Chloe Adams and Nate Williams talk about worship! What is it? How should we do it? Let us know what you think!
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Chloe Adams and Nate Williams talk about worship! What is it? How should we do it? Let us know what you think!
Website: www.dangerousfaith.net
YouTube: Dangerous Faith
Rumble: Dangerous Faith
Instagram: nwdangerousfaith
Twitter: @FaithDangerous
Facebook: @NWDangerousFaith
Well, hello everyone, welcome back to Grow With Khloé, with me, your host, khloe Adams, and today we are going to be talking about worship, and more specifically, worship music, and how we, as Christians, should treat that and how exactly we should view worship. So, to kind of get us started, what is worship? Well, to me, worship means to bow down to something, to give reverence and honor to something, and that could be God, or that could be worldly things, that could be your work, that could be another God, it could be social media, but the point is, everybody worships something, even an atheist who says they don't believe in any kind of God they don't believe in our God they still worship something, whether that be seeking the truth, or they worship an idea of having a God or an idea of there not being a God. Everybody worships something. So I think that's an important way to start this conversation. But something important we need to know about worship is that worship is not just something that's done in the church, on the stage, in the audience.
Chloe Adams:Worship is done anywhere, at any time, but it is not dependent about the place. It's all about the person or the thing that you are directing your worship toward. That's the main thing of worship. You want to make sure the object of your worship is in the right place. It's also not a feeling. Now you can get multiple feelings and emotions from worship, and I think that's a great thing, because God gave us our feelings. God gave us our emotions. But it isn't all about getting a feeling out of worship. It's about renewing your mind and dedicating our entire life to God.
Nate Williams:Now let's talk about the feeling aspect, because I think that we can go too far in either direction. What Chloe is saying is not that feelings aren't important, that what you experience isn't important, but we have to remember that's not the main thing. You don't want to put the cart before the horse, and so sometimes what happens is, in churches and concerts and things like that, the priority is placed off of the experience that, oh, did you have a good time? Did you have fun? Did you all those things? And if you answer yes to that, then people say, oh, wow, that was great worship. We have to remember that those things, while important, you want to experience happiness and it's not a bad thing to enjoy your time with other Christians. Primarily, Chloe, what you did so well was you said that worship is about what you're worshiping, the object or, in our cases, Christians, the being, God himself. But we're not saying that the good emotions, the happy feelings, that doesn't matter as well, that's just secondary.
Chloe Adams:Right, yeah, and I think, like you said, feelings are important. But I think there are some churches out there Maybe what you think of is like a mega church, who they want to evoke those feelings in you, and that might be like getting these huge lights and a smoke machine and just all these crazy stuff that you don't need to worship.
Nate Williams:Now are you? You mean to tell me are you anti-smoke machine?
Chloe Adams:I mean, I don't think it's necessary.
Nate Williams:What about lasers? I like lasers.
Chloe Adams:Definitely not necessary, and that can give people seizures too, that's true, but smoke machine like. There's nothing inherently evil about a smoke machine. However, it's not necessary and I think churches money can go towards something better, like missions.
Nate Williams:Something else. Yes, I think those are good points now, but we also want to remember within that that there is a room for good quality music right. So, as you lead people in worship, and we'll talk about that, I don't know if you want to talk about your experience on a worship team now or later.
Chloe Adams:I'll go and I can kind of give the top now, I guess. So.
Nate Williams:When it comes to quality, we do want high quality worship, in that if I sing off key and if I do some really bad, distracting dance moves on stage, it's really difficult for the honest, sincere Christian in the audience to worship because it's distracting. So, in the midst of all this, we're not saying that there's no room for high quality worship that does matter but we just always. You have to be careful and any two extremes is bad. But, chloe, tell us your experience on worship teams.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, so I've been doing worship music for as long as I can remember. Honestly, it's probably been gosh, probably like anywhere from eight to ten years. I started probably doing it more at this church, this really small church I went to a few years back when I was in middle school and high school. I started kind of getting out of my shell more because I used to be really, really nervous to be on stage and singing. That's a lot of pressure. But then I really I really started to find a passion for it because, I mean, I've loved singing my whole life.
Chloe Adams:There's the story my grandma likes to tell of me because when I was a baby I would wake everyone up by standing in my crib and start singing at six in the morning. Wow, okay. So from my entire life I've loved to sing. It's a passion of mine and I think that passion just grew more as I was starting to sing in church and getting out of my shell more. Singing solos in church, leading worship, and you know people would tell me all the time like goodness, you just sound so good and like your worship is just so beautiful. And so now I sing at my church here at home and I love it. It's great, but there is a lot of. There's a lot that goes into it all to say that. But I love it. It's been great, but, but yeah anyways, there's a lot more I could say about that.
Nate Williams:A lot of experience there and and so when you, when you speak about these things, you've been able to be a part of it. Now, while my voice, I would say, is quite average, I've been a part of a couple different worship teams as well and, yeah, so a lot of coordination. One thing people don't always realize is how much behind the scenes work there is in a church. So you might think of a pastor as a Sunday morning person and all they do is get ready to to give a sermon and give their sermon. A sermon is a major part of a preacher's duty, but also there's a lot of stuff during the week and I think the same thing with the worship team that worship leaders and band members.
Nate Williams:They got to practice, they got to, you know, study a little bit depending on what they're doing. They got to. If they're sharing a devotional, they're study there. There's also important that, as you, as you worship I don't know again, we can get into this now or later that we have good theology as well with our study, our doctrine. Would you like to get into that or you want to go in a different direction?
Chloe Adams:Well, I kind of wanted to talk about something really quick, just before we go into that kind of talking more about my experience. Just a couple of the things I've learned, yeah, being involved in the worship team at various churches.
Nate Williams:Yeah.
Chloe Adams:I'm trying to think where I should start. So there are a couple of things that can be difficult when it comes to any kind of worship or church thing, when you're on leadership or staff whatever. And to me I think it's really important if you're going to be on the worship team, you need to have a genuine heart for it, because that's important Leading worship and leading a crowd in that, like you don't want to. For me, I never want to be a different person offstage than I am onstage. So if I am onstage and I'm moving and I'm raising my hands and I'm closing my eyes and truly just resting in God's presence and praising His name, like I don't want to be completely different offstage and just have my arms to my side, look bored, all that kind of stuff. So I think it can be hard sometimes to find the balance between like how do I want to say it?
Chloe Adams:I want to like, when you think of being on the worship team, there is a certain aspect of, yes, we need to perform, we need to sound good, because, like you said, nobody wants to listen to worship music at a church that sounds awful, where the singers are off key. That's just not bearable. So, yes, there is some kind of performance that we have to put on, but at the same time, like you, want to be genuine and pure in your intentions when it comes to worship. So to me, finding that balance has been a little difficult, but you know, it's gotten better, I'd say, over the years. And I also don't want to be the person that just does it for all the praise that I get Wow, you just sound so good, like those comments are great. But honestly, I just love seeing other people worship, even though those comments they mean so much, but that's not why I do it.
Nate Williams:Yeah, for sure. I think if you grew up in a youth group background maybe in high school or middle school or whatever you know and maybe this was you, maybe it was me, whoever, you know the kids that they would be a certain way during a Christian concert or if they were in the band, but come Friday night they were a very different person in how they live. This goes for any Christian in the church in any leadership position. It kind of makes you jaded because you're thinking oh, I see how you are as you live and you're not this way. You're not all about Jesus, you're not all about walking the things that you're talking, walking the walk, so to speak. And that's important. So consistency, that if you're on stage that you do want to lead a good example it's not that you can't make mistakes, but as you live you try to be consistent, authentic. If you make a mistake, you apologize. And just some things to think about.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, I agree for sure, but we can definitely talk more about now if the worship songs we're singing need to be 100% theologically accurate. I have a couple of thoughts about that. One is a verse I wanted to share. Well, I have a couple of verses I want to share, but the first one is Philippians 4-8, which says Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. So we haven't talked too much about this yet, but worship invokes a lot of thoughts in your mind. It brings a lot of logical thoughts that you think about. It brings a lot of emotions and you want those thoughts to be true, noble, pure, lovely, all these things. So I think it is very, very important for worship songs at churches to be theologically accurate. Oh yeah.
Nate Williams:And this is where you might not realize this, but a good exercise in your devotional life would be to write a poem to God or write a worship song to God, and not that you have to create music for it or any of that, but as a way of refining your mind with theology and doctrine and you'll realize, as you talk about Jesus or you talk about the Holy Spirit or something going on in salvation, your theology really matters. And knowing your Bible and your doctrine, I think of that funny Instagram reel that it's satire, it's mocking the way Gen Z talks, but that song, your Love is Bussin. Have you seen those videos?
Chloe Adams:I'm sure I have at some point. I'll send it to you.
Nate Williams:Yes, but anyways it's using Gen Z language in a worship song, and so you want to be careful between using appropriate language, using theologically correct language, but also to do so in a non-stilted, natural, beautiful way. It's really difficult to do, yeah.
Chloe Adams:But anyways, and I think honestly and I think we might have talked about this before on one of the other episodes but one of the biggest examples of that is people have this huge debate over reckless love.
Nate Williams:Can you remind the audience of maybe some of those lines?
Chloe Adams:It says oh the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God. So I can understand why there's a problem with this, because when you think of reckless you think crazy, out of control, and obviously God is none of those things. The Bible does not say he's out of control, it doesn't say he's reckless. It actually does the opposite. But at the same time there is a sense of like. It's so much that we can't even fathom it, you know. So I think it depends on your definition of reckless, how you want to interpret that.
Nate Williams:Here's how I handle that many controversy On God's end. His love is not reckless. His love is pure and good and he knows what he's doing. He's in control, but from our perspective, it seems reckless. It seems reckless Like why would you love people like us? David in the Psalms wrote who am I, who is man that you are mindful of?
Chloe Adams:him.
Nate Williams:And when we see how sinful we can be, we see how great God is in sending Jesus Christ to earth to die for our sins. There is a reckless nature from our perspective, and so that's where maybe it's accurate. Maybe it's not when it comes to that controversy. That's how I explained it, but anyways.
Chloe Adams:No, I totally agree. But I think another good test to run on worship songs, especially in church, I think. But if your worship song is saying a ton of eyes and knees and not saying enough of God, jesus, you are, your like, your love, your mercy, your grace, it might not be the best song because it's putting all the focus on yourself and not on God. It's like I heard of this really good analogy. It's like say, like I'm married to Zeke. So if I was to say like I want you, I love you, like I want you to do this, that's putting all the focus on what I want. But if I was to say you love me and like you are so great, things like that, then it puts all the focus on him. So I don't think it's necessarily a sin to listen to those songs that say I and me and all that, because I think those have a time and a place.
Nate Williams:For sure.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, but I think, especially in the church setting, I think it's more important to put all the focus on God, because when we're worshiping we want our minds to be set on things above and not on things of the earth, which is what Colossians 3-2 says one of my favorite verses. So worship is really a great place to kind of take us out of all the distractions of the world and to set our minds on God.
Nate Williams:I agree. I agree and I think with some of those songs about the eyes and the knees and the way I feel some of them can be accurate, but the word I use with some songs I hear on the radio shallow Like nothing's wrong with shallow water. Here and there that it might be true, it might be accurate, but it's very limited in terms of the way and the depth that it can feed you and it can feed your soul and it can feed your worship and your worship of God. So if that's you and you listen to your worship songs and they tend to be more shallow or very basic From time to time, that's fine, nothing's wrong with that.
Nate Williams:We all have to start somewhere. However, I would press on to maybe deeper theological thinkers, writers it can be poetry as well, that just sometimes the depth of theology, because, think about it, we're writing about God who is endless, his beauty is matchless, it goes forever, eternal, infinite. That our worship should reflect some of that depth of God, and so I would encourage you to press on just a little bit, maybe go into some deeper waters with theology and it'll be very richly fulfilling.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, no, I totally agree. And a couple of last points on that question. There's a verse I think it's John 4.24, where it basically says we must worship in spirit and in truth. So that says, like our worship needs to be spirit led, but it also needs to be rooted in truth, and so that kind of goes back to the other verse I shared about all those things. Whatever is right, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, that's what our minds need to be set upon, or else we're going to be singing lies about God, like we're going to just be at church praising well praising but we're just shouting out all these things that are just complete lies about God that don't, that aren't talked about in scripture, but anyways.
Nate Williams:I think that's a whole other tangent. I could go.
Chloe Adams:But I think one last thing, sorry. So I've heard a lot of debate on like this Christian band doesn't believe this, so I'm not going to listen to anything they're going to. They're you know, they believe in this really extreme view of this and this and this, so I'm not going to listen to anything they produce. So my question to them is okay, but what if that band with their amazing voices, what if they sang a song like Amazing Grace? It's literally the same, it's the same meaning, it's just different voices. And so I think the biggest thing when it comes to worship songs is the purpose of the song, Not it's like it just bothers me because I'm like everybody's sinful. Everybody believes differently. These differences shouldn't cause us to completely abandon them Because, like you could take a secular band who is very good at singing, very talented, and they could sing some like Amazing Grace or it is well with my soul, anything like that, and the song would still hold the exact same meaning. It would just be sung by another group of centers. We're all centers.
Nate Williams:We're all centers and I remember I had an argument with a mutual friend over this and If you're listening.
Chloe Adams:We love you, yes, and.
Nate Williams:This person took the opinion, had the opinion that if someone is living in unrepentance and if they're proud of their lifestyle and they come out with a worship song, it does not matter how theologically accurate the song is, you should not sing it in your church. And I saw his point. But also, I think of Psalm 51 with David. That was after David did that whole episode with Bathsheba and Gariah, and now it's one of the most beautiful Psalms that we have in the book. And imagine us saying well, david, you messed up royally, so we're going to and it was a bad mess up if you go read that passage of scripture Adultery and murder and well, we can't accept your worship there.
Nate Williams:I take it as a case by case basis. Read the song lyrics If you know your Bible, if you know your theology, and you read it and you're like OK, this is theologically accurate, you might. If you go sing it in a worship setting. I don't know if it's appropriate to explain the situation, but I lean towards the song being OK. Maybe there are some exceptions, maybe some people have so heinously sinned that the headache would not be worth it to explain why, you're using the song, but in general I go song by song basis.
Nate Williams:If the theology is accurate and it's otherwise a beautiful song, I'm OK with that.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, I think just a good summary of everything we've said is just worship music should be focused on the purpose and the object of the worship, not so much who is singing it where they're singing it.
Nate Williams:Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.
Chloe Adams:Yeah. So, Nate, who are your favorite Christian bands and singers?
Nate Williams:Oh boy, so growing up, I love some of the popular ones. I love DC Talk, michael W Smith, amy Grant and many of those. There was also what was it 2000s? Did you ever listen to Zoey Girl?
Chloe Adams:No, but I have heard.
Nate Williams:I listened to some of their songs and there was Take Five. They were a kid kind of band or group of singers, anyways, just all sorts of stuff. Mercy Me, casting Crowns, jarzaclay Skillet, I liked them all. I love Mercy Me particularly. If I had to pick one Christian band, it would probably be Mercy Me. And then on the hip hop rap side, I love LeCray and NF.
Chloe Adams:Yeah, and NF, there we go.
Nate Williams:I think that's what I would say. What about you?
Chloe Adams:Well, I have kind of like categories of worship music.
Nate Williams:Oh man, that's fancy.
Chloe Adams:Because I love worship music, Like if you looked at my Spotify, like the rap just came out and I think I have like 125,000 minutes listened Now.
Chloe Adams:I think that includes podcasts too, and that's impressive, regardless, I listen to a lot of music when I'm driving and when I'm cooking, things like that. But I really love for like a band style. I love we, the Kingdom, their music. They really give me a lot of joy when they sing. Their voices are amazing. I've seen them twice in person and they're even better in concerts and they're so genuine in how they worship as well. But if it's more of like independent artists I've said this before I love Forrest Frank. He's recently started coming out with some more Contemporary versions of hymns, like old hymns. The album is new hymns and I really love that. I like Riley Clemens, phil Wickham, the band Kane, shane and Shane.
Nate Williams:I like Tori Kelly to.
Chloe Adams:Tori Kelly yeah, she, she is really good. I used to listen to her more than I do now I'm, but I also like Brandon Lake. His voice is very good, but I love also KB Lecrae, andy Minio, all the 116 crowd.
Nate Williams:Yes, yes, OK well yeah, a lot of Christian music. Also say the same thing about Christian movies. It's gotten a lot better.
Chloe Adams:Yes.
Nate Williams:It's. The quality has become, I want to say, equal to anything else, that's out there there was a time with Christian movies where you kind of roll your eyes and you say they tried they gave it a go you know? Or in the South, people say what is it Bless their heart. Yeah but, but now the quality is is incredible.
Nate Williams:But, speaking of just kind of Christian sphere, secular sphere. What is your thought? If it's all right if I ask this what is your thought on secular music? Is it OK for Christians to listen to secular music, in your opinion?
Chloe Adams:Yeah. So I think the biggest thing we need to focus on in this conversation is this word called discernment. So I think if you listen to secular music and it makes you stumble, like you're tempted to sin, or it makes someone around you stumble, then it's a no go, don't listen to it. Or if it is openly blaspheming God, the Holy Spirit, jesus, obviously that should be an immediate red flag. Do not listen to this. And I think the last thing is if it makes you, you makes you dwell on certain things like sin, sexual sin, stealing, murder. If it makes you dwell on those sexual, sexual, sinful things, so sorry, then that should also be a no go.
Chloe Adams:But I don't think that all secular music is bad. I think that even some secular songs nowadays can promote godly views like honesty, even like purity in the marriage bet, like I think that some of them can still do that. And to me, like I listen to some secular songs and that's totally okay because I have fun with it and I'm not taking my mind completely off God, I'm not blaspheming God or anything like that, I'm just kind of. You know, this is music that I enjoy, I have fun with, it, doesn't make me sin, it doesn't make me stumble, so I don't personally see a problem with it.
Nate Williams:Yeah, I think let's take one of the genres of country music. Yeah, you can, there are some stuff that's not great in certain country music songs but there are songs about bravery, about the military, about serving, about sacrificing, about fathers and mother sacrificing for their kid. They love for grandparents. I know for a lot of people grandparents played a major role in their upbringing and even if it doesn't explicitly mention Jesus by name.
Nate Williams:There can still be some good themes and good values. And now I know a gray area might be language. You know what, if there's some language in a song, and I don't know how deep you want to go into that question, but I think discernment, like you said, incredible word. We need to practice it. For sure, reading your Bible, praying, asking for good wisdom from those around you helps with that. But some good thoughts there.
Chloe Adams:And I think too, when it comes to like language and cussing and swearing stuff like that, that's. It's a hard conversation, but basically anything we consume as humans, if we consume it in a big enough amount, it's going to come out of us. At some point it's going to overflow, it's going to come out of our mouth.
Chloe Adams:It's going to come out of our actions. So, yeah, if you are trying to stop cussing and you're a Christian, listening to a secular song with cussing probably is not the best idea. I will this. I mean, this might be a hot take, but for me I've never, never struggled with cussing. I've never done it in my whole life, I've never been tempted to do it.
Chloe Adams:So, yeah, there are a couple of secular songs I like to listen to that do have a couple of cuss words in them and that might be a hot take between Christians, but to me I don't. I don't stumble when I listen to that. Now, when I listen to it around, maybe a friend who's trying to stop cussing no, because if they're trying to stop, then why would I play something that promotes it? But for me personally, like if I'm at the gym and I'm listening to like a rap song that might not be from a Christian artist and it might cuss like one time, I'm not going to just shut it down because of that, because I just personally I don't, I don't struggle with that. But I'm also not going to go listen to a song with 50 million cuss words, like if. For me it's like if there's one cuss word.
Chloe Adams:I'm like, yeah, I'm like, if there's one or two like that's fine, but if there's any more than that, I'm like okay, I don't like listening to that trash. Okay.
Nate Williams:Yeah, it's again just what Paul talks about this and first Corinthians and Romans, with different issues, holy days and food offered to idols. You need to be careful what causes you to be tempted, the habits and addictions and all those things sins that you struggle with that might be different than someone else and you need to take that into account, that your brother or sister might not struggle with the sin that you do. And as you relate to one another, hang out with one another, the activities you partake in the music you listen to, thank you, there might be some need for some honest communication like, hey, that's really not listen to this or watch that Just again. Communication, discernment and being prayer in your relationship so that you can go in a healthy direction.
Chloe Adams:Yeah and a couple other things as we kind of close up. I was listening to a short video, actually by Mike Winger, who had a video on this topic, and he said something that really stuck out to me. He said focus on the message and not so much the genre. So if you were to listen to a secular song and it might have like we were talked about some Christian values like family and love and peace, stuff like that, that's a good message, that's a positive message that can be good to put into us Now, then if you found out it was secular and then you're like nope, I'm not listening to it. But you know what, if that song still gives you those good thoughts and good feelings, and that to me that's a positive, that's a plus.
Nate Williams:I think so, and you can look at it in different ways. If a non-Christian builds a building, are we not going to enter it? Because there was a non-Christian. That did it A non-Christian can build a good building.
Chloe Adams:That was my next point, actually.
Nate Williams:Sorry, sorry, sorry, I did not see her notes. No, no, no, that's totally fine, go on. I don't want to steal your thunder, no, that's totally fine.
Chloe Adams:I was just going to say, like, well, nate, is that shirt you're wearing made by Christians, made?
Nate Williams:by Christian. We're using lights. Maybe you use some indoor plumbing. Was it a Christian that set that up?
Chloe Adams:Exactly.
Nate Williams:To wear. Non-christians, whether knowingly or unknowingly, can do good works. They can do. Now I have to again, whenever you say that Christian theology, we're all sinners, all that, insert all the asterisks there. But they can promote good values. They can do good work at their jobs and to deny that would be absolutely silly. For example, if a non-believing soldier saves your kid, let's say that's a war situation. A non-believing soldier saves your kid. Be like hey, you're not a Christian, go send little Bobby into the front lines again because whatever that would be dumb. The non-Christian soldier did something good for you. You can just apply that logic to everything.
Chloe Adams:But anyways, and it's pretty much impossible to own everything that is made by Christians. There's just no way you can do that. How do you know the wood that your house is made of is made? It was cut down by Christians. Exactly, there's no way to trace the line all the way back to the beginning and know that it's by Christians. And even if you did, you'd probably be living in a bubble.
Nate Williams:Yes, yes, and then you wouldn't be able to evangelize that way as well. Exactly.
Chloe Adams:But as we kind of wrap up this, I don't want to take it lightly, because worship is very, very important to Christians. It's kind of a way for us to step into God's peace and His love and to understand His mercy and grace and to just kind of set our minds on the right things as we go on into the world. But do use discernment, as you do, that If a song doesn't whether secular or not doesn't line up with God's word, then you probably shouldn't be listening to it.
Nate Williams:But yeah, I think I'll finish with this. Some of you might ask well, what's the best way to worship? How do you do it? There's a lot of advice and wisdom we could give there, and that could be a part two, some specifics how to go about worshiping directly, but the key thing is to do it.
Chloe Adams:Yeah.
Nate Williams:That sometimes we're so worried about what we say and the exact song we listen to and all those things, and, yeah, take some time to ponder that. But the biggest thing, just like in prayer or reading your Bible, just get started. Yeah, get started and worship in ways that worship with people that would be corporately, with the body of Christ in church. Do it devotionally, individually, when you're by yourself, and just do it, because that's what God made us to do?
Chloe Adams:I mean God is worthy of our worship. I mean he is the King of kings. When you think about a king, you think of people coming down and bowing down before Him in reverence. So we need to do the same with our worship, whether that, even if that just means listening to worship music in the car and just singing your praise out to God, that's still a form of worship.
Nate Williams:Yes, for sure. Well, this has been another Grow, with Khlo episode on worship. Just, we have a podcast, a YouTube channel. Go check it out, let people know about it, like, share, subscribe and we'll talk with you later.