 05, 2012

N.T. Wright on Worship Songs

N.T Wright calls for balance in worship songs: http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00950

"...I remember puzzling about that as a young man. It was easier to write protest songs than to write celebration songs. And I think now it's easier to write worship songs which are basically like teenage love songs, and there's a lot of worship songs which are basically about me and Jesus falling in love...and you know, that's fine, but as I've often said to teenagers, the point of falling in love is that it's like striking a match--which is a very exciting thing to do--in order then to light a candle with it. A candle is not as initially exciting as a match, but actually it's a very beautiful thing, and if you look after it, it will last a whole lot longer. And so what I want to see is Christians trying to develop music styles which grow out of and have the energy of the excitement of contemporary music, but always looking for something which will sustain...something which will last. And for me,--and okay, I'm a traditionalist in this sense--I grew up singing the good old fashioned hymns in the 1950's and 60's--and still, if I am walking down the street or going to sleep at night, I'm very happy to have those great old hymns in my head, and I worry that a lot of the stuff that's written at the moment isn't going to last five minutes in anyone's head, and might not do them that much good if it did."

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