In Uganda, when the so-called “Balokole” movement broke on the scene in the ’80s, we disrupted the religious tradition of the day with an unprecedented affection for the things of God.

Choirs “danced for The Lord” (literally).

My recollection going to crusades with my mum in the late ’90s, every kiwempe church featured a guy on drums, a choir in long dresses swerving the same direction in between interludes.

Nigerian attire-clad, fire-spitting preachers — in tandem with the new hysteria—tapped their pointed shoes and nodded heads as “God’s presence powerfully came down.”

It was indeed a disruption. A fairly good disruption then, dare we say, a disruption from what we had known before, going to Church became more interesting than those dreary hours enduring liturgy. (Although this entire hyper-jiggy experience wasn’t free from nearby Congolese music influence too)

Yet looking back, seems like the hyper-search for entertainment in the Ugandan Christian experience has not come without a cost through the years.

As feeling-centered audiences have arrived with the current therapeutic generation, congregants, and those who “lead worship” have continuously abandoned the profound roots of deeply knowing the one they are soon going to be singing about.

The writer of Ephesians waits for four entire chapters before admonishing believers to sing “spiritual hymns” (Eph 5:16), he definitely knew the importance of grounding Christian practice in Christ identity and understanding, one wonders whether today’s church music experiences come this close?

Going by this argument, Paul would, for example, have understood our modern temptation of the replacing ‘genuine and instructed Christian conversion’ with guitar genius.

Today, our attractional church pulpits reinforce this anemic model of worship, after all, if God’s word is no longer prominent on the pulpit, why should it be in the heart of the pianist?

As a result, character is overcome by competence, and as the music in our worship increasingly relies on the later, many Christian musicians confuse vocal progress with spiritual growth.

That would probably be fine if gospel musicians were only singing before bathroom mirrors, but the call to Christian worship is, you guessed it— a call to exult in Christ, not self, and so its the congregation that suffers most.

Ultimately, weekly emphasis on Performance rather than faithfulness, vocal finesse rather than sanctification, leave congregants as spectators rather than participants, and as a result, weak worship, and therefore, weak churches and Christians.

But we can’t critique long enough if church is indeed a hospital, the drug we need most now is a vaccine, a vaccine of discipleship, sound instruction in the good news before it is sung. Paul would agree.

When believers (onstage and offstage) apply themselves to “the knowledge of him” (Eph 1:17) distinguishing substance from ‘form’ will recover worship to become a what it is supposed to be—a sweet aroma, pleasing in his sight.

Consequently, the volume is likely to go down, at least for the sake of everybody’s spiritual health.

And as Apostle Paul demonstrates in Eph 5:19, all Christian music and expression are rooted in the one we have come to profoundly know, first and foremost (Eph 1:17, 3:18) —in music ministry, nothing just hangs by itself, not even our awesome voices or instrumentals.

Understanding this may mean resting the guitar —even if for a while—in order to first comprehend the one we will soon be singing about.

And sure, the call for true worship is not a call for cemetery-like auditoriums but a call to know what and who comes first.

This, in essence, is a call to Strive to grow, before you strum the guitar.