I get frustrated when I hear people tell us that we love God with our minds but not our hearts.

It is true that the typical Sydney Anglican doesn't gush with emotion during church. We are typically quite measured in our emotional expression. Our gatherings are more like public meetings and less like rock concerts.

A big reason for this is that we Anglicans began the race to contemporaneity way behind the blocks.

When I grew up in a progressive-ish Sydney Anglican church in the 1980's, we dared to remove the robes from the service leader, and even occasionally stripped back the good 'ol Page 39 service to its bare bones. We sang cutting-edge choruses from Graham Kendrick and Scripture in Song to the sound of amplified music. We even cut the organ back to only one hymn per service. We were pushing the boundaries as best we could.

Twenty years later, we've come a long way. We no longer hold song books in our hands, which means we sometimes end up in spontaneous and even planned bouts of clapping. We sometimes dare to shut our eyes during songs.

Sometimes we even shift the weight repeatedly from one foot to the other during singing, creating the appearance of dancing.

We've come a long way in a short period of time. We don't gush our emotions. But it doesn't mean that we are emotionally impaired.

But there's more behind our introverted 'worship' than simply a resistance to change.

At the same time as we stripped back the use of AAPB and turned up the guitar amps, we were aware of the growing influence of a theology that had the potential to woo us away from our first love.

Experientially-hungry Christians were seeking an alternative style of church with heightened emotions. The music was loud, the lead singers raised their hands and closed their eyes in a demonstration of earnest adoration, and the crowd followed suit.

People sought this Charismatic alternative because they craved experience. They sought a slice of heaven, on earth. They wanted to touch God and to feel his warmth. This new atmosphere of church promised to help people scratch where they were itching.

In response, we resisted the temptation to bring heaven down to earth in this way. We sought to meet Christ, clothed in his Scriptures, rather than draped in experience. We maintained that to know God meant to know his Word, and that the task of the disciple was to have faith and hope in the coming of our Lord.

And so, in contrast, we often look a bit boring. We don't always wear our hearts on our sleeves.  We usually don't leave church in a sweat.

But it doesn't mean that we don't have hearts. We love and worship our heavenly Father through his Son by his Spirit. We are so passionate about a life of worship that the numbers of people heading into theological training keeps steadily growing. We are so emotionally strong that we tear ourselves way from the lure of materialism to head out to the mission field in ever-increasing numbers.

We love God with our hearts because we know him with our minds.

Yet, there's still room to grow in the way we express our emotions. If we're happy to lose ourselves in the mosh pit of a rock concert or the energy of a sporting crowd, then we should be prepared to appear engaged as we engage with God in the company of others. We have room to grow and improve.

That's why we run the annual TWIST Music Conference. We want to help each other wear our heart on our sleeves with some more confidence. We want to equip our churches with the tools to lead our congregations in great singing, to God's glory.