I grew up attending church. I also grew up playing musical instruments. I started off learning trumpet and piano and then embraced drums as well. As I got older, piano and trumpet eventually took a back seat and that was mainly due to the fact that we did not have a piano so I couldn’t practice routinely. I eventually got out of high school and stopped playing trumpet. I continued playing drums because in the 1970’s, the music was good. Most of it – though rock and roll – was music that was pleasant to the ear and had meaningful lyrics, often about boy meeting girl, falling in love, etc.

Of course, over time, something called “hard rock” and then “metal” came to be. Music always changes and often becomes more repugnant. Today, music is all finalized using ProTools, a software program that can take any voice through the computer and adjust it automatically so that all flats or sharps from the singer are digitally placed in tune. Same with the instruments. There is also plenty of overdubbing in today’s music. Unlike what was called “the wall of sound” from the Wrecking Crew in the 1960’s where there were literally multiples of the same instrument playing different tracks, today’s music is simply digitally overdubbed and perfected.

Today’s music is really an engineer’s game. More often than not, most groups who tour today often have canned music and audio tracks playing with their live sound. You don’t really want to hear them without it because the groups that were hits when I was a younger person and are still touring are pushing their 70s now. They’re really old and should have stopped a while ago, but money beckons and it’s all they know. If they don’t tour, they don’t make money. It is interesting how it has all evolved.

The same type of “progress” can be seen in musical stylings in churches of today. When I was growing up, the hymns were hymns, sung out of a hymnal. After college, the music in churches took a slightly new approach. It all started with those neat little choruses. I recall even playing drums in several churches that utilized these choruses. It was fun, didn’t take a great deal of work, the songs themselves followed the instinctual route of good, normal music. In other words, there was a musical symmetry to these choruses as simple as they were.

Of course, nothing stays the same. I began noticing that in place of these simple choruses (often based directly on the Psalms or other portions of Scripture), the songs started meandering and began sounding more like Bob Dylan tunes. They told stories. To me, they started sounded annoying because they were going against type, with discordant notes and tunes. Instead of adding to the worship, it seemed like they were attracting more of the attention.

Eventually, worship songs have become these heavily convoluted, wandering songs filled with high-strung guitar riffs and loud, obnoxious volumes, all set on a firm foundation of bombastic drumming. If you take away the lyrics of many of today’s so-called worship songs, they could easily be mistaken for what passes as secular music. There’s nothing uplifting about it, in my view. It seems like music has taken center stage, overriding the actual worship experience. But to most, it doesn’t seem to matter because people appeared to be really getting into things. They’re enjoying it. It makes them feel good. But this is the actual problem.

Every church we have ever attended in which we eventually left was due not necessarily to the music itself (as obnoxious as much of it is today), but to the direction this music pulled the church. It has led me to believe that the more the music is given free rein and center stage, the greater the chances that it will derail what God considers holy.

Today, churches are filled with people who shed tears...