I'm almost reluctant to do this one, in light of the "church's" love affair with secular music, right now.  But my beef in that regard is the church hailing these secular, worldly, politically motivated musicians as though they were Christian models, or role models for our pastors to follow.  They are not.  Bands like U2 have absolutely nothing to do with glorifying God in their music.  Instead, they are exalting themselves and elevating MAN (or man's agenda and political goals) to the object of worship.

Be assured, that is not what I'm doing here.  The group in the video below are fun to watch, but they are not bringing a godly message, and they are not doing this for God's glory.  They are secular, through and through.

BUT...THIS is just plain fun to watch.  And they are undoubtedly talented, and entertaining.  But that's all.  Except for a point I'm going to make following the video. This is a Slovenian choir.  The performance they are putting on here is done entirely without instrumentation of any kind.  And it's all the more impressive once you realize that English is not a first language for most of them, and probably not a language at all for at least some of them.

Notice that I didn't entitle the article "What praise is". 

One question I want to ask right away (for the benefit of another crowd) is this:

"Does anyone here seem like they have any thought at all of sending a text message right now?"  Does any one of them look like they have anything at all on their mind other than the task at hand?  Do you see anyone who looks like they are thinking, "Ya know, I gotta bust a tweet up in this place?" 

No.  You don't.  They all, to the one, look fully engaged, with their full attention in the work at hand.

This is not praise.  But it does look like it and resemble real praise better than I think it is done in the church.  This is what it would look like if properly done.

To begin with, notice how it is a corporate affair.  It is something done collectively.  The whole thing hinges in the perceived "we together" aspect, and not on the "you singing your thing and me singing mine" aspect.  The success of the performance depends upon them appearing unified in the spirit of the thing, and they do that very well.  If even one of them looked distracted, the whole image would be shattered. 

Second, notice how there is no "star" on the stage.  There's no "worship leader" who's alone on the stage with a "backup band" behind him.  There's no one particular individual in the spotlight.  There's no one practically on the verge of a Jesus orgasm right on the stage.

There are no instruments of any kind.  They perform using only the bodies that God gave them.

Notice also how they appear happy and upbeat about their performance.  Not romantic or erotic.  Notice how there is no sense of "look at me" coming from the stage.  There's no one individual who is the center of attraction.   They are all in it together and they seem to know that.  There's no sense of "me, me, me..."  There's no sense of "we are leading and you are following."  Even the audience, whether they can sing or not, feel a part of the presentation, and a connectedness with the joy of the moment.

As out of character as it is going to sound, coming from me, this happens to be a very good model of what I think REAL Godly praise looks and sounds like.  People who are ALL genuinely happy to be there singing, and are singing because it's just gotta come out, lest these rocks and stones immediately cry out.

Anyway, enjoy the show.  I did.