On Worship Music

In my digital media class we've spent the past 6 weeks looking at experimental music from the dawn of the tape recorder and of records and how composers used mediums in ways that they weren't particularly designed for to completely re-write the rules of what music is and can be.
This week the professor played pieces that were created out of words.
For example, there was a piece that was made out of a man saying simply the words "rainbow", "bandit", "bomb", and "chug".
It was really cool, and here's why:
Words are neat because they mean things.
Those 4 words have inherent meanings- they create pictures in your mind that are representative of what they mean, and ideally everyone has a similar mental picture, and that's how we communicate with each other.
Interestingly, those 4 words lose their meanings when they are combined- they don't mean anything together, they don't form a complete thought.
However there are cool things you can do with the rhythm and with multitrack recording that is good for experimental music.

It brings up a really interesting thought.

Music by itself, with no words, evokes emotion. It causes the listener to feel.
Words by themselves convey a complete thought to that listener, with or without emotion.
Together they are a powerful way of conveying a message full of emotion.

In bible times, writing "worship music" was a big deal. Solomon employed musicians constantly in his palace. The middle of the Bible is the book of Psalms, which is a pretty big deal.
Churches around the world have Hymnals in the back of their pews.

Psalms and hymns have something very in common: we don't usually think about them from a contemporary music standpoint.
You can sing hymns with music, but you can also sing them without it, or you can merely speak them. The Psalms were most definitely very poetic and musical in the original hebrew, and there have been english songs made out of quite a few.

But non the less, they are not in the format of a modern low-art "song".

So here's what I got to thinking about.
You can worship God with words.
You can worship God with music.

But here in the modern times, we can pull up 'worship music' at any point of the day and listen to it.
Is listening to worship music the same thing as worshiping?
Not necessarily- you can listen to music without worshiping, but you can also engage in the music and worship God with the ideas presented by the songwriter.

But what happens when you have music with no words?
Can you worship God by listening to music with no lyrics?
Its one thing to play music, and use an instrument to worship God with, they did that in the old testament.
But just by listening?

Music without words presents no specific thought, just moods, emotions.
So an instrumental "worship song" wouldn't be able to help the listener by suggesting words to sing or think.
But that emotion definitely does something.
Any good worship set has periods of instrumentals that give space for people to meditate and bask in God's glory.

I think that a wordless worship song does nothing that we can't do on our own, not in the sense that lyrics give us words to sing.
But music can definitely put us in a mindset, an attitude of worship.
A state of being where we can be more receptive to God, more sensitive to His presence.

Music is a powerful thing.
I would like to write an instrumental album and release it as "worship music".