Heart of Worship-Generation X

The following article was written by Dr. Randy Gill a former Professor of Music at Pepperdine University. He is now a Worship Minister in Nashville.

Heart of Worship-Generation X
by Randy Gill

“They don’t think like we do.”

After what had felt like an endless semester, the syllabus I had prepared for Music Appreciation still looked good to me. It was the first time I had taught this particular course in twenty years and things had not gone well. I had approached the material much like I had when the class had been a campus favorite two decades before. But something had changed. I could feel it. For some reason the course just wasn’t connecting with students like it once had. I wasn’t inspiring them. I was putting them to sleep.

The organization of the material seemed fine. Things flowed logically from the fundamentals through the periods. Melody led to form. Renaissance moved easily into Baroque. It was linear and well put together. It made sense. At the end of the semester we even spent a few weeks on the music the students loved most – rock, jazz, the blues. It seemed perfect. Why wasn’t it working?

“They don’t think like we do.”

Like most teachers I had heard the experts say, “students today aren’t like they were twenty years ago.” In seminars and workshops I’d heard about the post-modern preference for “nonlinear” thinking. “Gen Xers aren’t interested in neat rows,” the journals said. “They don’t necessarily move from point A to point B. They’re interested in a holistic experience not a progression of carefully structured facts. I had listened politely. I’d even thought about making a few changes. In the end, though, it just wasn’t worth the trouble. The syllabus had worked fine before. Why wouldn’t it work again? Yet here I was, at the end of a long and frustrating semester, haunted by a familiar phrase.

“They don’t think like we do.”

Perhaps the experts were right. As much as I loved the logic and symmetry of my class, maybe it was time for a second look. So the next semester I threw the old syllabus away and started over. I tried to picture loosely connected blocks instead of a straight line. On Tuesday we’d talk about Beethoven. Thursday we’d listen to Elvis. Chronologically they had nothing in common but both were musical and social rebels.

I have to admit, at first, it felt like a stretch. We were covering the same material but it looked so disorganized. I worried about what other teachers might think hearing Bach coming through the walls one day and Jimi Hendrix the next. But eventually an amazing thing happened. The students, who had seemed so dead the semester before, came to life. They began speaking out in class. They seemed interested and glad to be there. Their test scores went up. And after a while I found that my own enthusiasm for the class was growing. Changing my paradigm had forced me to look at the subject and at music in a new way. I saw connections and relationships I’d never noticed before. I spent less time talking about the symphonies of Mozart and more time listening to them. I discovered that if my students began to love a piece of music, they were more interested in who had written it and how it was put together. It wasn’t like the Music Appreciation course I’d taken in college. It didn’t resemble the course I’d taught twenty years before. But it worked.

Think for a minute about the worship times at your church. How much do they resemble my original syllabus – linear, structured, carefully organized? Are they packed with information? Is there room for spontaneity, for mystery, for surprise? Do people leave having experienced the power and majesty of a mighty God or are the preacher’s three points the most memorable part of the service? Have we thought at all about the growing number of post-moderns sitting in our assemblies?

I grew up with the words “decently and in order.” In 1st Corinthians 14, Paul uses that expression while scolding a church whose assemblies had gotten out of hand. I was taught that Paul’s words ought to guide our worship today and I still believe that. In our efforts to be orderly, though, it is easy to create a kind of rigid, unofficial liturgy. Our “order of worship,” from opening song to closing prayer, is often so predictable that any variation is likely to upset people. What do we do, then, about this generation that doesn’t relate to the formulas and outlines of the past? Generation X has come of age. But will they come to our churches? Will our own children stay? Are we inspiring them or are we putting them to sleep? They’re looking for God. Will they find Him in our comfortable routine? It’s time those of us who are older realized.

“They don’t think like we do.”