Origin

It seems to me that any discussion I’ve been involved with to answer “is worship about God or me” ultimately ends up being a worthless pursuit. I’ll explain: we often assume musical worship has a point of origin, i.e. “God or me” and we must start at origin point God, or me before we can progress. This is privy to Western Culture’s treatment of progress really, we want a 3 step process for everything, we also view most things as being linear. I think this treatment doesn’t fit musical worship. I’d argue there isn’t a point of origin for musical worship, but rather, a continuous state. Worship isn’t about “God” or “me” but rather, it is about “us”. It isn’t about a starting point, but a continued process that we’re apart of whether we acknowledge it or not.

I bring that up to clarify my recent conclusions after talking to people about the object of musical worship. My thoughts are still kind of developing on it.

As to having issues engaging worship music; I would find someone’s inability to engage music a small matter in the grander scheme of Christian living. I also wouldn’t think it is accurate to say inability to engage a worship set is indicative of personal spiritual issues. I would say that person is already engaged in worship, regardless of if they feel engaged. I'd reference the nature of God’s interaction with us, and, in my opinion, the broader definition of worship includes the work of God in us, regardless of our immediate response. So, for musical worship, everyone attending is engaged in worship before they even entered the sanctuary; music just gives an opportunity for a response to the already existing condition we find ourselves in, a condition of God’s interaction with us. Further to the point, if musical worship is poorly written, I say it won’t provide a good opportunity. Good songs make us aware of the “condition” I mentioned earlier, great songs do that and allow us opportunity to respond, phenomenal songs do all this and are engaging.