Worship Music Should Be Radically Contemporary

Wait...who exactly are we worshipping again?

A recent article is making its way around the worship music circles, "The Imminent Decline of Contemporary Worship Music: Eight Reasons" by T. David Gordon, and by way of it's title it is causing a decent amount of buzz (I'm prone to writing titles like that myself, most especially in my article "The Moment I Began to Lose Faith in Contemporary Worship Music"). Articles such as this also tend to warrant lots of responses, so I figure I would step in the ring and have a go at a round. Musician and church music leader Fernando Ortega pointed it out to me, who I hear might be writing some "contemporary" worship songs himself at the moment. Let's pray for him! We all hope he gets his new songs "right"! (No pressure!) But seriously, lets pray for him—his art is a blessing to the Church.

There is a lot to be commended in the article. That is, there is a lot I agree with, most especially his concerns with the disposable nature of contemporary worship music. It is novelty music, here today, gone tomorrow, and is not excellent enough art to endure throughout generations. I would also want to resound his points about its (general) lack theological depth and poetic excellence in its lyrics (where that is the case), as well as its unhealthy connections to our overly saturated entertainment culture and industry.

However, there are two points in his article I believe deserve a pushback:
1. That the "old hymns" are by default superior.
and
2. That "contemporary worship" as a term is an oxymoron.