From the Archives: "Too Much Bono in the Church?"
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
Having become entranced with the emotional “high” of U2 concerts, Aaron Niequist attempted to emulate the same excitement in worship. He and other song/worship leaders saw that Bono had the ability to create “epic worship experiences” that seemed to be the best way to use music to heighten the emotion of worshippers. As Niequist reflected, however, on how it is that worship enables the faithful to carry on in a world with serious lows along with emotional highs, he saw that when worship offers only the image of a life of faith as one mountaintop experience after another, it is not offering the most honest and helpful view of life with God. Eschewing the pressure to be spectacular meant for Niequist less pressure to come up with greater and greater spectacles. Instead, he saw worship as an event that should offer “wise practices, clear teaching,” and space to ask questions that bring deeper gifts from God. –– Melinda Quivik
Selected Quotes from
"Too Much Bono in the Church?"
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As I marveled at Bono’s ability to create such an epic worship experience, it occurred to me that this anthemic, euphoric, and cathartic euphoria is the perfect model for a traveling rock show but may be a potentially unhelpful model for weekly worship. And yet so many worship leaders––myself included––have been trying to emulate this mountaintop experience every Sunday morning for years, asking, “Did people lift their hands in the air? Did they sing loudly? Did they have a deeply authentic emotional experience?” These questions, learned from traveling rock stars, have come to define much of the current Christian worship culture.
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I am becoming convinced that a rock concert worship event is wonderful in small doses but dangerous when it becomes normative
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While over 30 percent of the Psalms are lament, looking at the top 100 contemporary (or “modern”) worship songs, you see that almost none are lament. As a result, our faith can get lopsided, and we do not always know how to engage the pain and heartbreak of life if we have only chosen the top songs or failed to use a range of Psalms.
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A steady diet of rock concert worship does not teach us how to engage 99.9 percent of real life, which is neither spectacular nor very entertaining, and often involves quiet, awkward, and ordinary people. Reality is gloriously diverse.
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For all the good it can offer, might our programs accidentally reinforce the belief that people can only fully encounter God in a rocking church?
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Aaron Niequist is a worship leader, songwriter, and pastor. Currently, he curates a discipleship-focused, formational, ecumenical, practice-based community called “The Practice” at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
Aaron Niequist, “Too Much Bono in the Church?” Liturgy 32, no. 1 (2016): 42–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/0458063X.2016.1229452.
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