Performance?

What kind of performance does God prefer from the congregation?

When I first read the description for the book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I thought, I'm not planning to live in a monastery, why would I read about life in a community of believers? As is often the case, I found a quote from this book which intrigued me, so I gave the book a read. Previously to reading Life Together, I had read the Bonhoeffer biography by Eric Metaxas which inspired me greatly. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's journal he recounted having visited Harlem and wrote highly of the congregational singing he encountered there. My heart was lifted up just thinking about the black spirituals I grew up on. My heart needs to experience congregational singing. 

I long to be one voice among many worshipping someone worth worshipping. I'm not trying to show anyone how worshipful the service was for me. I am trying to not care at all about anyone but God. 

How many Hillsong or Bethel or Elevation or Jesus Culture songs were written so that we can hear the voices of the congregation? People are great at playing, but not better than singing in one mind, one heart, one purpose together. We ain't got time for songs without the Word of God in them.

I knew the singing in churches had gone wrong, but I didn't realize that when Bethel and Hillsong teach from The Message instead of the Bible this is a theological choice. They are keeping people from the Word of God. That will not stand. No matter how the devil sends snakes, bloody legs, and heel pain my way, I will not be silenced. Worshiping God in His Word is worth it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p59-60

"Speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5: 19). Our song on earth is speech. It is the sung Word. Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing to­gether it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word. All devotion, all attention should be concentrated upon the Word in the hymn. The fact  that we  do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to  say, that the  burden of  our song goes far  beyond all human words. Yet we do not hum a melody; we sing words of praise to God, words of thanksgiving, confession, and prayer. Thus the music is completely the servant of the Word. It elucidates the Word in its mystery. Because it is bound wholly to the Word, the singing of the congregation, especially of the family congregation, is essentially singing in unison.  Here words and music com­bine in a unique way. The soaring tone of unison singing finds its sole and essential support in the words that are sung and therefore does not need the musical support of other voices. With one voice let us sing today In unison both praise and pray sang the Bohemian Brethren.  "With one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 15:6). The purity of unison singing, un­affected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity, unspoiled by the attempt to give musical art an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing. This, it is true, discloses itself to our cultivated ears only gradually and by patient practice. It becomes a question of a congregation's power of spiritual discernment whether it adopts proper unison singing. This is singing from the heart, singing to the Lord, singing the Word; this is singing in unity.