Last night, ten of us from Anchor attended a Tommy Walker concert at Blackhawk Baptist, one of the megachurches in Fort Wayne. The place was packed. We occupied the right side of two pews in the steep balcony. It was not a young crowd, so I wouldn’t put it in the post-modern fold. It looked to me like most people attending were in their 30s and 40s. Which described Anchor’s delegation.

I’m not sure “concert” describes it right, at least not in the way I think of concerts. This was a participative event, like a two-hour worship service without the preaching--just the congregational singing part. Only a couple of songs were sung “to” us. Nearly all of them included projected lyrics so we could sing along.

Tommy Walker leads worship at a church in Los Angeles, and is also a “hired gun” worship leader for Promise Keepers and other organizations. Worship leaders are sort of the new Christian rock stars. Yes, we still have Third Day and the Newsboys and MercyMe and lots of other "traditional“ concert performers. But worship leaders/writers like Chris Tomlin, Matt Reddman, and Darlene Zschech now fill stadiums just as easily.

I’d never heard Tommy Walker before. I liked him, liked the concert, consider him genuine. He did a wonderful job leading in worship. I recommend him.

With that extended disclaimer, I’m going to comment on aspects of the event.

The music was nearly all of the vertical variety--me singing to God. This seems typical of contemporary worship music. Most of the worship songs written today can be summed up with these generic themes: God is awesome, he’s wonderful, he’s my strength, I love him, I need him, God is great, I praise him, I honor him…. You get the picture. Most of the songs we sing now are basically love songs to God. Now, how can you criticize sentiments like that?

But last night, there was nothing about the body of Christ, about being a mighty army, about going forth and changing Fort Wayne, about telling our friends and neighbors about Jesus. No, it was all personal singing, between me and God. Nobody else around me was needed. It was a collection of individuals who could zone off in worship, just them and God and Tommy's superb lyrics.

I’ve noticed this trend for years, and others on the Anchor worship team are, by now, tired of hearing me gripe about it. I guess my formative years included a lot of "horizontal" songs which spoke about the church and evangelism--"One in the Spirit," "Pass it On," "I'll Tell the World," "Get All Excited." I miss hearing the body of Christ express those themes in song.

It seems outlandish for me to criticize vertical worship, and please admonish me if I’m out of place or just plain ignorant. But I left the concert last night feeling that hundreds of individuals (myself included) had experienced a good time of individual worship, and that’s as far as it would go.