Sounds like I’m being set up here

Perhaps category is a bad word - perhaps it isn’t. I guess the type of music I am thinking about here is music that is directly bringing glory to His name and were written for that expressed purpose. This could include both ‘churcy’ songs as well as ’secular’ songs that don’t explicitly use complicated words that we love to crank out in church songs.

Now I know this makes me a sitting duck because you are going to start on questions such as ‘what about songs that sound like they are glorifying God but actually weren’t intended to’ or what about songs that are very discrete in the language and perhaps only mean something to the author. Those are good questions - but not really what I was getting at with this post. For starters, I think any music can bring glory to God depending on who is playing / listening to it and probably most songs can be seen through Christian beer goggles and made to fit around some part of our faith. However, what I was trying to get at here is that while it seems like we are saturated with ‘Christian’ music (everyone wants to be the next Matt Redman etc) that can causes me to wonder what the point is of trying to write worship music when there is so much good (and bad) stuff already out there. I guess what I was trying to get at is that I’ve viewed that market saturation as a bad thing - when in fact we should be inundated with songs that glorify God as that was what music was created to do!

So in conclusion, probably any music can be viewed as ‘praise and worship’ but I am saying specifically that we should spend time and energy on writing songs that are from the outset songs set apart to honour God.

Can it include ’secular’ music? Does it have to be ‘
congregational’ music that is sung in a church? Does it have to have been written by ‘Christian’ artist?

As the worship leader guru of threedays I’d be interested in your thoughts *smile*