Niels Prip – Blog

I have been a musician since 1965 and I have been involved with writing Christian music since 1971. I am a product of the Jesus Revolution. If you saw the movie, it is a story about my wife and I, there are so many similarities. We were part of a group of newly saved young people, and we had a key role in starting a church in the early 1970’s in northern Illinois. I played at church, and I played in a Christian band that played in parks, campgrounds and coffeehouses all around the Midwest. In 1977, the band traveled to Denmark and Sweden for a 5-week outreach. Those were exciting times for us. It was all about outreach and preaching the Gospel.

It wasn’t until about 1981 that I had ever heard the term “worship leader”. Someone we were visiting told us we needed to come to church with them because they have a great worship leader. I had never heard of that before. In those days, we just had an overhead projector and a bunch of musicians sitting off to the side.

I have always thought that “worship leader” was such a lofty title. Can you be a worship leader and not be a worshiper of God? Yes you can! In many churches you can be hired to lead purely based on your talent. It used to be in church that you could be a minister of music, someone who led the congregation in praise unto God. But that is not such a lofty title.

Recently, there have been famous worship leaders who have come out and said they now doubt Christianity. Huh? How did they get a worship leader position? When churches hire musicians, is it based more on talent rather than their real walk with the Lord? I think so! We are now so far removed from what real worship is that if you ask someone, there are like deer in headlights.

The modern church has thrown praise and worship into the same bucket, we make no distinction between the two. We have minimized what true Biblical worship is, to our own hurt. I used to hear it all the time, people go to specific churches because they like the worship there. I then ask them; you mean you like the music??  Invariably, that is really what they mean, and it is OK to prefer what you like, but lets not call it worship, call it praise.

Being a true worshiper of God has nothing to do with what you like, or your taste in music. It has to do with what your walk with the Lord, your obedience, your sacrifice, taking up the cross daily, preferring one another in love and bowing before Him. When Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, when he was going on the hill to worship, the was no music. We are losing our understanding of what Biblical worship is! If that is lost, we are at peril.

If you love to praise the Lord, do it with gusto with your preference of music. Enjoy it! But let’s rethink worship and how much more serious it is. When it comes to worship, God sets the standard. When it comes to praise, we have liberty to have music we prefer.