"the heart of worship"

Do you know that ubiquitous "Heart of Worship" praise song by Matt Redman? It's one that always sets my teeth on edge for a couple of reasons. First of all, it rather startlingly places the accent on the second syllable of Jesus at the end of each of two couplets in the chorus. Secondly the writer is saying that the "heart of worship" is "all about you, Jesus," which is at best sloppy trinitarian theology. That having been said, the text has some depth and loveliness "When the music fades All is stripped away And I simply come Longing just to bring Something that's of worth...". Maybe not "A Mighty Fortress", but certainly not the work of a hack.

Matt Redman seems to be part of a concert at a local Metro-Detroit church this week, and the Freep's (that's our affectionate name for the more left leaning of Detroit's 2 dailies, The Detroit Free Press) religion feature writer chatted him up. Contrary to the prevailing evangelical- protestant-mega-church-praise-chorus-only trend, Mr Redman stressed how important he feels it is to juxtapose both old and new music in worship, fessed up to currently being on a Wesley hymn binge and discussed tradition as an anchor. But something else he said in this interview has been bugging me all week; Mr Redman talks about being part of a new, start-up church near Brighton, England, and he says "It's a new church we're starting, a fresh canvas on which to express ourselves". I'm pretty sure that worship is not the place to express ourselves for the sake of being creative--that belongs at the art gallery or on the stage or in the recital venue, and I don't see how anyone harkening back to the Wesleys for inspiration and acknowledging tradition as an anchor can see an opportunity for worship as a blank slate--we're the heirs in worship of all the saints that went before, and this is baggage not to be discarded lightly. But I've decided (in light of him being a Wesley freak) to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he means that we offer up our creative gifts to God in worship.