Beyond its melodies, worship music serves as a lens through which we as Christians can interpret and engage with the world.

Yet, as a result of the shift in the availability of commercial music over the past few decades, a transformation is underway in the realm of Christian worship music. As congregations gather and voices rise in praise, there’s an evolving landscape where the faithful find themselves navigating new dynamics. Gone are the days when every parishioner confidently sang out hymns with practiced ease; today, many find their singing abilities stretched thin, perhaps by the sheer technical prowess demanded by contemporary worship songs. Meanwhile, at the forefront, worship leaders step onto stages resembling concert platforms, delivering powerful performances that can rival secular productions in their intensity and fervor.

Amidst this spectacle, worshipers and leaders alike may question the where the balance lies between worship and entertainment, as commercial influences subtly shape the sounds and messages of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Exploring these intricacies reveals not only the vibrancy and diversity of worship in modern churches, but also prompts reflection on the spiritual journey in an era where faith and culture intersect with profound implications.

In this episode of the Good Faith podcast, Curtis Chang speaks with guest Andy Crouch to explore these dynamics of modern Christian worship music. Their conversation covers the ways that average church-goers are becoming limited in their singing abilities, the concert-like performance style of worship leaders, and the commercial influence of CCM. Defining worship music as a way Christians can try to make sense of the world, Andy and Curtis suggest that the church may be in need of a musical reformation, and offer some practical tips on how to get started

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.

Curtis Chang:  So Andy, when you are preparing and then engaging in music worship, leading an audience, what do you have to do that may be different from when you are preparing to give a talk or sitting down to write a book? You’re starting to get to that a little bit, talking about how you’ve got to be able to hear your audience. You’ve got to be able to connect with your audience because something about what’s happening is a common exchange of emotions that is part of the sense-making. What else is involved in this?

Andy Crouch What’s hard to do in worship is, we’re meant to be, in a sense, emptying our self of self and turning our attention and being absorbed in the reality of God’s presence. And to do that while you’re learning a completely new thing, there’s limits to our ability to do that. So I might be able to teach you a new song, but it had better sound like something you’ve heard before.

The first job of the musician as worship leader, I think, is to really pay attention to what can this congregation do, and then how do we stretch it? In music as in these other forms of communication, the two things you have to – well, you have to have a horror of them, I would say – cliche and sentimentality. So cliche is overly-familiar truth, and sentimentality is unearned emotion, emotion that comes too easily, that doesn’t kind of emerge out of authentic experience, but just is kind of rung out of you by a kind of manipulation.

And so I have to be thinking both with the words and the text, like what will be truthful for this congregation to sing, and what emotions are truthful for us to express.