I've stood in congregations where this song has been delivered almost deadpan, with worshippers unwilling to move even a muscle while claiming that they're prepared to become 'EVEN MORE undignified than this.' There is a huge irony in the fact that this song originates from Britain.Īnother song which doesn't quite make the transition from summer festival tent to the pew back home, Tim Hughes' 'Joy is in this place' is a party atmosphere reworking of Amazing Grace which definitely only works at a party. Today however, as the song passes into the hymnal of the average small Baptist church, the accompanying enthusiasm is rather weaker. When young people first heard 'Undignified' at events like Soul Survivor in the 1990s, they did likewise – minus the partial nudity.

'I will dance, I will sing, to be mad, for my king' sang Matt Redman, evoking the moment in 2 Samuel 6 when King David dances with such abandon in worship that he's not worried about exposing himself in public (in every sense). ' I'll become even more undignified than this' You might be the sort of person who raises their arms aloft in worship all the time, but if you do so during Chris Tomlin's 'Unchanging', will people think you're just doing the actions, and assume that you're not an experienced arm-raiser? As a result, you might ironically decide to take an arms-down position for this line. Instead we stand absolutely bolt upright, offering about 4 per cent of ourselves, and frantically looking around the room to see if anyone else has assumed the High Church prayer position. But very few of us ever respond to the lyrical invitation to drop to a more monastic position and offer 'all of me'. Many of us will have sung Kathryn Scott's majestic worship ballad 'Hungry' in recent years, and some of us will have even managed to follow the tune. But sometimes, our unwillingness to move even a muscle feels a little conspicuous. Now, I'm not suggesting that we should be miming along interpretively to every lyric like one of those people at the front at Spring Harvest. There's an unspoken tradition, particularly within evangelical circles, of failing to practice what we preach, or rather, sing: we don't do the actions in grown-up worship songs.ĭuring children's songs, we're only too happy to oblige with hand gestures, usually around God being wide, deep, tall and long, but when it comes to regular songs, we suddenly freeze up. Acts of worship such as singing are about bringing our whole selves to God yet there's one very specific way that Christians often fail to do that. 'There is no one, correct way to worship except to worship honestly,' says devotional writer David S Lampel, and of course he's right.

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