Music, Moshpits, Psalms and Young People – An excerpt from Rebooted
When I was 16 I had the single most rock n’ roll experience of my whole and entire life.
I was sat in a Christian camp for young people with a friend when we heard that there would be a ‘battle of the bands’ that very evening. This would be a mix of local talents and traveling, well established Christian bands from across the UK. The announcer said that there was room for just one more band. We looked at each other. There was no way we were going to miss this opportunity.
That afternoon we tracked down a bass player, a drummer, and a singer. We went to a music shop and ‘rented’ guitars. In reality, this meant buying the cheapest guitars we could possibly find with the intention of returning them the next day. We then sat in the coffeeshop and acoustically practised Matt Redman’s ’Blessed Be’ at the table over triple shot mochas, while I penned out a horrendous Christian rewrite of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
We borrowed drums, a bass guitar and amps from the house band, plugged in (without a sound check) and played to nearly a thousand people. We rocked straight through Blessed Be easily enough, then we brought out our Nirvana rewrite which we had christened ‘Sounds Like the Holy Spirit.’ I got a couple of random guitar solos wedged in, and the drummer threw together a blinding tom-tom solo.
It didn’t matter that we weren’t in time, or in key, and no-one cared how incredibly cheesy we were. It didn’t matter that we had no dynamics and had no idea what the other musicians were doing. We were on fire! We played two songs, and were the only gig that conjured up a full scale mosh pit. I think we might even have scored crowd injuries!
We called ourselves ‘Holy Moses’, and we were terrible!
We were also awesome!
There were ten bands: nine high quality, and well established, talents – and then our rabble. Yet we were voted to come second! It doesn’t get much more rock n’ roll than that.
I will never forget that experience of creativity, community and chaos all rammed harmonically together. I did return my £75 guitar the next day, but I’d like to think it was a little endowed with the spirit of rock.
Music is incredibly important to the human spirit, as well as being vital for the creation of culture within community. Music is also incredibly important to God; it is a fundamental part of His creation with specific purposes.
The Prevalence of Music in the Bible
God’s people constantly used songs in their daily lives and worship. They were essential to the worshipping life of Israel, so much so that God appointed specific people to write and lead these songs.
God’s people, as you’ll probably know, were broken into twelve distinct tribes, each named after its own original ancestor. Each tribe had specific roles to fulfil within the body of Israel. The tribe of Judah, for instance, tended to provide the Kings and politics, while the Levites were responsible for all things Temple and Tabernacle. The Levites were divided into three parts: the Kohanim, who were the Priests, the Temple Guards, and the Musicians (1 Chron 6:31-32). These musicians were exempt from all other duties and, much like surgeons today, had to be on call day and night (1 Chron. 9:33).
The use of music to worship and to proclaim truth was commanded by God across the whole Bible (Ps. 33:2-3) right through into the New Testament (Col. 3:16). In fact, Luke gives four examples of songs being sung at pivotal parts of Jesus’ early story (Elizabeth in Lk. 1:42-45; Mary in Lk. 1:46-55; Zechariah in Lk. 1:68-79; and Simeon in Lk. 2:29-32). Jesus himself sings with his disciples (Mk. 14:26 and Mt. 26:30) quoting Psalms 114-118. He also quotes the words of a song from Psalm 22 on the cross.
The Power of Music in the Bible
Consider that it was song that threw the enemies of God into confusion so that they ended up destroying themselves in the story of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chron. 20:1-29, and it was during song that the chains broke and the stone rolled away in the jail in Acts 16.
The old puritan writers would say that music lifts our affections so that we can see truths about God in ways that could not be grasped purely intellectually. We might more easily say that music helps stuff move from just our heads down to our hearts. The Psalms consistently display music as a powerful emotional expression of love for, and dependency upon, God. William Law famously said,
“Just as singing is a natural effect of joy in the heart so it also has a natural power of rendering the heart joyful… There is nothing that so clears a way for your prayer, nothing that so disperses the dullness of heart, nothing that so purifies the soul from poor and little passions, nothing that so opens heaven, or carries your heart so near it, as these songs of praise.” [ Law, W. (1827). A serious call to a holy and devout life. Glasgow: William Collins. pp.318-318]
The Bible is far from a simply didactic or intellectualised book of Words. The scriptures are alive with music, poetry, art, story and incredible imagery. It would be easy for us to go so far in one direction that we end up making the Bible sound two dimensional and static, when it is in fact living and active (Heb. 4:12).
Full Coverage
If you’re going to buy car insurance, full coverage is probably the safest way to go. In the UK, we have something called ‘Third Party: Fire and Theft’ which is the cheaper option, and basically means that you’re covered if your car gets stolen, or if it spontaneously combusts. Anything else is on you, buddy! Proper full coverage, however, gives legal protections, property and bodily injury liability, collision cover, rental reimbursement, and even windscreen replacements. Looking back at my track record with cars, full coverage has certainly been essential for me.
That is exactly what the Psalms provide – full coverage. They are not just a limited and small part of the Christian life (or Third-Party insurance) – The Psalms cover the entire emotional spectrum of the human condition. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that all the Psalms are simply about praise – when in fact these are the minority.
Psalms gave voice and expression to the fullness of the human life and they accompanied all the activities that made God’s people distinct in the world, and then even ubiquitous ones, like eating. Psalms were used to teach (Deut. 31:30), and to mark occasions (Ex. 15:1-21). There were specific Psalms to accompany all acts of worship including sacrifice (Ps. 27:6), parades and processions (42:15), entering the Temple (24), pronouncing blessing (4:6), giving thanks (50:14), confessing sins (51), teaching (1), and praising God (147). God’s people used The Psalms everywhere! And they provided full coverage in two very specific ways:
Emotional expression
Because humans have an incredibly wide emotional spectrum ranging from carnal fear and desperate hopelessness, to majestic joy and giddy excitement, God’s songbook needed to provide for all these occasions. This is why we have Psalms that express fear (22), beauty (Ps. 27:4), gratitude (30:11-12), hope (33), longing (42:1-2), joy (42:5-6), stunned silence (46:10), grief and regret (51:17), desperation (63:1), confession (71), contentment (73:25-26), lament (86), fury (109), and anticipation (144). The Psalms give voice to the widest range of emotional turmoil and satisfaction in our lives. Full coverage!
Propositional truth
The Psalms don’t merely express, they also teach. In the same way that popular music has always provided a liturgy for, or commentary on the culture of the times, the Psalms provided an expression of propositional theology. More simply put: They tell us lots about God. The careful theological content of the Psalms safeguard against purely emotional responses, which can easily marginalise God’s words, exalt musicians, and increase division.
The Psalms, therefore, provide a multifunctional tool that both elevates and expresses our deepest emotions, allowing us to receive genuine propositional truth from different perspectives. There is sometimes truth that we just can’t fully embrace, receive or even understand without the elevation of our hearts through some creative media like music.
Today, music tends to be one of two ways we learn our theology (the other being the sermon), making the content incredibly important. As creative and professional as many of our modern songs are, I’m not convinced that we always put enough effort into the content. I also think that we need to explore a much wider emotional spectrum than just joy and praise.
What does this have to do with youth work?
‘Lots’ would be the pedantic answer. However, you may have already noticed from its omission, that the Psalms themselves contain very little that specifically addresses young people. Rather than shoehorn something in, the applications here will be a little broader and also applicable to the wider church. This, however, will make these ideas no less essential in our youth work.
Creativity and young people
The first thing we ever learn about God is that he makes stuff, and that he does this through the expression of His voice. God is immensely creative, and He made us in His image to also be creative.
I don’t believe there is any such thing as a non-creative person. Not everybody is a fine artist but everybody has a divine innate ability to create stuff. One of the fundamental parts of creativity is the ability to see and solve problems – something humans have to do on a daily basis. Some people do this with more flare, while others are perhaps more modular. I believe that as we grow, however, we have a habit of keeping our creativity in carefully acceptable tracks, and keep the more vibrant artistic side suppressed and under wraps. Children and young people haven’t learned that unfortunate habit yet!
Have you noticed, for instance, just how much children love to dance? I’ve never met a young child that didn’t. I’m part of a fantastic church that has carefully created a safe community where children can gather near the front and dance together during the songs. I remember on one such occasion when we were singing the bridge to the song Your Love Never Fails, which repeats ‘on and on and on and on it goes, and it overwhelms and satisfies my soul…’ During the ‘on and on’ bit, a little boy ran to the front and just ran in a continuous circle until he fell down dizzy. I remember thinking what a beautiful expression of the truth of the song his dance was – and realised that I had been led in worship by that small boy.
Young people are seeking to be expressively creative in times of worship. Once every semester I cover the floor of my hall in plastic sheeting and give every young person a canvas and access to big buckets of paint along with brushes, sponges, pallet knives and squeegees. I tell them to paint something of their relationship with God. The only rule is that it shouldn’t be representative; so it shouldn’t look like an object or a person. This allows them to think about motion, shape and colour in more abstract ways. This always produces a profound experience of worship, and provides a way into talking about where their relationship with God currently is at.
The Psalms are sometimes very abstract, and can connect with different people for different reasons. They give room for expression, and create a conversational context where young people can engage with the various aspects of both their individual and communal relationship with God.
Teaching through creative media
Jesus was a storyteller through and through. He also regularly used object lessons from drawing on the floor, asking for coins off the crowd like a street magician, and pointing directly to people and landmarks.
There are many ways to teach the Bible. Proclamation is important, and didactic intellectual engagement needs to happen for sure, but that should be balanced with performance, participation and conversation.
For the past few years I’ve gotten to be involved in something artfully named ‘The Easter Transition Project’ for a local High School. This is how it looks:
- Stage 1. Myself and a small team teach the Easter Story to a group of 14 and 15-year-old students during their regular Religious Studies lessons for six whole weeks. We do this through teaching them drama. They learn various acting styles and techniques, they take the Bible home to study the source material for homework, they write their own scripts from it and turn it into short plays.
- Stage 2. These students present the Easter Story through several narrative short plays to younger pupils from across our region who are about to move up into that High School. Armed with iPads, the younger pupils watch each play taking notes, then have a group discussion pretending they are on the ground journalists. They are given physical evidence to handle, and fake facebook pages are preloaded onto their iPads for each of the characters they have seen on screen.
- Stage 3. After the plays are performed, the key characters from the Easter story that have been on stage walk to various different locations around town. They stay in character constantly. The younger pupils go out with their iPads, filming them and asking them questions. This means that every 14 and 15-year-old actor has to intimately know their character and fully inhabit their role.
- Stage 4. The younger pupils go back to their various schools and create news reports to give to their classes. The school inherits the evidence boxes we have made (that included things like rubber severed ears, nails, and crowns of thorns), and keep talking about them.
The stories are read in the Bible, passed down to the older students who then creatively bring them to life in plays, then inhabited by the actors, are passed down to the younger pupils, who then pass the story down to their classes. This is a wonderful representation of the most important story every told, being continuously retold creatively to hundreds of young people.
We need to be creative in our teaching, and use all the tools we have available to us to bring the message of the Gospel to life! The Psalms celebrate the creativity of both God and humans, and give us licence to explore his word creatively – as long as we stay accountable to it.
The Psalms give full coverage, and so must our youth ministry. If our youth project strategies only cater to certain narrow expressions for specific personalities of young people going through particular stages of life when we simply won’t be relevant. This means that we won’t be able to walk with them consistently through all the various aspects of their journeys. Engaging creativity and applying it to the broad spectrum of life is part of what makes the principles of the last three chapters work and come alive!
Young People and Worship
Worship is a lifestyle, not just a sing along and our times of corporate worship should reflect and support this. It’s important to invite young people into these times of worship often, and not guilelessly segregate them from the experience.
These times of worship should give room to express and experience a wide spectrum of emotions before God. Communal worship teaches us to live our lives in light of God – in every occasion. This means we need songs and liturgy that take us through grief and hope, struggle and confidence, confusion and dependence. We need to make sure our worship is experiential so that it engages our whole hearts and reflects the lives we live.
Worship should not, therefore, just be propositional, but raise our affections and engage our emotions. This doesn’t have to be limited to intellectually grasping content. Instead we can embrace all the artistic and creative tools available to us to express the content. I am not a fan of ‘performance’ worship where the band is basically the focus rather than God. I do not, however, have any problem with the careful use of media, lights, volume, or even smoke machines, as long as they have been carefully put together to engage the worshipper, and support the content.
I remember one evening at a large Christian youth festival. I had brought my group to an evening session which turned out to be very powerful. God was speaking clearly to many people on the importance of surrendering pain to Himself, and letting go of historic hurts. God was moving among people, healing old wounds, and bringing the beginnings of reconciliation. There were floods of tears, and heaps of awkwardly entangled hugging young people everywhere. It was emotional, and it was heavy. At that point, the band came on stage, and we all expected they would bring some continuity to the sense in the room. Instead came an enormous 4-4 drum and bass beat, and the singing started up with ‘dance, dance, everybody dance!’ Unsurprisingly no one got up, and no one danced.
The music should always embrace the worshippers healthily and support the Spirit’s movement and the content being taught.
Want to read more? Check out Rebooted for yourself.
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