Teaching through song

On Tuesday night, Dana and I had what might be the highlight of at least our month--a concert by Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. That's the group from Nashville who are taking the words from old (mostly forgotten) hymns and putting them to new lyrics. Dana's church in Lincoln, Grace Chapel, sang a lot of Indelible Grace songs during Sunday worship, and Dana got us hooked on them from there.

While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.

Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)

Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.

What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?